Cover shoot for Zalora Philippines, featuring Thirdy Ravena. 2019.

In 2017, photographer Andrius Burba released a series called “Under-Dogs”. It was a collection of dog portraits taken from underneath—black background, studio lit, shot through a floor glass. The concept was very inspiring, but not within reach due to the estimated cost of production. The west had done many fashion campaigns with the same style, and the photos almost always came out very interesting. 

I kept the peg in mind and put it in my bucket list.

The opportunity to DIY the concept came during this layout with Thirdy. I used to have basketball cards of Jordan where he would be flying and the camera angle would be from a very low angle. I thought that if those sports photographers could achieve those epic angles, then I could apply their situation and marry it with Burba’s series.

We set Thirdy to stand on a bench so that he would have enough height and distance from my lowest possible angle. He balanced on one leg while his other was “stepping on an invisible floor”. I had my white board over me and with a lens hole to give me optimal bounce and reflection for the shoe. Thirdy gripped and carried the ball with one hand to give the illusion that he was about to bounce it on the floor. I didn’t want to make it seem like we were just in a random area in the city, so I included the spotlight as a subtle hint to us being in a sports related area, but not as obvious as including a basketball ring. I have a certain allergy to objects touching or overlapping in a frame, so I rotated myself until I found a frame where Thirdy stayed separated and center. I had a light set up with an octabox to serve as the main light to compensate for the exposure of the environment—we were shooting this layout at around 5:30pm on an overcast day, so the sky was dark and clumpy. I set my exposure to erase the clumpy sky and keep it bright enough for me to push the highlights in post, but neutral enough to get details of the architecture. This made the shot generally dark on Thirdy, so the light helped balance the shot.

Photography by Artu Nepomuceno, assisted by JT Fernandez and Ignacio Gador
Direction by Eugene David
Produced by Bea Jocom
Styled by Randz Manucom
Grooming by Zarry Borbon

Read more here: https://www.zalora.com.ph/covers/thirdy-ravena-trina-guytingco-2019/