Always exploring concepts for stock photography, our team wanted to shoot something uncommon in the stock arena. Something devious, combined with sexy. Intimidating, yet appealing. Applicable, functional, and creative too. We’re getting ahead of ourselves already.

No better model than Rachelle, with a tough girl attitude and gorgeous features. Easy to doll up, Rachelle snaps right into character as if she might just be the deviant we are hoping to portray.
Flagrant red lips, luring eyes, and a faux beauty mark for fun. Austie (MUA) doesnt take long to get her hands dirty. Clearly visualizing the appeal I wanted for our Poker Vixen, Austie jumped right into action.

Our stage was set by the classic poker scene from the movies. Hanging lamp above the players, dark shadows, and a dingy smug look on everyone’s face. Easy to setup, great shots for fun, but hard to produce solid stock images. Rachelle’s fedora cast deep shadows across her face, and was a challenge to illuminate her eyes. We threw in a white bounce card underneath to project some luminance, which helped recover her beautiful face.

Less Stock, More Concept.
A short burst of great images, and the shoot progressed into an unstoppable whirlwind. Soon Rachelle was topless and sprawled out on the table, Austie had baby oil in hand, and it was a room full of smiles.
A comfortable model is a priceless model.

Although the images we later reviewed could have simply been amazing without any edits, I felt compelled to not only push the envelope, but my own quality standards. The following is a recap of my efforts in post production with one image specifically.

Rachelle was posing on a table with white bed sheets, but upon review, the sheets had some heavy wrinkles, giving it a dirty bedroom scene, opposed to sexy and soft. I wanted to remove the sheets. So I jumped in to commence an arduous effort, hoping to find the story along the way.

• Basic Cleanup
  Typical blemish cleanup, wrinkles, stray hair, and lens dust.
• Smoothing
  Smoothing skin and retaining some edges. Tucking and reshaping, but not much.
• Image Blending
  Finally had a chance to use some of my photos from Montana, the big fluffy clouds from Big Sky Country. Soft, rolling and brilliant. Shot with a 300mm Telephoto Prime mid day. They didn’t sit in the archive for long.
• Selection
  Cutting out hair is a complete mystery to me, and this had to be my most extreme case of hair cutting I’ve been presented with. Brunette shot on black, it was a nightmare to recover anything at all. So I decided the only way to counter this was a dark starry night scene behind the model. Strictly using my photoshop tools, I created the crescent moon along with a horizon of twinkling stars and a whole lot of wonderment.
• Color
  What color is the sky above the clouds… at night? Creative.

I think this theme would make a great Print series…

Download the desktops:
Rachelle Clouds 1920×1280
Rachelle Clouds 1280×1024

This post is tagged clouds, Desktops, Downloads, image editing, night, photo, photoshop, poker, Rachelle, sexy, sky, stock, topless