Behind The Scenes
Shooting a model with a city in the background isn’t as easy as it would seem. I had for a very long time now wanted to do a shoot at night with a city scape in the background. Something that I found could be very challenging.
Not necessarily challenging in the way one might think, just challenging because I wasn’t sure exactly how to accomplish the look I wanted. I have a friend who has this great loft apartment with roof access and he allowed me to come shoot there and what a great day it was.
I had reached out to Playboy model Gabrielle Romanello on Instagram and she was going to come in for a sunset shoot but being an actual working model and actress she was delayed. By the time she arrived and was done with hair and make up the sun had already set.
But I did get some great sunset shots with Rebecca Buchanan. I digress and I promise to show those if you wish to see them. We went up to the roof with a single JTL Mobilight 401 and a 30″ collapsible beauty dish also from JTL-Lighting.
The biggest challenge for me initially was getting the background elements correct so that the cityscape showed up.
Test shot exposed for the cityscape.
As you can see it’s absolutely dark and yes Gabrielle is in there; right at the center of the frame. Even the city is very dark at f/4.5 shutter speed of 1/60 with ISO 400. I was trying to get the city lights to expose brightly so we could at least see it. Obviously my camera settings weren’t right.
I was trying to expose for the ambient light.
Test shot with the strobe firing.
As you can see Gabrielle is somewhat over exposed. While the background is still very much under exposed. Not even near the look I was going for. At one point we decided to try using a cell phone camera flashlight to light Gabby.
By lighting Gabby with the cell phone I was able to figure the right exposures for the background and the foreground. Or at least make them work.
The Finished Photos
The first four images were light by cell phone. The remaining three images were lit by my strobe.
The last five image were shot against a silver door on the roof and I used my flash and single beauty dish to create this look. If you look at the images you can also see the subtle changes from image to image, be it the positioning of the hands, the tilt of the head.
Eyes opened, closed. Everything contributes to the overall completion of the image. The images against the door were shot at iso 100 f4.0 at 1/125th sec. I was using my favorite lens my beauty maker lens.
The Canon – EF – 70 mm to 200 mm – f/2.8 – Telephoto Zoom Lens is my lens of choice of course for glamour type shoots. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this post by leaving me a comment below and I will be happy to answer them for you.
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