Editorial: Marie Claire - Shine a Light

OUT NOW: MARIE CLAIRE JANUARY 2012

Marie Claire (Australia) approached me to shoot a campaign on mental depression. Designed to lift the stigma attached to this condition, they invited Australian celebrities to shine a light on depression by talking about their personal experiences in a campaign titled Shine A Light.

The creative brief described complex scenarios capturing the stars in darkness, beautifully illuminated by a set of lanterns and fairy lights. Our aim was to produce a whimsical atmosphere of dusk throughout the series.

Working with the busy schedules of celebrities can be challenging. Not one was available during the evening, yet every shot was to have a dusk or twilight look.

We needed to get crafty, and crafty we became! All the scenes we shot in mid afternoon. Fortunately Shining a light on the issue of depression was a wonderful technical challenge and a chance for me to play with a variety of light sources.

We shot several exposures and in postproduction, I used layers from each exposure. We exposed the celebrities with our soft fashion shoot lighting, the ambient light with the available sunlight and long exposures at night for each lantern, candle and fairy light.

This is the kind of series and challenge I revel in! I hope you enjoy.

Shine A Light also aims to promote awareness of depression through an interactive website and you can see this, the stories and more behind the scenes action here.

http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/features/shine-a-light