Remember the movie American Beauty?In it, the middle-aged character
played by Kevin Spacey lusts after his daughter’s girlfriend, played by Mena
Suvari. In a daydream, he imagines her nearly naked with red rose petals gen-
tly raining down on her. In the next couple years, I was deluged with re-
quests for this kind of image.
This image of Michelle (below) retains all of the fantasy, which is appar-
ently as attractive to women as it is to men. In the movie, the camera is from
directly overhead. To call attention to Michelle’s beautiful curves, I decided
to lower the camera angle a few feet and to move the camera to the right so
your eyes contact hers first. We used white petals for contrast. Michelle was
lit with a strobe fitted with a snoot that gives me about a 20-degree beam of
light with soft edges, causing the fall-off of light on her legs. There’s still
enough light to call attention to their length but not enough to take away
attention from her face. A gelled strobe set 1^1 / 2 stops under the main light
illuminated the background of dark-red muslin. This had black tulle clothes-
pinned to it, rendering it a deep, subdued red that contrasts nicely with the
satin sheet she’s lying on. We raised her left knee to keep the focus from
going to her female parts.
66 MASTER GUIDE FOR GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
This image of Michelle retains all the fantasy
of the famous scene from American Beautyin
which Kevin Spacey’s character fantasized
about his daughter’s friend.