Behind The Shots: Fella and the All Star Challenge 2020

We couldn’t believe a year had passed already. We packed up all our gear into the car and began our evening drive over to Folkestone. 

It was our shoot day for the All Star competition; an annual hairstyling and portraiture competition hosted by men’s hair and skin care brand American Crew. The founder of American Crew, David Raccuglia, is not just a talented barber, he is also a highly skilled, self-taught photographer with a love for classic black and white images; reminiscent of classic 1940-60 Hollywood portraiture. From this combination of photography and mens hair styling skills, American Crew was born and a competition celebrating both of these passions was created. 

Last year we came very close to reaching the finals, with our photographs of model Soren Paillou and our good friends at Fella Hair were eager to enter again. This time they had organised two models each with distinctive looks, styled by barbers Alex Wakefield and Jayson Black.

Last years images which made it to the top 20.

The Models and the looks

This year, both barbers had come up with a back story and personality for their look. Jayson styled model George Blake into a Harley Davidson-riding rocker with a glorious beard and a love for rock bars and neat bourbon. Alex had gone for a Mod culture inspired look, a sharp looking young man with a chip on his shoulder portrayed by fashion model Soren Palliou.

The Final images

Here they are! Our final front and side profile shots for the competition:

Soren rocking the Mod look with some amazing textured hair as styled by Alex

George with his glorious beard and hair styled by Jayson

Closing thoughts

Unfortunately our images didn’t make it to the finals this year, but they were spotted on the judging table in one of the videos American Crew streamed and we received some encouraging comments:

We were really happy with our shots and were blown away by the efforts made by the barbers and models. A huge thank you to Alex, Jayson, Bobby, George and Soren. We already can’t wait for next year!

Behind The Scenes

Our basic lighting setup for the shoot was a large octabox as the key light, a small softbox as the hair and rim light positioned behind and a lot of reflected and bounced light was played around with to get the look just right.

Our basic lighting setup

Editing

We were shooting tethered to keep an eye on the images as we went and everyone was pretty chuffed with the shots straight out the camera. After we got home we cracked on with some high end editing. Our workflow was firstly to get the image looking right in Lightroom by adjusting the tones, clarity, highlights and contrast to give them a bit of punch. Then we took them over to photoshop for our high-end final touches. The 3 stages of the images are shown below:

Credits and social media links

Models:

Soren Paillou

George Croft

Hair Stylists:

Alex Wakefield

Jayson Black

Fella Barbering:

Fella

Fella Folkestone

Fella Margate

American Crew UK:

IG Page

BEHIND THE SHOTS: Fella & The American Crew All Star Challenge 2019

---

Another great shoot with Fella barbers complete. This time we were entering a national hairdressing competition, The American Crew All Star Challenge. Every year photographers and hairdressers have to submit two black and white portrait images, one face-on and one in profile. The competition is run by the men’s haircare giant American Crew so we had to make sure to capture images that were complementary to their look and style.

We arrived just as stylist Alex Wakefield was giving the hairstyle some finishing touches. We set up our backdrop and lighting ready for shooting. Our subject was an unfairly good-looking French model named Soren Paillou.

We set  up a portable studio inside of the barber shop, it was a bit of a squeeze, but we managed to get everything in place. We spent the next few hours experimenting with different lighting and poses, to get everything just right.

THE FINAL TWO IMAGES

The final images we decided on, showed both the versatility of the haircut Alex had created and matched our vision of the American Crew brand.

We wanted the face-on portrait to convey a classic, gentlemanly look. To achieve this we explored a range of  poses, outfits and camera angles. With our model dressed in a suitable white shirt, we directed him into a slightly regal pose, which gave the image the feel of a classic 1950s Hollywood portrait.

For the side profile image, Soren had a costume change into something more casual, which matched the “swoosh” style on the side of the haircut. This complemented and contrasted the smart style of the front-on image, helping to demonstrate the versatility of the cut.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

We were all very happy with the final two images.  We didn’t quite make it to the finals but we were shortlisted among the top 20 and we received some very positive feedback from Fella and the judges, and we are already excited for next year's challenge.

Huge congratulations to everyone who made it to the finals. Wishing the best of luck to this year’s world finalists. A big thank you to Soren, Bobby and Alex for the great opportunity and all the work they put in for the shoot.

Behind the scenes

THE GEAR

The Lens - Portraits was the name of the game so we stuck with the classic choice of the 85 mm lens shooting mainly around F7.1 to keep the face and hair tack sharp. We dropped it down to around f 5.6 to help smooth out the background and keep the focus on the hair for some shots.  

The Lighting -  Getting the look of the lighting just right was a huge part of the final images in order to match the aesthetics of the American Crew brand. We had a large Octobox softbox for our key light, a small gridded square softbox positioned behind the model as a focused rim / hair light and finally a silver reflector for some nice fill light. We took the key-light in nice and close to get some beautiful soft light/shadows on our model.

To really enhance the hair we used some bounce cards and even mirrors to add a bit more pop and shine.

EDITING

We were pretty happy with the shots Straight Out Of Camera (SOOC), some basic enhancements were made in Lightroom and then the final touches were done in photoshop before converting the images to black and white.  

Straight Out Of Camera (SOOC)

Basic Lightroom edit

Final image with Photoshop edits and black and white filter

---

Credits & Social media links

Behind the Scenes Shots - Kamila Lobuzinska. (All behind the scenes photography is taken on 35mm film (Fuji colour 400) with a Canon AE-1)

Model - Soren Paillou

Hair Stylist - Alex Wakefield - A.W Hair

Make-up - Hrista Karapneva

Fella Barbering: Fella / Fella Folkestone / Fella Margate

American Crew UK - IG Page

---

BEHIND THE SHOTS: FELLA HAIR

We recently did a commercial photo shoot for the men's hairdressers “Fella Hair”. Our Brief was to create a set of promotional photos in various iconic locations across the Kent county. We spent the day on the road, taking photos in the 30 degree heat, travelling from location to location all over the Kent coast. It was one hell of a rewarding experience. Here is the story behind the shots.  

Some of our photos from the shoot recently got published as part of an advert in the award winning ‘Cene magazine.

THE GEAR

The Lens -  These shots were to be storytelling, with the environment just as important as our subjects. We decided on the moderate wide angle of a 35mm lens, shooting nearly everything over F7.1 which allowed to keep everything in focus.

Lighting - The shoot was outside, mostly spent in the heat of the summer sun. We were travelling all day so we wanted to make sure our equipment was streamlined. We used the sun to our advantage, using a bounce board to reflect the sunlight onto our subjects. To give the photos a little extra pop we also took along a wireless flash with a 31 inch octagonal softbox for some directional fill light. Searching for open shade when possible was a must for this shoot, to keep the light controlled and save our models eyes, but as you’ll read later on that wasn’t always easy to find.

We also took 35mm film photographs on the shoot, using 2 Canon AE-1 cameras. These were both equipped with 50mm f1.8 lenses.

THE SHOOT

Canterbury

We started in Block Art Media’s hometown of Canterbury and our first location was Westgate Towers and Gardens. We got to the location before the scheduled time to scout out some nice compositions and locations.

After that we headed to the nearby gardens where we had previously found a great location for the shoot, just down by the river Stour with the Westgate Towers in the background.

Once we had the models placed, we added in the lighting. We had a great moment of luck when one of the tour punting boats appeared in the background.  

The Orchard

The next stop was one of Kent’s Iconic Orchards. The midday sun was fast approaching, the models were sweating; this was a real run and gun scenario.

Composition found. Models posed. Lighting added. Shots taken. Back in the van, just in time as well, as a disgruntled farmer arrived on the scene.

Margate - Dreamland

The next stop was to the coast. After some traffic troubles we finally arrived into Margate.

The shots were to feature the Dreamland sign but also include the beach. It was probably the most difficult part of the entire shoot. With the hot midday sun beating down on us, we walked our equipment across uneven sand to set up in the middle of a crowded beach, we didn’t have the option of open shade.

We had to use an umbrella at times to keep the heat from ourselves and the models. We got the photos and a few more from the opposite side for good measure. Tough stuff but worth the effort.

Margate- Turner contemporary & The Old Kent Market

After the beach ordeal, shoot fatigue was setting in. We decided to get a few shots in front of The Old Kent Market, an amazing red painted building, originally a cinema and now restored into a marketplace. We set up across the road to give a full view of the building. There was a lot of traffic so we had to time the shots for these ones carefully.

Just to the side of The Old Kent Market building was the iconic Turner Contemporary which we took a few shots outside of; the modern shaped architecture made for a brilliant backdrop.

Just as we were hitting minimum energy levels, Bobby (the manager of Fella Hair) appeared heroically with boxes of pizza. A life saver.

Kingsgate bay

With our energy newly restored we were ready for our next stop along the coast, Kingsgate Bay! The beautiful chalk white cliffs gave a feel of a mediterranean fashion shoot, something that wouldn’t feel out of place on the cover of Vogue magazine. We headed down towards the beach and stopped at an opening in the cliff for our first set of shots. We were luckily provided with open shade and positioned our flash to mimic the direction of the sun.

After the clifftop shoot we followed the path down through the cliff side onto Kings-gate Bay. We had done our research and already knew we wanted the scene placed right in the centre of the natural Rocky Arch cut into the cliffs by the tides. It gave us a perfect frame and the cave walls gave us open shade from the glaring sun. We clambered on the rocks with the lighting, tripod and various gear trying not to slip on the seaweed. This was one tricky location for sure but the shots came out beautifully!

Folkestone harbour

As we parked the van up on the harbour arm we were greeted by a perfectly still and tranquil blue ocean. We quickly scouted out cool locations along the harbour, looking for leading lines and clean compositions.

One method we used here was to use a bare flash to back-light droplets from the sea salt spray that Fella sells. This also created a strong rim light on the models face, helping him to pop from the blue background.

Back to Canterbury

The shoot was drawing to an end. We chucked all our gear in the back of the rental van and headed away from the coast, back to our home city. It was Golden hour as we arrived. We had to get one more location in, Smack bang in the middle of the Canterbury high street! The streets were busy, many onlookers stopped and stared, wondering what was going on. The extra “characters” in these photos really add to the scene and a add some visual tension, especially one we got with a passing cyclist!

Closing Thoughts

Shoots don’t get much more fun than this. It was a long, tiring and tough day but what a beautiful experience it was! The clients were over the moon with the shots and we all left satisfied. If we could have changed one thing it would have been to take a scrim to block out some of that midday sun but hey you live and learn. We got to travel all around the Kent coast and visit some of Kent’s most iconic locations and we will remember this shoot very fondly for a long time.

And a video from behind the scenes can be found on our instagram highlights:

https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17941319791132440/

Credits:

All behind the scenes photography is taken on 35mm film (Fuji colour 200) with a Canon AE-1 and Canon AE-1 Program. We have tried a number of different types of colour film but this one works great for us. Behind the Scenes Shot by Peter Marsh, Peter Sladen, and Kamila Lobuzinska.

Models: Bobby Gordon, Alex Wakefield, Lawrence Goslett, Steven Perks