• 
• 

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Melissa Rodwell: Master Of Rock ’N’ Roll Couture

Melissa Rodwell’s fashion sense is dark and mysterious

This Article Features Photo Zoom

Adds Rodwell, "If you know how to light, you can definitely roll with a great location and a great model, but you need to know how to light. You need to know how to go into that situation and expose for the beautiful natural light. If you can learn how to light, you can use a light bulb to light something."

While Rodwell may prefer breaking the rules when she's lighting on location, that doesn't mean she's winging it. All of her shoots—whether client-driven or personal—involve extensive prep work and deliberate previsualization to the point where Rodwell knows exactly what she's going to create before she ever sets foot on set.

"I'm planning an upcoming shoot in the forest," she explains, "so I've sent my casting submissions out, and I'm locking down location shots of the forest that we're shooting in for the different times of day so we know our start time and how many shots I've got to get when that magic hour light is perfect. Looking at the weather and working with the stylist and seeing the clothes—it will be a whole week of this. And then by the time we get to the shoot, everything is nailed down, and I know what the final images are going to be already in my head. I'm formulating that now.

"You get some happy surprises and some things you weren't expecting," Rodwell says, "like when you're there and you're like, wow, this is an awesome angle, this is an awesome location inside of the location, let me shoot something here real quick. Then you get these happy surprises, but for the most part things are really nailed down."

See more of Melissa Rodwell's photography at www.melissarodwell.com. You can find her fashion photography blog at www.fashionphotographyblog.com.