As a working photographer and a lot of my tips and tricks are for directing photographers that would also like to be working in photography as a professional, but there are a lot of you out there that are just having some fun with taking photos and this story is about making it a bit easy and cost effected to take images whenever you want as long as the sun is shining.
When I first moved to the beach area in California, I rented a small house that had a back yard that was big enough for me to shoot shots with models. It also was well secluded so I could do what I needed in privet as I would like to shoot more sexy shot’s with-out onlookers.
I did have lighting gear (Strobes) to use to set up my lighting in a studio but getting all that stuff out was a bit of a pain so I thought what if I was to make a daylight studio that I could use at a drop of a hat any time, that could be easy and quick for me to just walk out to the back and shoot any one any time. What I decided to do was to make a two wall’s I could use as the backdrop and ad a scrim over the top to defuse the sunlight with the use of this set up, I was creating open shade. As you can see in the backdrop image and what it looked like.
The only thing I needed to do when shooting in that space was to add a reflector or a flash fill to brighten up my front light on a model another plus was, I could also shoot video in that space at the same time with no issues with exposure. In some of my shots you can see sunlight spots which I did by using a mirror with a gobo over it to make the spots of sunlight. Once I had the look, I liked I went and used a black backdrop in the space for a more dramatic look I placed a card on the very back of the scrim to stop light from shining on the backdrop to keep it nice and black this helped to show more of my mirror reflections.
My tip here is creating your own open shade space so that you can just walk out with a model and just start shooting it’s quick and easy!
