Author Christina Spyrou
A gifted woman
A few years ago, I had the good fortune to meet the author Christina Spyrou, and recently I had the honor of photographing her to promote her first book.
Photoshoot as it should be
A fun process
The photo shoot was a lot of fun, as Christina is easygoing, extremely cooperative, and hardworking until she achieves the result she’s aiming for.
We planned together many of the frames you see here some time before the photoshoot. On the day of the shooting, we had to bring many of the props needed for the ideas to come to life.
First outfit
After Christina was ready, we started taking photos with the first outfit of the three in total. Even though Christina is not a model, she was very cooperative and very precise to what she wanted; natural portraits with minimum makeup and hair, just like as she is in real life. She wanted to avoid looking “fake‘, so in post I did the bare minimum, just a couple of presets and minor spots removal.
Of course she managed to follow my instructions like a pro, while on shooting. We concentrate on poses of the body and some close up portraits. I tried to capture her personality. Christina is a serious professional, but she is also a very sweet and happy person, so I tried to showcase that with the photos.
The oversized mistake
The second outfit was a rather happy mistake. Christina wore a jacket that was somehow oversized and we were not very happy with the result. Every difficult circumstance can have its benefits though, especially if you are a positive person, so this outfit really loosen up Christina and gave us some laughs; that was the best warmup for the next and final outfit.
“First sentences are doors to worlds.”
Christina really enjoyed this one.
The black dress
The black dress outfit was the last outfit we tried and I am very happy with the results.
We used a book at the size of the final printed version covered with a green paper, so that the graphic designer could later add the cover (the photo session took place, before the cover was decided and therefore we couldn’t have a print copy).
I had the idea of throwing pages around her, while she stays still and the photo below is probably my favourite from the whole shooting.
Fun fact: the pages are actually the printed pages of her first drafts!
Of course, this was a photoshoot for her promotion on the book, so she had the idea of using some props-clues about the book’s story, without giving away too much. These last photos are the result of Christina’s ideas.
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