Behind the scenes of a photoshoot

Last week I had a day out of the office shooting a sweater for an upcoming magazine ad. I love location shoots--they're a lot of hard work, but the results are worth it. Plus, it's nice to get out of the normal office routine. This shoot was especially fun because I was going for a bit of a retro look, and we had the perfect model and location to pull it off. The model, Jenny, is a software marketer by day and one of Angela's roller derby teammates by night (derby name of Vixen). Jenny has the retro style I was wanting, so I asked if she would be a model for us. She also agreed to let us photograph her in her natural setting: her very cool condo and her car that was her grandfather's.

Above you can see Jenny in the distance during lighting tests, with our photographer, Sarah who was assisting our other photographer, Kerry (not visible). We liked the natural lighting of Jenny's condo, so Kerry kept the additional lighting to a minimum, mainly using diffusers and screens.

We teased Kerry about lounging on the job as he sat on the couch to get a lower angle of Jenny in the doorway. (By the way, isn't that Audrey Hepburn print awesome? Jenny says she found it at IKEA.)

After getting the inside shots we wanted, we moved outside for some shots in front of Jenny's car. I was hoping for overcast skies and cooler weather, but we had sun and 80 degrees. Luckily, there was a nice breeze and we were shooting in the shade, so Jenny didn't roast in the wool coat.

We must have made an entertaining sight to passersby!

I took this photo of Jenny waiting with Kerry's dog, Willy. In my experience as an Art Director, 80% of photo shoots are waiting around while lighting gets perfected or technical hurdles are overcome. Jenny says that being a model is much easier than her day job!

At the end of the day we had gotten some great shots of the sweater coat--so many that we plan to feature a photo slide show when the ad comes out. If you're curious to see the resulting ads from this photo shoot, look for them in the Winter issues of Interweave Knits and Vogue Knitting that come out in late November.

PS: Can you tell which Knit Picks exclusive pattern Jenny is wearing? I had it re-knit in her size and a dramatic color that looks fabulous on her. The knitter who knit our catalog version actually knit this one too. What a rockstar sample knitter!