Saturday shoot canceled! How to survive?

   What could be more fun than have a Sunday shoot with a gorgeous model, nice surroundings and great weather? I had a shoot planned for Saturday a week ago, but what sometimes happens the model had to cancel the session due to feeling ill, and I would say that during the pandemic it's wise to backup if you feel sick. Of course I wasn't very happy because my shutter finger was itching and I so felt I want to do a shoot. In the last moment on Sunday morning I typed a message in a local tfcd-group. A last minute call so there were no high hopes, but you can always give a try. Surprisingly I got an answer fairly soon, Roza had time for a shoot! When planning for a shoot you always want to know where to shoot, and what's the theme or styling. For the canceled Saturday shoot the theme would have been a fantasy shoot, but with this sudden change I just decided to give the model free hands with the styling, with the only requirement from my part that it's a clothes on shoot. For the surroundings we decided to choose villa Sinnebrychoff in Espoo. There's some cool old buildings and a little piece of a forest, something fairly easy to use as a backdrop. It's always interesting to collaborate with someone you don't know, so I was pretty exited to get to know my model and see in what kind of outfit she would appear. Finally after a little confusion with where to park the cars we met in front of villa Sinnebrychoff. My model turned out to be a nice young lady who'd just finished modeling school. She'd prepared two outfits, one which I would define as a street style outfit and then she had brought with her a more ladylike skirt combination, both very cool looking! Even though it was somewhat difficult to find a place where she could change her clothes, we managed to use both outfits during those couple of hours. All in all we ended up with some images that in my opinion just rocks and some images very ladylike, taking my imagination to Jane Austens "Pride and prejudice" surroundings, and then of course we had some good time. So no harm done even if my Saturday shoot was canceled! Here's a few images from the shoot...

        

Light is light!

   One of the most essential things in photography is light! No light, no photos. When you shoot during the day and it's sunny, there is an abundance of light and thus it's fairly easy to make images. The challenge is to avoid to burn out the highlights and trying to get rid of too contrasty shadows (Unles that's your intention.). When we get to the evening side of the day the light amount starts to drop and the darker it gets you start have trouble with low light. What would be the solution? Artificial lighting is the easiest way to cope with lowlight situations. And what could be better than a speedlight or a strobe or two? So easy to add some punch to your images with one flash. When shooting in a fairly dark surroundings in the city there is though one more option to be used when it comes to lighting your subject. About a week ago I had the privilege to do a photo shoot with Emma. The chosen location was the surroundings of a nearby mall. In this shoot we used both the existing light only and a combination of both existing and strobe light. The challenge with the light you find all around you while walking in the streets is that it's usually fairly weak when it comes to photography. The further you go from the light the less it illuminates your subject. You can always open your aperture or you can raise your ISO, both having their drawbacks. One thing you can do, what we did, is to place your subject as close to the light as you can. This way you'll get the most out of the light. Here's a couple of examples...

        You still might have to raise your ISO for this kind of lighting, but placing your subject enough close the light source, you'll get most out of it and you still get to the ISO level as low as possible.

  How about a combination of strobe and existing light? Just choose a shutter speed that allows you to have some of that existing light shown and then illuminate your subject with a strobe as your key light. Simple as that! Here's a few images made this way...

    So in the end light is just light no matter if it comes from the sun, a light bulb or strobe! Whatever you decide to use, know your light and use it for your advantage!

Trabant 601

  Somehow my last post disappeared, and I don't have a clue what happened with it. Anyway, I liked the few images made with my phone, so I'll post only the three images without the mumbo jumbo about Instagram and my one image per day plan. Here's the images of a nice DDR made car and my gorgeous favorite model and wife...