articles/Portraiture/baikieremotedesk-page3
by John Baikie Published 01/12/2012
So onto a recent shoot I did, and how this applies. I had bought a Red Riding Hood costume of eBay (please don't write an article next month Laura stating that the actual book had a wolf, because I couldn't find one) and wanted to do a dark, Red Riding Hood type shoot in some woods. So the planning first. I sketched some rough ideas of how I wanted the image to look and had a vague idea of what I wanted. I then chose the right model for the shoot, Sophie, who I'd done a few shoots with and felt she was perfect for this. I wanted the image to be slightly sinister, so I had already decided it would have a cold feel to it, almost like a still from a horror or vampire movie. I located a forest near Inverness which seemed to be just right for this shoot and all we needed then was a good day.
I wanted sunshine coming through the woods, to add to the feel, and to give me more options. If you shoot in a forest on a dull day you're pretty much struggling to vary the lighting and style. The weather gods played the game and we got an amazing day, which was too sunny if we were in the open shooting. I wanted the sun backlighting Sophie through the trees, as I love shooting into the sun, but I also wanted to create some smoke effects to add to the feel of the image. As I said I really want to get these images as close to final image as possible in camera, so this one was a challenge. I had to balance the light between then and the flash so that I wasn't overpowering the sun this time, like so many of my other shoots as I wanted to capture the sun coming through the trees and lighting up the smoke. A lot of people see my images here and think there's a lot of post processing involved, which is just not the case.
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