Model shoot: Lady in Red

Don't ask me why but I've always wanted to photograph a model in a red in a forest. Not exactly original but something to get me out of the office and get the old shutter finger moving non-the-less.  Like all ideas of this nature, success relies upon a bit of planning and the right individuals being involved. I was lucky enough to find a great model willing to travel up to Newcastle and trust me enough to then go on to a forest location in the wilds of Northumberland. Her name is Hannah and if you'd like to work with her you can find her on TFPModels as Hannah197 and on ModelMayhem. I also managed to find a great make-up artist/hair stylist who lives, literally, round the corner from me. How useful is that? Alex Pretswell may be young (seem to meeting more and more people who are these days, no idea what's going on) but is not short on talent. I also had my über assistant, Nick Shek along for the ride (and to make sure I didn't have to lug all the lighting kit around the forest). Hannah had managed to grad a great red dress for an absolute bargain price. My aim was to work with her on creating some strong poses that showed off the dress and her figure as well as paying attention to the direction of light. 'Dramatic' was the overall look I was trying for.

We were extremely fortunate with the weather, as regular visitors will know I frequently fall foul of the changeable meteorology we have in the North East, which really helped make the shoot more enjoyable. We had around four hours shooting and used eight different locations within the forest itself. Taking advantage of the varied terrain and light. Most of these images were lit mainly by a single Elinchrom Quadra flash head with a 42cm beauty dish. I shot only with a 100mm f/2.8 or 16-35mm f/2.8 lens.  These are my favourite shots from this short but enjoyable personal project. Thanks again to Hannah, Alex and Nick.

 A genuine smile is always worth more. And no, I'm not going to tell you what I said to get this reaction.

 To get a good reflection shot, your lens has to be as close to the water as possible, which in this case meant lying in the mud. Sometimes, you just have to go the extra mile.

 I'm not normally a fan of toning images in Photoshop but this one seemed to work quite well with one of the pre-set actions I have on my Motibodo board


These shots all utilised a second Quadra flash firing off the same pack. The first four images used a 20˚ honeycomb grid and 18cm reflector in addition to the beauty dish.

 As darkness fell we grabbed this shot on the trail that led us back to the car. Don't worry, Hannah did not walk around in those shoes all afternoon - I'm not that cruel.