With the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia just gone I decided to post from one of my more recent fashion collaboration shoots with Sydney based fashion designer Tarese Klemens and Melbourne based model Nicole Melrose.
We had Eve Hibbard assisting on the shoot and taking some behind the scenes footage on this one and will post a little bts video once I have some time to complete it.
I love working on outdoor location shoots with model over shooting indoors in studio. It allows a lot of creative freedom and versatility working with natural surroundings and compositions.
I find a lot of photographers struggle shooting in these scenarios because they haven't learned how to shoot in natural light or how to balance natural and studio light properly. Here we are shooting in La Perouse - one of my favourite spots around Sydney both for photoshoots and scuba diving.
In this shoot I did come prepared with a beauty dish and speedlite but working in the shaded areas we had such beautiful soft light that only needed to use a reflector to help balance some of the shadows at most.
The reds always creates a gorgeous contrast against natural rock formations and the ocean in the backdrop for the first really helped to make it that little bit more dramatic. We all have to take upmost care shooting on location and completely minimise all possible risks of injury for all involved and also high risk of damaging equipment. I've broken a lot of speedlites, strobes and battery packs in past shoots.
When shooting with natural light in shadow and including skies its almost impossible to get ski/cloud detail to show. Using a reflector helps especially maintaining that soft light across the scene and then balancing shadows/highlights in lightroom. Going the dramatic route can use studio lighting closer to the model to really bring some strong lighting to the model while darking the surrounding rocks and bringing in sky/cloud detail.
Something about this blue dress against the sandstone created a sense of waves surrounding the model which made it stand out for me.
At this point we had to quickly pack so Tarese could get Nicole to the airport to catch her flight back into Melbourne. Its always fun working with awesome and like minded creatives on projects. Everyone brings their individual skills and perspectives into it to create some great work.
Hope you enjoyed this series.