Story Behind the Photo
November 2024: What’s That Smell
©Scott Traynor
This was a difficult assignment. How do you capture an image of a smell. After a lot of thought, one thing that stood out was perfume, which lead to putting on or wearing perfume.
I wanted to capture the spray of the perfume and have a basic image where the perfume stood out more than the model. Off to the garage I went.
Plan: One side of the model with a single light in front of the model to capture spray and model. FYI: It didn’t work.
Plan B: Two photos: 1) Model holding bottle 2) The spray
Shot 1: One flash aimed at model from the backside to get wrap around lighting on the face. Very little light on the backdrop keeping it black.
Shot 2: Same layout as shot one, but added the Rotolight Neo on the ground facing up to highlight the spray. Spray was created by two water bottles, not the perfume.Photos merged in photoshop for final image.
Additional Information: I used a hair mannequin to adjust my lights to reduce model’s time on set (in this case in my garage). Took at total of 170 photos adjusting lights and trying to capture the spray.
Equipment: Sony A7Rv, Sony FE 85mm F1.4 GM, Godox AD600 Pro, MagMod Reflector XL &
MagSpere, Godox AD200 Pro, Rotolight NEO 3 Pro, black backdrop, two water bottles, and a
mannequin head.
Software: Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop
Settings: 1/60, F5.0, ISO 100