Mariana Mata

We had wanted to meet up a do a shoot for years now. With all the travel both of us do, it’s pretty hard to find a good time when we are both in the same city thought.

We finally had an 18 hour window where we could finally shoot. So we scheduled our shoot and got all the details finalized for it.

As soon as I got to the location, I knew it was going to be a bit challenging for me. We decided to go with an all natural shoot so I didn’t bring my flash with me.

It was supposed to be a cloudy day but as soon as I got out of the car, the clouds parted and the sun beamed down hard. The humidity was horrible, so that was probably the worst thing right off the bat.

But because of the location we choose, there were a lot of trees so light dabbled through the leaves. It casted a lot of shadow spots everywhere. It can be a cool shot, but as a close-up. Shooting a full body with a bunch of dabbled light is really horrid.

We had no choice but to shoot in the sun. I hate shooting portraits in the sun. Mariana started sweating right away. I could see the sweat pouring from her forehead so we only did a few shots in the sun before taking a break in the shade.

The sun would occasionally go in and out of the clouds for a minute or two, then it’d be super sunny. It was not a fun experience.

Because of how much sun there was, all of the backgrounds were pretty much over exposed. I was already dreading the editing process in trying to bring back all of the blowout areas.

We finally found a decent spot with full shade coverage by a wooden rail, as soon as she leaned on it, I noticed she had ants all over her arms. So we only took a few shots there too.

The final shots were close ups of her with some of the plantlike around. Even that had ants.

We got some decent shots, but it definitely wasn’t what we had in mind.