I was recently talking to a fellow photographer about working in bad condition ie outside in the rain.

It reminded me of a shoot I had a while back. Where we had booked a location shoot in South Wales. Now South Wales is a beautiful place to work in but unfortunately it does rain a lot. We were on location for two days and it rained for the two days we were there. Which kind of curtailed working the outside location we had planned to use.

However, the model I had taken Ella Rose Muse. Was keen to try and get some outdoor shots in a couple of locations even though it was raining.

There was a great summer house as a starting point. As well as a wall that was a possibility and it had some slight shelter from a big tree. So Ella went out and posed in the pouring rain.

Summer house and wall

I decided to look back in my Lightroom catalogue. To find the images we had created during that visit and thought it was worth posting them. It really shows how you can create a few different images in far from ideal conditions i.e. the pouring rain.

I even manage to find a behind the scenes image of Ella sheltering under an umbrella between shots. This must have been a very quick pause in the shooting. As she normally wore a warm coat between location and takes.

Also, how a great and brave model will go that extra mile to get you an image. Thanks again Ella.

It was not just Elle who spent sometime outside in the rain. For the shoots to the summer house I was outside in the wet shooting from under a large umbrella. These Images were shot using a 200mm lens.

The other shoots of Ella in the windows and doorway I was again outside getting rained on. While Ella was in the relative dry of the doorway. Our inside looking out.

I now remember that the main issue with these shots was the communications between shots.  Ella was behind the window glass and could not hear the shutter going off. So, we had to develop a method of signalling. So she knew when I had taken a shot so she could then change to a different pose.

Shooting from the outside to the in

The other very useful item for working in these conditions was a large umbrella. Both for the model to use between shots. As well as for me to shelter under while taking images from the outside looking in.

Looking back at these image I think it was worth giving it a go and shooting in the rain.

See what you think.

Model: Ella Rose Muse
Photographer: Richard Spurdens
Lighting: Natural light
Camera: Canon 5D MkII fitted with EF 70-200 f2.8 lens IS Lens

Following on from my last blog post on a remote shoot. I set up another remote shoot. This time with Zoi a full time professional model and actress, who lives in the Netherlands.

I have worked with Zoi a number of times in the past. You can see some of the images featuring her, in the my Fashion portfolios. Shooting the Sirens in Crete, and further on in Pure Silk Luxury set.

It was great to know that I could work with her remotely with Zoi being in the Haigh and myself being in England.

She has a great remote shooting page on her website. Together with a good PDF document that explains all the in and outs of shooting remotely with her. Its seems that the Haigh has 5G network connnectivity so the possibility of shooting outside is an option. As is the option of an assistant.

Zoi’s set-up uses a Fujifilm XT3 and is linked to Lightroom Classic with Fuji Plugin for Tethered shooting. The desktop is linked via Remote Desktop. So you can see what the camera is seeing and work the focus and controls.

Prior to the shoot I sent Zoi some moodboard images. So she could get an idea of styling for the shoot.

On the day we connected over Skype for sound and vision . Using windows Remote desktop to connect to the Fuji camera via the tethering software. All of which was diffferent to the previous set up with Amie.

However once you got use to controlling the camera via the software it worked well. We covered a number of outfits changes and below are a selection of monochrome images from the remote shoot.

Monochrome Images

Following on with some colour image of Zoi

Colour images

Zoi’s location had some great natural light and offered a varity of shooting directions. It was great to work with Zoi again and her setup works well. Thank again Zoi.

I will hope to do another remote shoot soon.

A virtual studio shoot was a good way of testing the possibilities of still been able to work and shoot with models. Having been locked down for the last few months a virtual studio shoot looked a good thing to try.

So when I spotted that Chris Conway and Amie were putting on session at Trident studios in Plymouth I thought it was worth giving it try.

I contract Chris and got a link to a very helpful set of remote shooting guidelines. These included how the shoot would work, what software was required. Also what I need to do from my end in terms of supplying a mood board for the look and lighting.

Setup  requirements

The virtual shoot was run using the Zoom meeting software together with tethered shooting to a laptop.

Tethering enabled you to take control of the camera settings from your screen, and also show both a live view from the camera (for composition) and also an image review and browser. So you can see what you captured

Chris’s set up uses a Sony A7R3 camera with the choice of a 90mm 2.8, 50mm 1.4 or 35mm 1.4 lens. The Sony has a feature for auto detecting the eyes so was great for this type of setup.

Virtual Shooting

So how did it go ? overall it worked really well and the images coming onto the review screen looked good. I struggled initially with which screen to look at as the main tethered screen was the previous image. Once I had got the sorted it was better.

I was using a surface tablet to run Zoom etc and really that was too small as the view of the model from the studio camera was actually the best screen to be looking at. But that was small only about an 30cm by 10cm so not really useful. This was a learning point for future virtual shoots, I need a bigger viewing screen to get the inputs at a good size

We shot four different sets, and each had a different lighting setup. I was a bit too trigger happy and ended up this some 300 plus images. which was ok until you have to try and get them on your computer.

After the shoot

Chris puts the images the low res Jpegs form the shoot in to a Dropbox folder – so you can see them more or less straight away to review them. Later in the day he uploads the RAW file to Dropbox for you to download. This all went well apart from issues with Dropbox dropping the server connection consistently. Which meant you had to start again with each down load. In the end I download each image individually which took forever.

Thoughts

Firstly, thanks to Amie of the great posing and styling for the four sets we shot. Thanks also to Chris for setting the lights follow me direction for each of the sets. Overall it was a good set up and it worked well.

I will certainly do more shoots this way in the future as it’s a good way of testing with models. Also, a good way of working with Models who are abroad. My recommendation is give it a go it is well worth doing and I will be doing more shoots this way in the future months

Here are a set of four images from a shoot with Helen Diaz shot using a single light setup.

I came across these set of images from a studio session with the UK model Helen Diaz. I might call them a bit of a vintage set as they were from a few years ago. When I was just starting to get into working with models and lighting in a studio-based setting. They stood out in the LR catalogue and I decided to work them up to put into a blog post.

I was initial shooting a portrait session with Helen and was also fortunate to have a very good Makeup Artist to work with on that day. The Makeup Artist also turned out to be a bit of a stylist too, as when we want to shoot some more fashion type looks.

She came up with a white ruffled- scalloped type jacket which looked like it might photographed really well. The result of using that jacket can be seen in this set of images.

I chose to light the set with a single light setup to the righthand side of the model. This consisted of a medium sized beauty dish that was mounted on a stand with a boom arm extension. By putting the light onto the boom arm it moved the model and light away from the background and by careful positioning it warped around the subject and made her and the jacket standout against the dark background.

I worked with Helen again in the following few years and we produced some more cool images from these shoots as well.

• Model: Helen Diaz

• MUA: Sonia Parker

• Location: Studio

• Lighting: Single medium beauty dish

• Styling: Sonia Parker

• Camera: Canon 5D