A professional portrait shouldn’t be dull and a professional photo portrait of Melody Savage wouldn’t do her justice if it were. This shot was for the ABC charity calendar photographed by myself and a fellow photographer supporting charity Tomorrow’s People.

Melody requested to play Jessica Rabbit from the wonderful film ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ which we were happy to accommodate. Photographed in a studio in Kent with a dark background it’s lit with a single flash strobe for the hard light look of ‘stage lighting’ – as Ms Rabbit had on her when she is first introduced in the film, singing on stage (yeah; I know; she’s a ‘toon, so it never happened!). Relatively easy to shoot, the image works because Melody gets into character (she’s not bad; she’s just drawn that way)

http://youtu.be/yy5THitqPBw?t=1m20s

The movie was released in 1988 and what I remember about the film is exactly that scene of Jessica Rabbit singing. One; because the voice is provided by the sexiest woman of the age, Kathleen Turner who was/is a draw for me (although the signing is from Amy Irving), but more importantly, the animation technique made the lighting around Jessica Rabbit create refractions, rim lighting and beautiful specular highlights on her dress (See the clip, left)

It’s a lighting setup that despite being animated, is achievable in real life and we pay homage to it here. My thanks to Melody Savage and her business ‘Devine Design – Melody Savage‘.