Morning Light Photo Shoot
Trying out some lighting ideas
All photos in this article by Bruce M. Walker
Last year we decided to try a photo shoot using light from the Domanski House Studio windows with some additional lighting used when needed. The Studio has these huge tall, wide plate glass windows which face east.
The wished for effects were hazy, dreamy and silhouette.
Even though the sun kept playing hide and seek, we were able to get some rather nice effects from the natural light coming through the windows.
Notes from Bruce M. Walker
All of the shots were taken using only ambient window light. In the first five, I positioned black flats to either side to increase the shadows and the silhouette effect. In the last shot (“Looking glass”) I added large white reflectors to bounce in some fill light.
The shots were all taken with a medium format Pentax 645Z digital camera. I used two lenses: the 90mm f/2.8 macro and the 150mm f/2.8. As the ambient light level was very low on shoot day, I increased the ISO to as much as 1600 in many shots. This had the bonus of adding some lovely film-like grain to the images. To enhance the dreamy look, I added a Tiffen diffusion filter to the lens during shooting.
—-bmw
Participating in the photoshoot was photographer/lighting technician and set creator Bruce M. Walker, with makeup and posing help from model/makeup artist and photographer Araina Nespiak, and helping Bruce with set up and tear down, Mel Wilson. Model Louise Peacock.
