This is the second post covering a concept shoot with Rachel and around 200 vinyl records. As mentioned in the previous post the records were all classical discards from a bookfest that my wife is involved with.  

In the studio I had positioned two sheets of plywood as a backdrop. Onto this I attached overlapping records using small nails to hang them up. It took the best part of two hours to nail them all in. I lost count of how many times I hit my thumb during the process.

On the floor I placed plywood planking as I thought this gave a better look than the carpet. The records stack was made up of groups of ten records glued together with a central steel rod giving it stability.

The video below shows what the overall studio set look like as well as the lighting positions. 

The actual lighting is shown in the diagram below.  It consisted of a Godox AD600 shooting into a 1.5m softbox positioned 90° to Rachel. At the rear of the room my Elinchrom D400 was shooting into a 7 foot umbrella with diffusion covering it. This light was being fired by an optical slave built in. The video shows a hairlight but this was not actually used.

For the second shoot Rachel was naked and used records to create images that wouldn’t get me banned from IG. Rachel is comfortable being nude in front of camera so the shoot flowed easily. 

My studio has mirrors on both sides so we also used them in the shots.

All of the images in this post were shot on my Lumix G9 at the following setting 1/200s f8 ISO200 with focal lengths ranging from 24mm to 32mm. The combination of 1/200s and f8 ensures that I have full control of the light while giving me a reasonable depth of field. I am operating in a small studio with only 2.4m (8 feet) available between my model and camera. So if I want full body I am forced to shoot wide. This is not an issue if you place the subject in the middle third of the frame.