Los Angeles is a city of sunshine and positive vibes. Well, positive vibes always. Sunshine…turns out only sometimes. Check out our behind the scenes spotlight to see how the amazing rue21 crew transformed rainy days in LA into this sunny dreamland.
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Los Angeles is a far cry from our hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. You might know a little about the ‘Burgh, but what you probably don’t know is that we have about as many sunny days as Seattle. That’s why when we needed to work some studio magic and bring summer to rue21, we turned to sunny California for our inspo.
Fast-forward through that flight from PIT to LAX and hello…rain.
It NEVER rains in LA!
All those photo ideas buzzing around in our heads suddenly seem like a serious obstacle. Except we have a deadline to meet–and obstacles–we were born to tackle those. Think those gray skies put a damper on our shoot? No way!
Summer is about the fun and the unexpected. So when the skies opened up, our incredible creative director and awesome team of photographers, models and stylists went to work. With umbrellas, photo know-how and shameless plastic ponchos in tow, we hit up some of our favorite local photo spots in Los Angeles and transformed rainy weather into the sunny dreamland you see in our emails, stores and on our site!
How’d we make this happen? Here are three of our fave tips and tricks:
Use shady spaces to your advantage
Our model has a natural glow, but to highlight her shine, our Photo Team needed some extra creativity. Bring on that gold foil sunshine. 😎
Cloudy skies still let in enough sunlight to create shady spots, so we took advantage of the awning of this too-cute cafe to capture this natural shot. Throw in a pair of sunny shades and add in a golden reflector, and our model is glowing.
Embrace a gray backdrop
It’s all about the angles. Our Digital Photographer takes one for the team, lying on a wet court to create the appearance of a bright sky. 🏀
Sometimes a flat backdrop, like that created by a cloudy gray sky, is exactly what your photo needs to make the foreground stand out. When we took our shoot into the wild outdoors, our photo team took full advantage of the colorless sky to highlight the color pop of this sporty jersey tank and the movement of our model.
Add a pop of color
How did we score that perfect shot? With a little help from our Photo Stylist, of course, who kept our models dry by lending her umbrella. ☂
Our favorite way to hide a gloomy day in our photos? COLOR! We fell in love with this rainbow wall and knew it had to make the cut in our photos. By choosing to highlight the bright hues of this jersey tee, the gray sky and drizzling rain seemed miles away.
The results of our newly-named “Summer in the Rain” photoshoot? Couldn’t have been better. It shows that all it takes is a little photo magic and bright spirits to lighten up a day–even a rainy day in LA.
Love these photos and want to know more about what rue21 does behind the scenes? Let us know in the comments below!
