Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes your the bug.” ―
There are lots of advantages to working in a studio, even if it’s just a temporary set-up in your basement or garage. The biggest advantage of shooting in a studio is that you have much more control over the environment. You don’t have to worry about wind or changeable weather conditions and you have complete control over the lighting.
Shooting glamour portraits in Cancun may be too expensive for most of us but shooting outdoors in local parks is free and for state parks admission usually cots less than a few bucks a day. When you take the time to look around, attractive and dramatic locations are everywhere.
Tip: Many state park systems have annual passes that are quite affordable. And if you’re 62 years of age or older, a lifetime pass to National Parks costs $80.
If you shoot during the week, when I made this photograph at Barr Lake State Park, there were few people—just a couple of fisherman—around so you seldom have to worry about gawkers. And even the park rangers were always nice and friendly to me and my models.
How I Made this Portrait: I did many model shoots at Barr Lake State Park before running into one of the biggest problems using these kinds of locations. It wasn’t gawkers, it was bugs! I was able to make eight images of Helen before large ants started crawling on her and she said, “that’s it” and we left the park and relocated to Benedict Park near my former home.
Benedict Park is a relatively large park with a scattering of trees and I had made other portraits there with other models. It’s (relatively) bug free and during the week it’s gawker free too but it’s not as scenic as Barr Lake. I shot 300 images of Helen in this park including this one but I never felt that any of them were as good as the eight images I shot at Barr Lake before the ants got to her. For this portrait—the best of the ones I made in Benedict Park, I think—the camera used was Canon EOS 50D and 28-135mmmm lens (at 86mm) with an exposure of 1/200 sec at f/4.5 and ISO 100. An on-camera EX 550 speedlight was used as fill.
One of the key decisions facing you when preparing for a outdoor shoot is determining which location is best for the kind of photographs you have in mind. For glamour photography, privacy is the most important concern. If your model is wearing lingerie or something less, you can forget about shooting images where any people are walking by. And it’s unprofessional to place your model in that kind of situation and chances are it could also be illegal in your area.
That does not mean you can’t shoot glamour images outdoors but it does mean you’re going to have to be creative about where and when you shoot. That still doesn’t mean you won’t encounter problems. Shooting outdoors in this post-911 era has made many people, especially those wearing badges, sensitive about photography and sometimes they overreact.
You can learn all of my tips, tools and techniques for shooting available light glamour photography in my book surprisingly titled Available Light Glamour Photography. New copies of the book are available from Amazon for $29.95 with used copies starting around twenty-two bucks. Kindle copies are $28.45, if you prefer a digital edition.