Recently, I was introduced to comedian Lahna Turner by a friend of mine. For the upcoming release of her new video album ‘Limeade’ that just so happened to be coming out on the same day as the new ‘Fifty Shades Darker’ movie, Lahna was wanting to shoot a ‘Fifty Shades of Lime’ marketing campaign for Instagram.

She had a few thoughts on what it was she wanted to shoot for the campaign, and we ended up collaborating on a long list of ideas that ranged from snarky to sexy to down right kinky. It all had to be funny in some way and couldn’t go too far with the sexy element, but we had to get the concept well into the fifty shades ballpark.

For the actual photography, I decided early on that I wanted to keep it very simple. We were going to have to cover a lot of set-ups in one day and I didn’t want to get bogged down with moving loads of lights around. So I went with using a single 36″ octabox on one of my Alienbee 1600 strobes and a white piece of foam core as a reflector for the lighting. A clam shell setup worked for most shots, and when we got to setups in her bathtub at the end of the day, I just used the octabox. I used two prime lenses on my Canon 60D for the shoot, a 24mm 2.8 EF-S and a 40mm 2.8 EF.

It was one of those perfect situations where everything was working just as it should. Afterwards, it’s nice to get calls from the client saying they are having trouble decided on which photos to use because they are all so good.

I have found great joy in not overthinking the concepts of photography in my work lately. I have colleagues that spend lots of time rigging numerous strobes for a simple shoot and the photos look great of course, but I’m always quite pleased with how fantastic a well planned shot can look with just a single light source.

Watch Lahna Turner’s Limeade here: