Rachel is another one of the many DIT models I have shot. Rachel was involved in the DIT Fashion Show. Rachel is currently signed with Catwalk Models in Galway. Rachel has a really nice look and it was great to shoot with her on two occasions. She has catwalk experience and has done a good few fashion shows. Working with experience models always make things easier when it comes to posing and general atmosphere on set.
The two shoots were a fashion shoot on the streets of Dublin at night and some beach shots. For the Dublin shoots, we were aiming for a dark look. Ann-Marie Carey was on MUA duties with Danilo Tavares was on hair. Both did a fantastic job. I was assisted by Cameron ( Snapt.eu), who was a big help in the location scouting and the lighting on the night of the shoot.
This shoot has its lighting problems in that the areas is lit by ugly, yellow sodium vapour street lights. This alone was not that big a deal from an ambient light point of view. A custom white balance on the Nikon D7000 worked a treat and produced a nice result…. almost cinematic feel, which is what I was hoping for. The problem then came in trying to use fill light. I do not have big reflectors to reflect back enough of the light. My initial reaction was that I wanted to used flash, but with this custom WB setting, normal white light was shifting to dark blue.
I knew that I needed to balance to my flash with the ambient. This is a trial and error process. You basically need a lot of CTO and 1/2 CTO gels with you and keep adding them to your flash until the light from your flash looks good on your subject. I think I ended up with an equivalent 3 1/2 CTO gel, which was made up of 5 or 6 individual gels. The main problem with this is that each gel added decreases the power of the flash…. power that is already scarce due to the distance from light to subject and I was wanting to keep the ISO low on the body to keep noise down. But it all worked out in the end.
The other set of shots are from a beach shoot with Ray Byrne. It was a great day on the beach and we got some great shots. Here are the best ones. I really like the portrait below of Rachel. I like the expression on here face and she has amazing eyes.
I hope to shoot with Rachel again soon over the Summer to get a wider range of shots. If you’re reading this after 2011, then click to see more shots of Rachel and Ray.