Virginia Living Cover – “Shoot & Tell”
Monday, September 14th, 2009Earlier this year, I shot a story on Virginia’s peanut farming for Virginia Living Magazine. After the article was selected as the September/October cover story, I had the opportunity to shoot the cover image.
Art director Tyler Darden wanted to “keep it simple and clean, yet homespun and comfortable…like peanuts!” I brought my lights and soft boxes in case we needed the additional light but my first approach on any shoot is to keep it as simple as possible. I try to use available light and only add external light when necessary. I shot with a Canon 5D Mark II and used a 74″ Impact reflector to reflect and diffuse the available light. The camera’s live view function is crucial on shoots like this for nailing focus points and white balance, and allowing the art director to look over your shoulder to preview framing.
In this picture, Rob is using the large reflector to diffuse the light coming in from the skylight and the small reflector to cast a shadow on the back of peanuts.
As you can see, this allowed the peanuts in the foreground and in focus to really pop while the darkened background would allow the cover text to read better in the layout.
Rob used Aperture to download, preview and select potential images with the art director. We then connected our Macbook Pros over the wireless network to transfer the selected images. From there, the art director dropped the images directly into the InDesign layout and chose the one that looked best with his cover composition.
This workflow allowed the art director and I to be sure we nailed the shot even before we broke down the set. I just picked up the magazine and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.
