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Behind The Lens
Location
This is my beautiful daughter, Roxanne. She had just returned from her hair appointment and when she walked in with this crazy hair colour (it's called coral blush, by the way), I knew that we had to do a photo session! So we set up the lights in our dining room - that is what we use as our makeshift studio.Time
It was the middle of the afternoon, but that didn't matter too much as we were using studio lights to expose the shot.Lighting
We used a complimentary cyan gel on the wall behind her as a background. I added further colours in post processing as the hair colour was so vibrant.Equipment
The image was taken using my Nikon D810 and Nikon 70-200 lens. The main light was a Profoto B1x to the left with fill light to the right and a coloured gel as background lighting.Inspiration
I enjoy taking portraits that have something a little different about them. This dynamic hair colour just begged to be wild and so we incorporated some fast movement and coloured gels into the picture to accentuate the strength of the colour.Editing
After I opened the image in Photoshop, I felt that the cyan background really complimented the coral colour well, but it needed the addition of further colours to create a kind of disco feel.In my camera bag
Heavens, my bag? Bags more like! I do try to keep my equipment to a minimum, but I'm not so good at that. I usually start with my Nikon D810 and my two goto lenses, Nikon 70-200 and Tamron 24-70. Then, of course, I pack my Samyang 14mm in case we want to do some wide angle - you never know. Always best to have the backups, Nikon D800, 24, 50 and 105mm. Then there's the lights, modifiers, tripods, backdrops ..... so, just one suitcase and two camera bags and I'm ready to go, lol!Feedback
This type of shot is what they call a 'moment'. I knew that I wanted to capture the hair at it's maximum movement. Firstly, I tested the lighting - we were using flash to freeze the movement - and camera settings to make sure that everything was properly exposed and the background was evenly coloured. Then we did some practice runs. After that, we took lots of shots. Lots and lots. Then, with one of those shutter presses you kind of know that you've hit the 'sweet spot' and it's pretty exciting when it happens! As we reviewed the images, we spotted this one. There it was, that was the moment. The movement was perfect. A fraction of a second either way and it would not have worked.