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Laura on fire!

Laura on fire!

In the back of my head was a shoot planned some time ago with good friends Laura and Ray who have graced my camera once before as a pair and more so singularly. When I first met Ray I learned he was a man of many interests, one included saving lives and putting out fires so of course we had to eventually put him and a pretty lady in the protective gear that keeps firefighters from getting burned. The only question was where to take the gear to get the most effective photographs? Thanks to Ray we had a lead on a great location and it even came equipped with tons of firefighter gear and vehicles

Saturday started with a quick lunch at Spider Sushi with the lovely Stefi Jade. Couldn’t help but get the ramen… so yummy! After our delicious yummy goodness we ran off to purchase a few things like special fx makeup and a giant carry bag. Sounds like a future shoot in the making. Off to the studio to grab gear, pickup one amazing model and follow said firefighter to our location.

At our fine location I realized quickly that lighting was going to be tricky. Lots of shiny things, poor natural light, danged fluorescent bulbs, and of course plenty of tight spaces. I pride myself in the ability to control light and even though I had a difficult operation ahead of myself I knew I could surgically place some lights and get something amazing from this shoot.

This is were I’d like to remind all photographers that it’s completely ok to make mistakes. Without the mistakes we can’t learn what doesn’t make a photo look good. It definitely took a few tries in the setup to get things right, which included putting people on top of things to get the light just in the right places. I use a lot of the knowledge I’ve picked up from reading Joe McNally and David Hobby articles; true masters of lighting, and in this instance I relied on the ability to light in planes. Basically, if you understand that light can be controlled in small distinct areas you can put light in the necessary places without interfering too much with other areas of your final photograph.

Making my mistakes today and rethinking how I would shoot this a few times we finally nailed a series of shots that were jaw dropping. Big thank to Ray for the idea, the gear, the location and for being awesome and of course another big thank you to Laura for being amazingly beautiful!!!