Freezing, but Fashionable in “Labou”

The level of cold experienced during this photoshoot was something else. I had to avoid holding the light stands for fear of not being able to feel my fingers to be able to press the shutter button on the camera. Everyone on this team was pushing – and I had on a jacket! Can’t imagine standing still in this breeze wearing these dynamic fashion pieces from Kyle Gervacy. Jilldeen was amazing as a model and we were able to pull of something really spectacular, I believe, with this set of images. Especially towards the end, there was an essence in the air that was captured as night fell and I decided to “drag the shutter” on the camera (lower/slow down the shutter speed) so that I would be able to expose whatever bit of light was in the sky. This wonderful navy tone was still there, which I decided to make a bit more cyan in editing. In editing the background was recovered (adjusted the brightness so that it is more visible) a bit, but the location lights did a great job.

I was also experimenting with using an ipad for wireless tethering (sending images from the camera for previewing) and had a nice rig (clamps and light stands for holding everything) to ensure that the designer was able to see images as they were being captured. There was also a 360 degree camera and iphone capturing some behind the scenes footage and the designer shot some behind the scenes on his phone as well.

Rescuing the “Tree” Light

Check out the behind the scenes video. It was a great shoot. A FREEZING cold day (relatively for Toronto). And… I had the extra joy of having to rush back and return to the photoshoot location after realizing that I had accidently left one of my lights hanging in the tree. I used a flexible clamp to hold a speedlight (smaller lights that are usually connected to the top of a camera – very necessary for event photography, even if it is just “filling” light to reduce shadows on people’s faces) on a tree branch so that I would be able to have some rim/edge lighting on the models as well as light up the scene behind the models since the point of shooting in that environment was to be on Location (we want to see the nuance of the environment a bit!).

A fun little bit of insight – I used a grid (honeycomb-like attachment for lights to narrow the angle of light so that it does not spread out widely in the scene – it is control of light which is essential in photographic technique) for the backlight and when I ended up using the photography light as a flashlight to illuminate my return from the muddy forest-like area, I removed the grid as was about to reach the car and revealed a live demonstration of how effective a grid can be.