Winter Scene

I had an interesting theme for a shoot recently, which involved creating a winter scene for the shoot. I used a combination of fallen branches I collected from near my house, fake snow from a snow machine and fog from a fog machine to create the look.

I used two 550EX (equivalent to the Canon 580EX II) flashguns with CTB (cooling) gels from behind the setup in order to light the fog a cool blue. I had one on each side of the setup.

I then used three lights to light the model. I used two Bowens monolights with softboxes on either side (Esprit Gemini 750+/750+ Kit). The power of these lights means that I was able to back them well away, and give a good even spread of light across the image, with some nice light down the sides of the model. The softboxes meant that even though the lights were a few metres back, they still weren't giving overly harsh shadows. Softboxes also tend to make the light a touch more directional, so I was able to turn the softboxes towards the camera a touch, in order to reduce the white light hitting the fog, which would reduce the blue effect significantly.

Lastly I had a 550EX (equivalent to the Canon 580EX II) firing into an umbrellabox on a boom arm. This means I get a nice overhead (or just to the right) light filling the dark spot that would otherwise be left down the middle of the model when lit by the two softboxes. You can see what I mean in this image where the flash hadn't quite recharged, and only the monolights fired.



Here's a few views of the overall setup, so you can visualise what was happening.