Miss Brazil Supranational 2016 Cloris Junges.
Cloris; Miss Brazil Supranational 2016 called me up one day and said that she wanted to do a shoot at the beach for her upcoming world pageant. It’d been a long while since I had shot on the beach so I figured I’d give it a shot.
I went to pick my neighbor Michelle up and we headed off down to the beach where we were to meet my friend and assistant for the day Shawn.
Cloris had gotten there just after I did, and I needed to figure out how I was going to light this shoot.
Some cities; like Newport Beach can be assholes about anyone shooting on their beaches and want anyone using anything more than a cell phone to get a permit which of course they charge an insane amount for.
If you know me you know I wasn’t going to do all that. Having said that I decided to leave the strobes at home and opted for nothing more than a bunch of reflectors, and a couple of speed lights which are always in my Pelican Case.
While I had several reflectors; I opted to use for the main fill was my 7’x5′ five in one reflector.The 5’x7″ is a great option considering that Miss Brazil is nearly six feet tall. The downside to it is that a reflector that big is difficult to control in an environment like that.
The beach creates wonderful challenges to shooting which I will outline below.
Challenges:
- Lighting
- Weather
- People
- Environment
As I mentioned before I opted for using my reflectors. Keep in mind I have like six reflectors of varying sizes and a Sunbounce sun mover reflector that is great to use.
Having said that; in this case my lighting was directly affected by the weather. That was constantly changing as a layer of marine haze rolled in and blocked my sun which was my main and rim light throughout the day.Once the haze dissipated we ended up with a marine layer that grayed out my sky. So not happy, but we have work to do. While I had the sun light I used it as much as I could.
I wanted to create the illusion of golden hour light and opted for the gold side of my 7’x5′ reflector to warm Cloris’ already naturally tan skin tones. (She IS from Brazil). However; not long after we started shooting we lost the sun behind the marine layer and clouds which rolled in from seemingly nowhere. This is always a challenge of shooting at the beach.
The unpredictable weather. If you’re using natural light, this will always affect your exposure. Another of the challenges are the people.There are often going to be people when shooting at a public location and frankly they don’t give a care about you or your need to get a shot.
This is often a good time to take a break and evaluate what you’ve captured. Maybe do some make up touch ups or whatever. Maybe even time to find a new location.
When shooting at the beach it is important to always remember the environment is a hostile one. Hostile to your equipment anyway. Sand and salt water are not friends to your cameras or lenses so be very careful with them.
Avoid setting your camera and lenses down as much as possible. Another thing to mention is not to forget waves. Waves are powerful and absolutely unpredictable. I have literally seen what looks like a small swell crash up over rocks and wash away thousands of dollars worth of gear.
The Results:
I may be biased, but I think we got some pretty great results from the shoot. Check the gallery below and let me know what you think.
Just leave a quick comment below. Or if you have any questions feel free to leave those in the comments as well.
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