Changing your perspective

There's a scene in the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" where Indy is in a library looking for a hidden symbol. He keeps searching until he comes to the realization that the symbol is embedded in the floor and can only be seen from upstairs.

As photographers, even though we train ourselves to look around our surroundings for shooting locations, we sometimes forget that there can be shots other than at eye level.

When scouting a location, don't hesitate to look at a scene from as many different angles as you can think of, even if it makes you look weird (Todd, why are you sprawled out on the floor? Did you fall down?)

For this shot with Luciane, we started shooting in the living room (the same from my previous post with Whitney), but we weren't happy with the green foliage through the windows as a background.  It didn't really work with the black lingerie she was wearing. I racked my brain trying to think of a different background when I had that Indiana Jones epiphany above.  I ran upstairs and saw this angle from the second floor bedroom overlooking the living room.

Passion on the Floor, originally uploaded by Mizomi Photography.

I had Luciane position herself along the edge of the living room floor covering so that she had different textures on either side of her. We then had our makeup artist Kahulani come in and arrange Luciane's hair so that it flowed with her pose.

We lit her with just 1 light, an AB800 with a large softbox on the floor next to Luciane's head.