V for Grand Victoria

When Roger Hagadone got the assignment to create a series of ads for Chicago's Grand Victoria Casinos he knew he'd need an extra bit of Photoshop Magic to create the final images and that's when he called on me to collaborate with him on the project.

As you can imagine casinos are busy places, and they're not about to shut down their prize assets long enough to pull off the shots Roger had in mind. So his solution was simple: shoot the backgrounds in the casinos quickly and then shoot the models in the studio and have me composite the pieces together.

Knowing matching the lighting and making sure the models fit properly into the environment would take some work Roger asked me to be on set in the studio as he shot the models for the various ads. While he worked on finessing the lighting and expressions for the models I quickly dropped the initial test shots into each background making sure the perspective and basic lighting worked.

Once the selections were made for each ad I then went to work carefully compositing each model into the appropriate background while enhancing the lighting, contrast and color to add just the right touch of drama to each shot. Once the models were in place I worked on the backgrounds themselves restoring detail to the bottles, removing unwanted lights and replacing the TV screens with the logos for the bar.

Below are the Before shots of the bar location and the model, shot in the studio.