Erotic Photoshoots in Hotel Rooms

It's been a long time since I talked about hotel room shoots on this blog.  One reason I don't discuss it very often is that I generally do hotel shoots with private clients, so I can't share those pix with you.  Recently, I did a hotel shoot with a professional model, Mimsey, at a nice hotel in downtown Portland.  That means there are lots of sexy images to post here on my blog!

Hotel room shoots are great fun for me.  To start with, I get to play undercover photographer as I walk past the front desk with my photo gear in nondescript bags.  I try to dress like a businessman and act like I belong there, so I've never been questioned.

Once in the hotel room, I find that my clients are usually pretty relaxed.  They are in their own space and didn't have to drive across town to my studio, so they have less reason to be nervous.

The technical aspects of a hotel shoot are quite interesting.  Not only do you have to work in a limited space, but you often have a fair amount of daylight coming in from one end of the room.  You can pose the model(s) next to the window for some great soft portraits, or pose on the bed and have directional light from just one side.  After that, things get a bit more complex, because you start adding in artificial light.  In my case, I bring a couple of Alien Bees studio strobes with umbrellas to spread and soften the light.  Then you have to decide how to deal with the fact that the daylight and the strobe light are different colors.  In this shoot, it didn't seem to make much difference, which was nice.

This particular hotel had great semi-private balconies and the sky that morning was a uniform light gray.  That's like having the world's largest softbox to bathe your lovely model in the softest light.

I did this shoot with my trusty Canon 5D Mark IV.  The lens I used most was the EF 24-70 F/2.8 L Mark 2, which is an amazingly sharp zoom lens.   A few shots were taken with the Canon EF 35mm F/2 IS lens, which isn't as sharp as the 24-70, but has image stabilization - a handy feature for shooting in dim available light.

The strobes are great too, especially when you want to stop action.

Believe it or not, Mimsey and I created over 1,000 usable images in about 90 minutes.  The purpose of this shoot was to create two photosets to offer for sale on Bentbox.co, where I've been selling photos I've shot with professional models.  It helps offset the model fees and hopefully some of my equipment costs, so I can keep my rates for private clients low.  If you'd like to consider purchasing these photos, you can find the first of two Mimsey photosets at this link.