Supplementing natural light and the perils of underwater photography.
As I posted in my last blog, natural light is awesome. But is also uncontrollable.
Sometimes we need to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Last time I was shooting Mischa in LA, we met these really awesome people that had a nice heated pool. We decided that it would be an awesome place to shoot. So as to keep the direct sunlight to a minimum we scheduled the shoot for 7am. LA isn’t exactly known for it’s rain or fog and this was in the middle of the summer so we were pretty much counting on regular old burning hot LA weather. We were wrong. On the day we decided to shoot it was overcast. Bad. Extremely muggy and grey, and so the water looked flat and didn’t have that glassy reflection we would have gotten if we were shooting into the sun.
To alleviate the gloomy conditions I set up a single 580ex speedlight on a stand on the opposite end of the pool I was shooting from, just off camera. This gave me the reflections I was looking for on the water, gave Mischa a nice edge light and froze the water droplets for nice action shots like below.
Sometimes you need to supplement natural light, sometimes you just want to add a light source to make a otherwise plain image stand out.
For this image of Mae, I was shooting her in my backyard on a typical San Francisco overcast day.
The background is just ivy on the fence, but with a strobe pointing straight into it, it gives a nice ethereal halo around her that makes the all the difference. It makes the image pop.
Remember, strobes are just a tool. They should be an ingredient in your soup when needed. Never think that it has to be just natural light or just strobe.
As far as underwater shooting, when your friend offers to lend you his scuba gear along with his underwated camera housing….take it.
I thought I would be fine, it’s only a pool right?
Well…when you have as much metal in your body as me from motorcycle accidents…you don’t float.
I jumped in the deep end and sank straight to the bottom.
Holding a big metal camera housing.
With no swim fins on.
Or goggles.
Almost drowning is not a fun thing to do at 7 in the morning. Definitely save that for the afternoon.
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