The lighting diagram for Autumn Collection
Autumn Collection series of images was actually supposed to be the Winter Collection, shot in January 2008 up in the Lecht area of Scotland. However due to conditions in the area I planned to be using was snowed out and the bridge was missing. So we had to find and use an alternative location, luckily I know the area and knew of some likely suspects. One of the cardinal rules of location photography is always have a backup. Only in Scotland can you go backwards in the seasons from Winter to Autumn and it pays to plan accordingly!
The intent of this session was simple, it was to be a lifestyle/fashion shoot in the snow. However as mentioned above this couldn’t go ahead. instead we found an alternative location that still had some colour and foliage which could enhance the images. We spent an hour or so using this location to our advantage and we achieved some great images from the day. The lighting is fairly standard for me: One 430EX aimed into a silver bounce umbrella, with reflector at the base of the stand aimed towards Monika. The real trick was to balance flash with sunlight. Throughout the session we were playing peek-a-boo with the light, but when it came out we would have a exposure difference of around two-three stops when it ducked behind some clouds or a passing wintery shower. This made for challenging conditions as I really liked the way the sun dappled Monika’s hair and created a soft rim light along her back. I metered for the ambient light and then set up the flash with –2 exposure compensation just to give a bit of fill to Monika’s face. The 580EX on camera was set to master and flash disabled. I used E-TTL as the light was highly variable to simplify the session and so that I could concentrate getting the images.
Much of the post work on this image is actually doing a simple colour boost to enhance the autumn colours and also to reduce the reds that occurred because of the cold conditions in Monika’s face.
Credits:
Model: Monika T
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