IND414 Model1
Jul, 2015Views
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken inside a friend's apartment shower stall in Santa Barbara, CATime
It was midday some time, but as we were inside an enclosed bathroom, all the light is provided by a portable flashLighting
lit with Quantum Q-flash strobe to freeze water actionEquipment
shot with Nikon D300 with Nikkor f/2.8 17mm-55mm handheld with a Quantum Q-flash portable strobeInspiration
At the time it was part of a school assignment at Brooks Institute to create an image with stop action lighting with a model of some kind and I wanted to create something that was slightly provocative while still being a conservative piece. It really came together with a friend who agreed to let me shoot her in the shower under a pouring stream of water with the splash and spray of the water perfectly frozen as it cascades onto her head and shoulders.Editing
The editing was fairly simple for this shot. I made some adjustments to the levels and curves and did a little retouching to the shower wall and skin in places and it was pretty well set.In my camera bag
Nowadays I carry my Nikon 300 still as well as a Nikon 1 V3 for camera bodies. As far as lenses go, my main workhorse is a Nikkor f/2.8 17mm-55mm but I also carry a Nikkor f/4-5.6 70mm-210mm, Nikkor f/2.8 50mm macro, 1 Nikkor f/3.5-5.6 10-30 VR, and a Sigma f/4-5.6 70mm-300mm. I also always have my Nikon SB-800 Speedlight, Battery grip and cable release for the D300, SIRUI monopod with Manfrotto 322RC2 pistol grip head, and an array of extra batteries, memory cards and filters.Feedback
I have always found the hardest parts of doing shoots like these is simply finding the people willing to get a little risqué for the sake of your shot. The use of different modeling and talent based networking sites can be incredibly helpful in finding models willing to show a little skin for your work but that can also mean paying for your models to pose and if this is can sometimes be hard to justify for a shoot. In that case, you can try a wider net of putting out a craigslist posting and seeing who responds, but that can be an interesting crowd to draw as well. For myself, the vast majority of images that I have taken with nude or risqué poses have been through the use of friends and other students for my models. It can be difficult to find the firth friends for this at first, but I found that asking a majority of my friends and acquaintances if they would be willing to pose nude that the amount willing was a surprisingly high percentage. And once you find those friends who are comfortable enough to pose for you, you see if they know anyone else who might be willing for it was also even more surprising how much higher it was for a model to know another person who would be willing to pose nude than just asking everyone I knew. Anyway, otherwise shots like this aren't terribly complicated as long as you are using the right gear. A flash that can actually fire on and off fast enough to freeze the motion is critical to capturing the water perfectly still (the standard flash units sold with cannon or nikon will not be fast enough!) something like an Einstein lighting kit or a Quantum Q-flash or equivalent. Once you have that, just play with the flash placement and angle to subject to create the right shading for your image and shoot away! It will probably take more that a couple shots to really capture the water or whatever it is in the best random splash so shoot a lot and check them in high magnification in photoshop/Lightroom/etc. to make sure you really have a nice crisp shot.
