I hate to get up early. I don’t know why, I just do. On the other hand, I love to experiment with photography. Needless to say, this was one bitter sweet early morning with an unexpected glitch. You plan… and more often than not in photography, the plan, like a super computer that attempts to destroy you and the world, takes a mind and course of its own.
THE PLAN
After reading a blog post about this guy who shot a model in a beautiful forest on a buffalo with a really nice haze filled habitat, I was inspired to try a variation of this. In order to accomplish this I knew I needed to eliminate the buffalo section and add a twist of my own (sad to say that my budget limited me from shipping a buffalo overnight to Tuscaloosa). I would accomplish the mist by using a fog machine. The woods would be handled by visiting the running trails of the local Bowers Park (of course named after my great great grandfather).
THE PLAN’S PLAN
My twist was to add a drastic contrast in color to the otherwise bland woods with the model wearing a red dress (actually Rachel’s idea). I wanted to keep the mist element so I asked my friend Michael Gordon if I could borrow his fog machine. The fog machine fell through the night before so I had to act quick and come up with an alternative. With a recommendation to try dry ice for this effect, I was pointed toward Publix. I came away with a modest amount of dry ice. I needed to store it for the night so of course I put it in my freezer, because that’s what you do with ice.
I awoke the next morning, pulled the dry ice out of the freezer, only to see warnings on the bag to ‘not place the dry ice in areas such as a freezer’. Since I could not change the fact that this had already happened, I loaded the bag up along with my gear and headed toward Bowers Park hopeful that the mist could still be created.
THE SHOOT (5:30 AM)
The shoot went as expected except for the part where the dry ice failed to perform its function. Disappointed that the mist element would be missing I proceeded to not waste any more time weeping and went to work with what was available. Rachel, who graciously agreed to model for this shoot, was very easy to work with.
Porfirio, who is pictured below in one of the production shots, was a life saver. I called him the night before asking him to help as an assistant (I really should be assisting him). He has 20+ years of experience and has basically fathered me through the basics of photography. For that I am very thankful. You can check out his great work at f8productionsonline.com.
THE PICTURES
The shoot went very well and some great pictures were made, which will be posted at a later time. For now, I have included a few production shots for your viewing pleasure. You can see the basic set up that I used.
At the time, I only had two receivers for my wireless flash setup, so for most of the shoot I used 1 strobe shot through an umbrella. Some thoughts on improvement would be to use various snoots and gridspots and splash accents of light on the subject and to practice controlling the light a little further.
A few things that I think contributed to the failure of the dry ice were:
- Not enough of it. I bought 10 pounds but probably needed 50.
- The fact that I froze it.
- The wooded area was super huge. It seems it would take a constant stream of mist pouring out to achieve the effect that I was going for.
Have any of you experimented with fog/mist before in an outside area? If so, what were your experiences with it?
