This weekend I had one of the most fun, and most physically demanding shoots of my life. 2.5 mile round-trip, hike through nature and hills, carrying 30 lbs of gear! I feel the final photos really reflect the all of the work the model, my assistant, and myself put in to this.
People keep asking me where we were after they see the photos, so right off that bat, we were at Malibu Creek State Park. My first time there I was assisting on a photo shoot with my old friend, and former professional model, Parker Shinn. After that, I used to go back all the time to do “testing shoots” for l.a. models. I hadn’t really been back since I had moved, so I felt it was overdue. I recently added a dance portraits section to my website so I felt more dance portraits were in order. I've been in the studio a lot lately and I've been really wanting to go shoot outdoors with strobes again. Hence this shoot was born.
Here is the gear for the shoot that my assistant and I had to carry! (Top right to bottom left) Reflector, Camera bag, Profoto Beauty Dish (White - 65 Deg, with a 25 Deg Grid), extension chord and sandbag, Profoto BatPac, and a bag with a stand, Profoto D1 1000w air, and Frosted Glass Dome. The Profoto Beauty Dish really is becoming my "go to" light modifier, especially for outdoors. One nice solid piece of equipment that is relatively light (especially compared to the rest of this gear), takes no setup (even better when you have to setup and tear down between each location on an outdoor shoot) and creates a beautiful light, which is easily further controlled with the grid when necessary. For this type of shoot, and many others, it is clearly the winner for the job.
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| Gear for the day |
About 35 minutes of hiking we got to our first location, the lake. Walked around, scouted for the best angle, found it, checked the ambient light reading, set the Profoto Beauty Dish (on a Profoto 1000w D1 air, and powered with the Profoto BatPac) to just about full power – at exposure, and had the background just slightly overexposed. (Brought the sky back in a tad in post. The rest of the images from this shoot are straight out of the camera after RAW processing.)
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| Ambient Light (sorry that it's an awkward photo, Rissi!) |
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| Setup |
Then we packed up everything and started the hike back to the last two spots. I figured that I would be best to make the longest part of the hike at the beginning, before we got too tired!
Location two was in a large open field and I applied the same technique, lighting and exposure wise, as I did at the lake. It got a little trickier because we were actually in a valley and the sun was dipping below a hill behind us. (Brought the sky back .3 stops in post.)
Location two was in a large open field and I applied the same technique, lighting and exposure wise, as I did at the lake. It got a little trickier because we were actually in a valley and the sun was dipping below a hill behind us. (Brought the sky back .3 stops in post.)
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| Setup |
Our last stop was the first hill on the tail. Half way through this look Rissi said, “can I use this?” and from behind the log lifted up that massive branch you can see in the last photo. One instance of her awesome on-the-spot creativity. (Pulled color for the sky in post at one stop. I almost didn’t, because it looked great out of the camera, but I decided it looked better this way)
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| Setup (except a log, not a couch!) |
Great shoot. So much went in to planning, the hike, the shoot itself (and the drive time!) and it was a completely worth it. I was defiantly sore from the hike and the pack for the next couple days, and my allergies kicked in shortly thereafter, but that’s was worth it too!
The rest of the photos are on facebook as well as the dance portraits section of my website.
(Lighting diagrams Powered by the Online Lighting Diagrams )
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