SKINS

SKINS is a clothing company. They primarily make compression undergarments for athletes. I used to have a partial sponsorship from them, so in continues yesterdays theme, I decided to a mock ad for them.

Considering I have about two hours to shoot, edit, and write these posts, the photos are in no way perfect. In a perfect world, I'd spend a lot more time getting wrinkles out and reshaping the clothing in Ps so it looked perfect. But for tonight I left the general shape alone and messed with the color, lighting, and actually putting the ad together.

To start off, I had to obviously get some pictures of the tights. I could have just laid them down and taken the pictures that way, but that would have looked horrible. So I had a model wear them! Correct shape and I wouldn't have to re position them for every shot.

I lit the scene with two umbrellas cross lighting the model. They were at higher powers than normal, both at 1/32 power. This was because the tights are black, so I had to use more light to bring out the texture and muscle tones forming the tight.

My first thought was to do only one view of the tight to make the ad, but I ended up with three views I really liked, so the ad turned into a three view ad! I did the fairly traditional front view, 45 degree, and profile. I had a back view, but I didn't really like it so it went away.

In Ps, I masked out the tights and put them on a white background. This was pretty quick and easy so not much to tell. Used the quick selection tool because I had to be quick. Pardon the lame joke....

The problem I did encounter was that the masks from the auto-seletion tool I was using didn't quick mask out enough around the tights, so I added a white glow around the tights to blend them with the background.

I then grabbed a logo on line and popped it in. I had to recolor the gold of the logo because it didn't match the tights. Eye dropper tool and paint bucket tool.

Finally, I added a levels adjustment to make everything a little brighter, and I was done! Here it is.

Since I didn't mention it before, I shot at ISO100, f2.2, and 1/200 of a second. I would have shot at a higher aperture to get more depth of field...but...I'm lazy and didn't feel like changing it because that would require compensation with ISO or flash power which would mean either more work in post and a lesser quality image or I'd drain my flashes really fast. Batteries are expensive, one charge of one of my flashes is like 10 bucks! I gotta get some external packs for them..

See you tomorrow!