Working with Natural Light – By Accident

I scheduled a photo shoot the weekend of October 18 because I found this amazing graffiti dress in Etsy.  I had the perfect model in mind for the session, but she had a family emergency the morning of the shoot.  I was so bummed because I really wanted to get behind my camera, and I arranged for a lighting assistant with my friend Tika Cook.  I put out a desperate call the morning of the session, and fortunately, a model responded.  She was from San Antonio, and was in Austin for another session.  

We met at the library downtown.  I had plans to use OCF, but yours truly forgot the battery to the strobe!  Argh! I guess it was for the best because it was very windy that day!  I packed a reflector which I knew could be used to bounce light onto the model.

What was very interesting about the model was the fact that she was Muslim.  She asked if I minded her wearing her hijab, and I said “no”.  I told her to make sure that she wore a camisole for the dress, and she also wore leggings.  I had purchased a pair of boots from Target for the session, and she wore them.   What’s great about the direction that I give is the fact that I didn’t take her out of her comfort zone. One thing I did learn is that I need to put double-sided tape in my photo session kit bag! Thank goodness that Tika had it in her backpack. It allowed us to close the front of the dress so the camisole wasn’t visible.

Although I wanted to use OCF, I think that working with the ambient light was a great exercise for me.  Since switching to Sony, I’ve used OCF for all of my portrait sessions.  I want to get to the same level of confidence that I had when I shot with Nikon.

We primarily stayed around the library.  There are some great textures near the building, and I wanted to capitalize on them.  While we were shoot near some stairs, this man, driving a convertible, parked his car illegally, and was taking pictures of us with a DSLR.  It was so creepy!  Tika brought it to our attention so I turned to him and asked if he was taking pictures of us.  He smiled, put his camera down, and drove away.   It still makes my skin crawl.

I want to try more sessions using available light.  My goal is to have a session using hard light.  I love the feel of imagers with that type of lighting.