Los Angeles Magazine

Design Director: Steven Banks
Photographer: Steven Simko

Heidi: What was the cover direction?
Steven: The cover brief was “LA’s most iconic places for tourists to be locals ” so Steven Banks (design director LA mag) came up with the concept of photographing a model at the Paul Smith Wall on Melrose #paulsmithpinkwall

Is the cover a painted set?
I scouted the location the day before in the morning and then in the afternoon using the iPhone app LightTrac to figure out the Sun’s best timing for a deep shadow off the model on to the ground (this detail was the most important to Steven’s design).

did you simply tell her to jump? what type of direction did you give her?
We were very fortunate that Kari Michelle (model) used to do the long jump in High School but this was the direction I gave her as seen in this  BTS shot …pretty good jump right ?

Is that the sun or a did you light this? is that her true shadow on the wall?
With the sun’s optimal light between 4:00- 5:30PM the PS store gave us an hour to shoot. We shout non tethered on a Leica Sl with 24-90mm 1/1250 at  f/ 4.5 ISO 100

Did you need a permit, was there a crowd since it’s so iconic?
Yes, we needed an LA city permit. There was a ongoing crowd of selfie takers at one end of the wall but Paul Smith was nice enough to
give us our own section to shoot against away from  the crowd. It worked out perfect for everyone.”

What was the fashion story direction?
The Fall Fashion Story brief was based around a mood board of the clothes that style director Linda Immediato pulled for this shoot. We were able to find a perfect Mid Century Modern location on Peerspace.com

How many looks did you shoot?
We needed (12) shots ended up shooting (13), the model needed to be ready at 12:00 PM that would give us (2) shots per hour.

With such a tight schedule we shot non tethered on a Leica SL with a 24-90mm & 90-280mm  lenses  1/30-1/500 f/2.8 ISO 200 with daylight except for the first and last shots we had a Mole Richardson Senior LED Daylite Fresnel for fill.

What are the benefits on shooting tethered, what are the cons?
The benefits to shooting directly to card are speed. We needed to be in and out quickly from the location so we did a few tethered tests to confirm the exposure / shadows / model placement in the frame. Steven Banks and I felt like we had it; we unhooked the cable and shot three outfit changes