Diary of a photoshoot… Jules
I met Jules, as usual through Instagram. I responded to a story she posted, looking for photographers to collaborate on a concept that she had. A good and a bad fairy was the basic outline and she wanted to shoot in the woods. This sounded right up my street and after some discussion about the concept, the mechanics of the shoot and our general philosophies on all things photography and modelling, we locked in a date to shoot at an epic location in the Dartmoor National Park. I won’t reveal the exact place, but if you know Dartmoor or can work the Google machine I’m sure you could work it out.
With the date set and one eye on the weather forecast (we had to rearrange a couple of times due to the good old British summer), we wanted a clear, sunny day to get some good light into the forest and there was also a plan to shoot at golden hour. A good day arrived and I set off up to Dartmoor to meet up with Jules…
And family.
It’s the first time I’ve shot with the husband, three kids and the dog in tow, but luckily Jules and her family are an amazing group of people who made me feel really welcome. Truly, the shoot felt like working with family, rather than a group of strangers. Thankfully, there are still great people in the world.
The result gained from incorrectly using my flash. Dramatic yes, but not the look we were going for.
After a fair old trek down a hill, we found a stream bed that had some interesting sections of rocks and trees that would work well for the first set-up of the shoot. I have recently bought a set of portable speedlites and light stands, to give some more flexibility to my work. Which I lugged down the hill. Being close to sunset, the light was starting to drop off. This made for some beautiful, soft, natural light, but also pushed my camera hard. I initially set up a single flashhead, but in my rush to get things done before losing the light, I completely mind melted and forget the basic rules of using flash outdoors. Instead of exposing for the natural light and then using the flash to fill in the subject, I decided I was working in a studio and shut out all of the natural light, so that my flash was all you would see. Needless to say, this didn’t work and I quickly abandoned the idea as my brain couldn’t compute what I was doing wrong. I am still learning with these set-ups, but that was a definite knock my head against the wall moment.
Fortunately, we managed to find an amazing little spot in amongst the trees that had a clear view up to the sky, that was creating a lovely pool of natural light. This lit Jules’ face so beautifully and gave her that stunning catch light in her eyes. I often find myself wanting to use artificial light, in order to learn and develop more, but sometimes, that big old ball of burning gas in the sky does an amazing job!!
We shot multiple set-ups in and around the stream, on a well placed rock and amongst the twisted trees. All of which were completely lit with natural light. The softness that was achieved, was, to my eye, really pleasing.
We then moved further down the valley (carrying all the gear again and now starting to sweat considerably) to find the shot we had come for… the waterfall. I had seen this place online during research for a previous shoot, that never went ahead and it looked amazing. So I was really excited to get down there and shoot.
Being deeper into the woods, the light was now struggling to completely penetrate, which saw me having the push the ISO on my camera, at points, up to 10,000 ISO to get a workable image. In post, the noise in the image bothered me a little, but actually with hindsight, bothers me less and I don’t think is hugely noticeable. What I really should have done and hindsight is great, is handhold a flash, inside a modifier (one of which has a convenient handle for doing just that.) Hell, I could even have enlisted the help of one of the four other people who were there. Just to throw a little extra light into the scene. But, we were losing the light quickly and I was rushing, so therefore my brain wasn’t engaging fully. That’s where more experience comes in and actually, this session has probably created that experience for me.
After slogging our way back up out of the valley, we headed up the road, to the nearby Tor, just in time for golden hour. Jules changed outfits and I quickly scouted angles around the rocks. It absolutely paid off, the golden sunlight was absolutely stunning and we captured some (in my opinion) beautiful shots of Jules that I’m really proud of. All of these were shot handheld, on my EF 24-105mm f/4 lens, at between 160 and 400ISO. Quite a jump from down by the waterfall.
When I edited these images, I tried a new approach. Colour images aren’t really my forte and I often revert to my comfort zone of black and white. But these photographs were screaming out for colour. So after some staring at the HSL sliders and colour wheels and watching a few YouTube videos, I set to work. I didn’t want to do, what I often do with colour images and just apply a preset, make a few minor adjustments and call it quits. The new approach I tried, was firstly to manually desaturate all of the colours out of the image. Leaving me with a monochrome basis to start from (my comfort zone you might say). I then adjusted all of my shadows, highlights, texture etc, added all of my masks, basically made all of my adjustments before I brought in any colour. I then slowly started to reintroduce colour, aiming for a desaturated look that would complement the theme. I was really happy with this approach and I’ve continued to use it since then, finding it a really useful approach. I would highly recommend giving this a try, even if you’re a colour ninja.
Overall, there were a lot of lessons learnt from this shoot, but I am super happy with the images we made and I had a great time doing it. So, that for me, is a win.
