WORKING WITH THE SUN

As we move through the year, the sun that streams into my studio changes ever so slightly every day.

I love it.

So when Savannah booked a shoot, I persuaded her to come early, not because I wanted to finish early, but because I wanted to have some fun before we started work. The sun streaming through the windows this time of year is incredible and I am a big fan of hard light.

So let me show you some of the images we managed to get before work started.

Studio setup for the first few shots.

Studio setup for the first few shots.

As you can see from the images above I have used both my black V-Flats as the background and have the sun streaming in from the left. The glass in the window is opaque, so it does give a nice bit of diffusion and does soften the light a tad. You can also see voile curtain behind the chair which I sometimes use to defuse the light even more if needed. It is early morning and the sun is low in the sky and is still quite soft at this stage.

So lets have a look at some of the images from this set.

Before we messed up the hair and before any makeup.

Before we messed up the hair and before any makeup.

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So these were all taken with the windows closed and you can see how much the opaque glass defussers the light.

SET 2

The next set all we did was open the windows to give a different effect and you can see there is quite a lot of contrast (which I like)

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Swapped the shirt for the jacket

Swapped the shirt for the jacket

SET 3

It is amazing how fast the sun rises, so we quickly moved the setup to the door of my studio and moved the V-Flats to create the desired backdrop. This setup again give a very different look and feel while still using the hard sunlight to create the hard shadows.

Changing the backdrop from white to black also make a huge change.

Here I used the white of the V-Flat.

Here I used the white of the V-Flat.

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And that’s a wrap. This took us about 30 minutes to do but was so worthwhile for me. As you can see we had almost a zero wardrobe change but we managed to get some different looks by just using the available light from the window and the door which was just 6 feet away.

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