Each year in October I plan a Halloween themed shoot. In 2022 I decided to reuse a dress from the previous year and create a corpse bride shoot. I knew that Devon would be perfect for the shoot and was really happy when she agreed to do it. The original concept was only to have her in it. During the fashion shoot with Katie, we were talking about the shoot and Katie sh said she would be keen to take part.

So we modified the concept so that the corpse bride was unhappy that her groom was marrying someone else. I reached out to a friend who has a whole collection of wedding dresses and brought four to choose from. I also enlisted the assistance of Erin Gibbons to do both bridal and horror makeup. 

I took the dress and further distressed it. First, I soaked it in diluted black poster pipe. Then we added rips to it.

Normally I shoot alone but for this session I invited two other photographer friends to take part. Rochelle lives in Palmerston North and has a wicked since of imagination. Toya mainly shoots birds. As she had invited me to shoot on a number of occasions. I felt it was appropriate to return the favour.  

The initial set was set up in my garage as it had sufficient room. I used the canvas backdrop that I had painted previously. From the roof I hung a chandelier to add a little extra element.

The main light was my Godox AD600 in a 1.5 m octabox positioned at a 90° angle camera left. This provided for in coverage and insured that we got catchlight in the eyes. A reflector camera right provided a bit of fill on that side. At the rear of the room an Elincron D400 fired into a 7″ umbrella with a diffusion panel to further provide fill.  

Devon was told to act like she was a ghost and two interact with Katie by trying to annoy her. Katie was told to look like she was completely unaware of Devon. Both pulled off these rolls perfectly.

All of the images we shot with my Nikon Z6ii camera using a 24 -70 4.0 lens. The camera was in manual mode set a 1/200s f9 at ISO100. This is my standard setting for studio work. It provides a reasonable depth of field as well eliminating all ambient light. This means that I am in full control of the light.

My original plan was to set up the lighting. Then, I would allow each of us to take turns with the trigger. While I am totally comfortable with flash, the other two were not. We discovered that if we opened the rear door of the garage it let in enough light for them to capture their images without affecting mine.

Everyone enjoyed this part of the session and some great images came from it.