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Last night Jazmin Riley and I attended a fashion show at Apricot Lane in Tempe Marketplace. Actually, she was in the fashion show, I attended and shot some photos. It was a pretty cool gathering of models, photographers, hair stylists and clothing designers. I’m looking forward to working with some of them in the near future.
For Jazmin’s final project in her college photography class, she was tasked with taking photographs of people. Being that she’s a model and I’m a photographer, we did what comes naturally, we called up a model. Our friend Aaron Matthew was kind enough to join up with us and donate some time to the project. Hey, no where on the final project instructions did it say we could not utilize professional talent for the subject matter.
We started the shoot in the morning to avoid the afternoon heat, but the sun was already high in the sky. With all the light available to us we started out with 48″ x 72″ white reflector to fill in the shadows. While it was doing its job, the light we were getting wasn’t quite punchy enough to produce the photos Jazmin wanted.
With the switch in wardrobe and background, we also switched out the white reflector for a 48″ x 72″ silver reflector. For these photos, I held the reflector with the long side on the ground, angled slightly to reflect the sunlight onto our model. The change in reflector made all the difference in our lighting setup and added a lot of drama to the overall photograph. It also added about 30 degrees of heat to where the model was standing according to what we heard from Aaron, so be sure to take care and not cook your model when using this type of setup in the summer.
When shooting on location you may find yourself confronted by beautiful, soft, ambient light. Don’t freak out, it’s alright. Actually it’s great, but that doesn’t mean your setup needs to stop there.
When the afternoon light starts to dim, I take the strobe I’ve been using all day to offset the harsh sun and move it behind the model. This also works for photos in the shade, overcast days and early morning shoots. Photos taken in soft light or shade can lose their “pop”. What moving your strobe behind the model does is add a bit of depth to your photo. By adding a bit of rim light or even simulating sunlight, depending on your setup.
I started using this setup late last year, mostly in various shoots in Mexico. You can see more examples of this setup on my Flickr photostream.
