Syreta At The Park

After practicing with the softbox for so long, I was confident that I would be able to replicate my results outside in the field. So naturally, I set up a photo shoot.

Syreta had never done a photo shoot before, but she was eager to have one. She has been thinking of doing some modeling but hasn't had the chance to look for a photographer. Luckily we both live in the same city.

We met up at a park that I knew fairly well. I didn’t have to look around for areas that look good for a photo; I already knew most of them.

Wasting no time we jumped to the first spot. Placing her in front of greenery is usually a big NO NO for me, but with the flash, I can get the correct color on her skin. Green tends to bounce into the skin tones, and it makes the skin look all kinds of strange colors. My flash counters all of that.

The images in the green leafs came out amazing. Some of my favorites. I finally put the 85mm lens to good use with the perfect softbox. We shot in front of the plants and a few shots within them as well.

We noticed the sun was going down, so I placed her in the perfect valley where the light cut through some trees. She was being backlit by the sun, and it made her glow. The perfect light formed around her body.  Normally, she would be in shadow, but the flash filled in and covered all of her body with perfect light.

By the time we crossed the park to the 3rd location, the sun had set under the houses and trees and blue hour was about to hit us dead on.

I placed her in front of a brown wall. I thought it would be cool to match her shirt. After playing with the flash for a while, I tried a more direct approach. The light was still soft although the shadows were a bit harsh.

Although the environment was already blue and dark, the flash was there to make sure her skin tones stayed true to life.  All the while making her pop from the scene with amazing clarity and detail. We found a random bench, and she sat down and just posed for a few minutes.

By now the sunlight was completely gone and the lights had come on. Sadly, they were harsh and pretty horrible. But no matter, I had my LED light bar. I set it up on a stand, and we started messing with colors. After adjusting the white balance, we began to shoot. Even though I shot at a higher ISO, the images still came out looking great.

We shot other locations in between but nothing was as good as these 4 areas.

The shoot ended up taking a little longer than we expected but we were having too much fun taking photos and playing with light.