As I had talked about before, a photo idea can be simple but effective when you spend some time to plan a shot, but you can also be creative on the fly by using your knowledge from other photo shoots you have worked on before. In this shoot with Yvette Nelson, it’s just another way to use the sky and hard daylight to get the best shot’s you need. The hard light is not always the best time to shoot but if you have a strobe and you are able to sync your camera up for a fast shutter speed you could get the exposure you need to pull off super shot’s like these.
Yvette wanted to have a shot with her body all oiled up and shiny in a swimsuit, and what better way to show off her sexy body then to shoot a tropical look on location. But we were not about to get on a plane and fly to a location just for one shoot, So I thought as we are in Los Angeles, how about the palm trees and blue sky as a background. Now the best-looking part of the palm trees are there leaves, so how do I get her to be in front of them? Let’s shoot on the roof that way we would be at tree top height, plus we can also get the blue sky with no distractions in my shots at the same time, but it was a bit too bright outside as we would be in direct sunlight with no shade on the rooftop. If I use a strobe I can balance the bright daylight for the right exposure.
We climbed up onto the roof at Yvette’s house where we could safely shoot the shots. Yvette took up a bottle of oil, water in a spray bottle and a towel, I had my camera and ring light. There I would use the ring light as my main light, and the sun would be the fill light, All I had to do was to get the exposure and the view I needed to look as if we were in the tropics on a super-hot day. As you can see in the smaller shot Yvette is standing on the roof. The main shot is what we were going for and the other is the safety shot with just the blue sky as the backdrop.
