Here’s a behind the scenes look at the fashion editorial we shot for Beverly Hills Lifestyle magazine in Joshua Tree.
I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk a little bit more tech about that shoot to add to the things I’ve already mentioned in my previous blog post.
Knowing we were going to be forced to shoot under the worst lighting conditions for shooting people, I decided to take along just one head and a Speedotron Explorer battery pack to fill and balance out the lighting. What you have to understand about using flash outdoors is that you’re actually dealing with two separate exposures and combining them together. The first thing I determine is my natural light exposure and how I want the background to look in terms of under or overexposure. Once that is nailed down, I then determine my flash exposure to match my ambient reading and set my camera accordingly.
Because I wasn’t trying to overpower the sun and just wanted to get a nice controlled fill of the shadows, I only needed a small pop of strobe and that meant two things: one, the battery was going to easily last all day, and two, quick recycle times. Early afternoon out in the desert also means you’re going to be dealing with a lot of light, so I knew I was going to be set at 100 ISO and I could also play with a very shallow depth of field. However, I am also limited by my flash sync speed of 1/200 at best using the Speedotron Explorer. Since my flash exposure is controlled by aperture, opening up to the 5.6 – 1.4 range would require a pretty high shutter speed to stop down the ambient light, thus negating my flash. This is when I make use of 2 and 3 stop ND lens filters on my lens to cut down the sun. But remember, exposure is a give and take equation, so now we have to pump out a lot more out of our Speedo power pack to compensate for the 2-3 stop loss and bring the shutter speed back down to 1/200 or under.
We were definitely going for that desert look, so I wanted to work with a crisper, harsher quality of light. I took 3 different sized silver reflectors, a 7”, an 11” and a 16”, finally deciding on the latter to get the biggest spread that would maintain some directionality.
I get asked quite often what lens is best for shooting fashion. There is no one best lens for anything. When you are treated to a gorgeous location such as Joshua Tree, you definitely want to choose a lens that will give you a sense of location and environment. I ended up using 4 lenses: a 16-35mm 2.8, a 50mm 1.4, an 85mm 1.8, and a 180mm 3.5 macro. With such a wide range of objectives, I was able to capture stunning wide shots as well as compressed shots with a good sense of depth.
I also wasn’t originally planning to shoot tethered, but I took the Think Tank Photo sunscreen along anyway because let’s be honest, who wants to squint at a 3” LCD when everyone can look at the images on a proper display. One of the coolest things about TTP’s sunscreen is that it makes carrying around the laptop pretty easily, and with the laptop shut, I can throw my camera in there as well. No matter where you end up shooting, whether it be at some remote location or in the comfort of your studio, you have to think about how to make the images easily accessible for your client, and this is why companies like Think Tank Photo and Tether Tools are so great.
I was able to take three assistants with me, making it easier to schlep the gear from location to location and to streamline the shooting process. One to light, one to digi tech, and one to bounce back and forth between metering, tether cable duty, and helping me switch lenses. At several points during the day, we were literally standing on three completely different boulders across from each other. It would have been absolutely impossible to get the shots I wanted without their help.
If there is anything else you would like to know about this shoot that I may have left out, feel free to use the disqus comment function below.
Pingback: Beverly Hills Lifestyle Magazine Summer 2011 | SEAN ARMENTA // the blog