Some time in 2012, I stopped contributing to an agency I was with due to a lot of corporate bullshit that was going on. Sometimes you have to know when to collect your chips and walk away from the game. This was one of the last shoots I did at that time back in Sept of 2012. I accidentally ran across the folder with these images so I wanted to put a little BTS post since people love to see what goes on behind the scenes.
My original goal for this shoot was to express the young California spirit of these teen girls. I thought an old school VW Bug would fit the bill right so that's what I went with. I asked a buddy of mine who collects vintage Vdubs and found some girls that my old assistant Lloyd knew from High School.
Due to time restraints I had at the time, my goal was to shoot by the shop but try to pass it off as if we were somewhere that was not Pomona... lol. So shooting tight was mandatory. The girls at the time didn't have much modeling experience which many times is a double edged sword. Double edged because they have little experience and they need a lot of direction but at the same time they have genuine emotions so it feels more "real".
Normally I didn't have people shooting behind the scenes but that day we had Paul (owner of the VW) out with his camera so that is the only BTS we have. We had the car parked right along the building so that we could utilize the shade as much as possible. The light outside the window were blown out but it ended up working for me since I was trying to make it seem we were closer to a "beachy" area. Is beachy even a word? IDK. Only other piece of gear we used was a large fan to replicate the car moving. Some of the shots are not as consistent with the wind but it worked for the most part.
Shot with a Canon 5d Mark III, Canon 35L and shot mainly these settings: f/2.8, 1/200th and ISO 400. Easy breezy. This was a short shoot as I had a few other looks I needed to get.
The images turned out well... this was quite some time ago and I will be bringing some new shoots up in the future that work on the Cali Lifestyle... so stay tuned with that.
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Andrew Manley
Lifestyle Photographer