I’ve shot Leilani before but, this time I thought we’d take advantage of the unseasonablely warm weather we’ve been having and try an outdoor location. I’ve been eyeing this place up since the summer. I showed up here in July with a model, the sky opened up and rained us out before I could get a chance too shoot here. I will certainly be back in the warmer, greener season for an evening shoot someone hopefully.
So fast forward to late January and here we are, back at this spot covered in snow with lots of long dead grass everywhere.
This is a bit of a treat because I actually lit this using the beauty dish that I made last year. I’ve used it a few times for some fun and an editorial assignment. It’s just now that I’ve had a chance to really utilize it. I like the sort of soft circle that it produces at around a 6 foot distance to the subject. It’s almost like a gridded soft box but, with a larger gradient around the hot spot. Closer to the subject the effect is quite the opposite, rich highlights and a sharp falloff that creates deep shadows.
There were certainly some challenges. We got out there near the end of the day, or when the sun goes down here in Alberta around 3pm. In my head I had this image of the sun being behind Leilani, backlighting the scene. The sun kind of changed my plans and hid behind some clouds making the scene more bleak. Cooler, almost non-existent shadows and just the approaching darkness made this a bit of a difficult lighting situation. I could have either totally underexposed the ambient light, or dialled the flash way back to balance it out. The problem with that is the dish requires a lot of power to light, so dialling it back actually creates an exponential loss of power from the light. I had a Nikon SB-800 situated in the dish set to almost half power. Which, effectively gave me around a 6 foot subject to light to get a proper exposure. Dropping it to a 1/4 power would have resulted in a 2 to 3 foot distance, which would have been too close to the subject and shown up in the image.
In this image the dish is about 5 feet from Leilani’s face at around a 45 degree angle. Close enough to create some noticeable shadows. The flash is set to around 1/2 power – o.3 EV and the camera ISO 125 1/160 @ F/3.5
The dish is off camera left from behind Leilani’s head. Settings for the flash and camera are pretty much the same.
The dish is around 10 feet away in this photo. Which, as I have mentioned creates this really soft light the further you get away from the subject.
I didn’t bother with the light in this image. With her topless I wanted to use a more subtle, softer light that didn’t take anything away (or add) to what was going on. It’s a natural photo, with a natural pose.
2012 is looking good so far. I’ve got plenty of work lined up and I’m sure there will be more on the way. Check out the video we did for Dancer in the Dark on Youtube. If you have any suggestions or questions that we could do another video on put a comment in the box below!
