Making Mother Nature
A few years back, I had a job as a summer maintenance worker at a nature park down the road from where I grew up. Working there helped me know the ins and outs of the park and to know my way around the trails (that I helped make). The park has lately become a go-to for me to get interesting backdrops.
I was in the park one day for a portrait shoot when I noticed a rather large fallen tree. It seemed to be fully intact, having pulled up its roots as it fell, leaving a crater where it once stood. I immediately started thinking of ways to use it.
I ended up with the photo you see above. Fortunately for me, I have a consistent model who graciously indulges my ideas. On the day of our shoot, I ran to the store, picked up a bag of potting soil, a paperwhite, and headed over to the park. We got to the site and started setting up.
I had two lights for this shoot; a Canon 600EX-RT and a 430EX iii-RT. I also brought along a silver reflector to give myself a little more control. I set the 600 up on a C-stand with an umbrella and positioned it overhead, facing downward into the reflector to create a clamshell lighting effect. We then "planted" the paperwhite in Gabby's hands and positioned her in between the umbrella and reflector. I placed the 430, undiffused, on a short stand behind Gabby and aimed it up toward the nape of her neck.
I shot at 1/125th of a second at f/6.3 and ISO 200. I wanted to keep some detail in the background while still separating Gabby from it. In hindsight, I think I would have gone a few stops higher with the aperture to pull out some more detail.
In an ideal world, I'd have used more light to accomplish what I did in Photoshop but I didn't have more light to use, I'm working on it. Out of camera, the background was significantly darker so I brightened it up in post. With the two-light setup I had to make a choice between backlighting the model or lighting the background and chose the former.
The other main thing that I did was to brighten her face (pretty standard practice for me), hands and increase the saturation of the paperwhite to help draw attention to these areas of the image. In the future I would try to use a snooted light on her hands to produce the same effect.
All in all, I was happy with how this shoot turned out. It was a little more Photoshop-intensive than I'd have perhaps liked it to be but it gave me the chance to brush up on some editing techniques that I'd been researching. I might revisit the site again to try something new.
Equipment: Canon 6D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM, Canon 600EX-RT, Canon 430EX III-RT, Shoot -Through Umbrella, Silver Reflector
