History Lessons with Cailee Oliver

Last year for his birthday I bought my husband Peter an old Twin Lens Camera. For a while now he wanted to do a photo shoot with it, but since I had been quite sick for a few months and am still in recovery, I didn’t have any shoots planned. Finally feeling better and ready to do it, I agreed to plan a photo shoot with a model in April, where he would be able to test his new camera in a studio setting.

As a theme we wanted to do a Vintage shoot, fitting the old camera. My own plan was to shoot with a digital camera, and edit the pictures in a way that would be inspired by older methods of photography.

I invited Cailee Oliver, who I had already worked with the previous summer, to be our model.

Peter has written his own post about the shoot. You can read it and see his photographs here .

While I researched historic photographs to decide on setup and lighting for the shoot, Cailee took care of the outfits she was going to wear. The original idea was to use the era’s before 1950 as an inspiration. Peter wanted to try out an orthochromatic film as well, and those became outdated in the 50s. Therefore I looked at a lot of pictures taken on wet plates, as well as some old black and white film photographs.

In the end, I also used inspiration from the 1960s and 1970s for some of my editing. Especially for the final part of the shoot where Cailee brought in her own outfit and idea for a more after-party themed lingerie setting.

Vintage shoot part 1:

Vintage shoot part 2:

Some fun shots:

Part 3, Lingerie:

Some of my best work so far has come from this photo shoot. It was the perfect mix of creative minds coming together, preparation, as well as going with the flow and being creative in the moment.

I also still love to work with the vintage presets I created editing this shoot.

It was an amazing come back after a way too long break!