Styled by me. Lingerie by Karolina Laskowska.
Adapting to your surroundings
When I approach a new location, more often than not I have no idea how it’s going to shoot or indeed what kind of light I’m going to need. Here we shot in an average bungalow in Sheffield. Luckily the decor was in keeping with the style we needed and there was a beautiful late afternoon winter sunlight beaming straight through a venetian bind. Lovely as it was it gave us just a two foot pool of light that we could utilise. Placing the model in the natural light I metered directly from this harsh light. The resulting image was ok but the contrast was a little too high with the shadows falling into a deep black of nothing. Time to set up an Elinchrom, the meter in the direct sunlight gave me a reading of 1/125th of a second at between f8 and f11. I needed to set up the flash so it wouldn’t kill the blind effect and opted to bounce the flash off the white ceiling. Setting the monobloc to it’s lowest power I adjusted the distance of it from the model until I got a flash reading at the models face of f4. Perfect fill flash. Soft and subtle.
A major part of being a professional photographer is the ability to think and adapt to suit the surroundings you’re shooting in. I spent many years developing my skills using medium format film cameras, mistakes were expensive but the learning curve was harsh and steep. It’s a good grounding though and exposure is something I need to control in every area of the image, luck has no place in lighting, everything should be calculated.
![stalkmarket:
@Tess_D_Stylist taken by Brian Kemm [@Brian505] at Weston Park in Sheffield, UK, 30 September 2011.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2fr189w3k1rtga4eo1_1280.jpg)
