I recently had a small test shoot with Bristol-raised model Ozy Hussian. A Computing student and part-time model, Ozy was keen to show a bit more versatility in his portfolio, which currently contained some good sports/streetwear images.
The obvious thing to do was involve a suit but dress it up in a way that wouldn’t be out of place with Ozy’s personal style.
To make things interesting, I thought we’d approach the shoot as if we were devising a small magazine feature with the title, ‘One high-street suit, four looks’ – the idea to take the same suit and go from workwear through to clubwear. A lot of young guys get their first suit for weddings, funerals, graduations and the like so our imaginary magazine feature would showcase a few cool looks beyond this. So, in other words, I turned personal stylist for the day. Gok Wan – watch out.
The four styles created were:
- A sharp workwear look, where Ozy would look the part thrashing out a big deal with a top client.
- A dress-to impress partywear look.
- A rock’n’roll dress-down gig look.
- A cool night-on-the-tiles clubbin’ look.
Not bad stuff from one inexpensive high street suit!
Lighting-wise I wanted to introduce loads of drama. The model was primarily lit by my Bowens Softlite reflector and a Bowens Gemini 500 studio flash. The Bowens Softlite a kind of beauty dish, which gives a great compromise between hard and soft light. It’s best when you can get it quite close to the model. A slight lick of fill was sometimes used too, provided by another Bowens Gemini and a ‘soft silver’ bounce umbrella.
