On Location With Only One Light And The Sun

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No moodboards on set. Eeh… no set. No stylist on location. No makeup artist. Nobody to do the hair. No help to carry lights and light stands. No Kuler color palettes. No tethering to the MacBook on location. This describes the day a little bit.

Normally I prepare a shoot some weeks in advance. All the communication, planning and perfecting the moodboards can take a lot of time and is very important while doing commercial work, but this time Kristel and I decided to just go outside and look for a nice place to make some warm sunny-reddish images.
It was a strange day though. Thunder was approaching us from the distance. And the car was being stuck so we had to walk half an hour to the nearest farmer, fortunately he helped us out with a big smile. And it was quite warm and full of mosquitos so we really had to calm down and stay relaxed.

In the end, the images turned out quite well. Simple, basic and with only one light on location (and the sun). I used the trusty Elinchrom ELB400 portable studio light as key light, because it gives me all the power and flexibility I need. I attached the HS-head so I could make use of the higher shutter speeds while retaining the open aperture of the lens. As light modifier I used the Maxi Spot and the Deep Octa ø100cm, both with silver deflectors and the Deep Octa also with the inner diffusor.

I created an LCC lens correction profile in Capture One Pro, which automatically corrects the frame for light falloff and subtle color variations, although the Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM lens is a magical piece of glass with almost no color artifacts and an easily correctable vignetting on wide apertures.