Pretty Reckless Photo Shoot

I wasn’t reckless with the shoot, but I did recently make portraits of a band called The Pretty Reckless. They’re fronted by 16-year-old Taylor Momsen, who is most widely known as Jenny Humphrey on the CW television series Gossip Girl. I’m a bit too old to have ever seen the show, but Taylor appears to be quite the hard rocker in real life.

Taylor has acted professionally since she was 3 and signed with a big modeling agency a couple of years ago. My goal was to photograph her like a rock star instead of a pretty girl in a fashion magazine.

To create the lighting, I used all SB-800 and SB-900 Nikon strobes. I put two in a big softbox at camera right, bounced another off a piece of white posterboard on the floor (for fill), added two strobes behind the amps for separation, and had one more in the back with a red gel to light the wall.

By using the right lighting and surrounding the band with amplifiers, I was able to get the look I wanted.

(Nikon D3, 24-70, 1/250, f/5.6, ISO 640)

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