My favorite TV commercial from last season (2009) was the Kindle spot, the result of a contest held by Amazon. A beautiful blonde actress named Annie Little graced the television screen, and she sang the ever-so-catchy “Fly Me Away.” The commercial captivated the audience’s attention with the costume changes and adorable photograph flip-book quality. It reminded us to dream, to suspend our disbelief, and totally dive into the pool of creativity. Part of that creative process, for me, is the ability to reverse engineer lighting and post-processing.

I had an aviator cap and goggles for another self-portrait I wanted to try and conveniently stumbled across some faux snow from the holidays. I set up the seamless background and added the fluffy cloud bits with tape. In the commercial, a fairly obvious light shines strongly from camera-left, and at the 0:07 mark, a rectangular shape appears on the goggles. I set up a medium softbox, put my camera on a tripod, and got my wireless remote ready. A friend assisted me by waving my scarf around and kept an eye on Mia and Wasabi so they did not fall off the stool. (Boy, those two little rascals would do anything for a treat.)

After a few minutes of shooting, I popped in the photos into an editing program and processed the images to have a Polaroid 669 film kind of feel. Voilà! Done. Even though the formula differs, I achieved similar results. Just remember, it only takes minutes to come up with something this creative and fun. The winner(s) of the Kindle contest shot an entire commercial in a seven-hour take. Congratulations to Ithyle Griffiths, Angela Kohler, Annie Little, Sharon Williams, and Rachel DeSimone. Thanks for the inspiration!

[See the adorable commercial here]

Self-Portrait by: Amy Dunn
Models: Amy, Mia & Wasabi

Houston, TX 2010

© Amy Dunn
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