Rummaging though my old fashion work, I came across this photo I did for the St. Louis Galleria in 1989. It is unremarkable as a photo, but it has a back story...
The two models, whose names escape me, I'm afraid, we flew in from Chicago for the shoot. They were real troupers, though, and we cranked out about 15 setups in different locations at the mall in one grueling day. The next day, when I made the straight print for this picture at about 9:00AM with a 2:00PM deadline, I was horrified! In our haste, we missed some price tags and signs, the male model's pinned up pant cuff had come undone and the chemistry between the models just wasn't there. With no time for retouching or a re-shoot, what to do? I decided to see if I could blur the unwanted detail by printing through fog and haze filters, but I couldn't preserve enough detail in the faces. Finally, I grabbed a Cokin A216 "Speed" filter and made this version after a couple of tries and cleaned up the print with split toning and selective bleaching on Grade 3 Agfa Portriga Rapid paper. I just barely made the 2:00PM deadline, fingers crossed that my client would accept the artistic license. As it turns out, the Galleria ran the picture a number of times and, much to my surprise, the photo earned several awards that year.
Technical: Hasselblad 500 CM, Zeiss Sonnar 150 f/4, Kodak T-Max 400, f/8 @ 1/8s, available light. Printed on Agfa Portriga Rapid Grade 3, partial bleaching in potassium ferro-cyanide, Kodak Gold toner.
Print copied with Nikon D700, Nikkor 50mm f1.4G, ISO 200, two photo grade fluorescent tube banks, RAW file processed in Lightroom.
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