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Lighting Masterclass - Stuart Wood - Aug 15 - part 3 of 1 2 3

by Stuart Wood Published 01/08/2015

So that this image would be suitable for magazine cover use, I turned Joanna to face slightly to the right (which is towards the direction that the magazine opens, so she is looking 'into' the magazine) and composed her perfectly to show plenty of the iconic St Basil's Cathedral around her that I had already rendered slightly out of focus by carefully selecting the appropriate aperture and I then placed my assistant Georgiy with my light to the right-hand side, so that we produced the lovely 'short' lighting that is so complimentary on women.

As it was also now snowing quite heavily, I was concerned that the best images may be ruined by a 'rogue' snowflake that may end up close to Joanna's face and could potentially produce a black shadow from the flash across an important facial feature, I kindly asked our friendly Producer/Director Michael to hold a brolly directly above Joanna and just out of shot. This worked perfectly and not a single stray snowflake caused us any trouble.

So, this is actually an image produced completely 'in camera' and the lovely twilight effect was produced purely by selecting a faster shutter speed on the camera, which deliberately rendered the daylight underexposed and every snowflake is completely authentic too!

After getting splashed by the unforgiving snowploughs that own the pavements during the Muscovite winter, we all went to the glamorous Shopping Mall in Red Square and Michael thawed us all out with a heavenly rich hot chocolate!

Throughout the next few days, we shadowed the filming and shot Joanna all over Moscow (and under - in both the Moscow Metro and Stalin's Nuclear Bunker!) and after saying fond farewell to my good friend Georgiy, I went immediately to the duty free at the airport to track down a litre of the wonderful Beluga Vodka that he had thankfully introduced me to!

I then made sure that Joanna finally got the promised Christmas card on the plane home and my final memory of a wonderful experience was Joanna running to hug me at Heathrow to wish me a Merry Christmas.

And the vodka went down very nicely during my well earned holidays!

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1st Published 01/08/2015
last update 09/12/2022 14:59:28

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Lighting Masterclass - Stuart Wood - Aug 15 - part 3 of 1 2 3