I recently got to be involved on one of Bella's shoots in a way that went beyond retouching or just assisting! I got to practice filming and recording the moments of the day in between setting up lights and assisting with BTS photos as well. I really enjoyed the process and wanted to share one of my first BTS videos with you! Let me know what you think. Below, is also the final image and 100% detail crops so you can really appreciate what the Phase One XF100mp can do. 

Team Credits
Photographer: Bella Kotak Photography
Models: Maria Amanda & Jeremy Moineau
Dress & Crown: Agnieszka Osipa Costumes
Assisting: Scarlett & Pratik Naik
Retouching: Bella Kotak & Pratik Naik

Composite Retouching Timelapse by Bella Kotak

Here is the final image we created that day!

Funny enough, the shoot wasn't as easy as it looked. We ended up forgetting the ladder for the laying down shot (we're smart), so we had to improvise. Fortunately it came together from the composite timelapse above! 

On the retouching end, there were many issues we had to overcome. Being that it was medium format we ran into an interesting issue. On the dress, zoomed out, it was actually looking gray in certain areas and no amount of adding "color" would even it out. It turned out that when you zoom in, the intricate pattern was mostly blown out with highlights, with subtle patterns showing through. But zoomed out, the pixels would be interpreted as a "gray" tone because the highlight and pattern meshed together and displayed it as such. As you know, you can't add color to an area that is completely white. So I had to add decrease the brightness of the highlights, so that I could colorize those areas. It made the dress have the same color throughout. 

Here is the final image of "The Kiss" with some detailed crops below it. 

100% Detail Crops

You can read more about the shoot at Bella's blog post here.