The outcome of location scouting - a sneak peak of the shoot with Justine

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the importance of location scouting when photographing outdoors. It's good for a number of reasons - knowing the terrain you're going to shoot in, knowing the light, and of course, giving the illusion of competence when you're photographing another human being.

That other human being I was to photograph was no other than the lovely Justine Green.

The shoot went very well. I had an assistant with me to help with lighting, and the hike wasn't as bad as I feared it would be with a backpack full of photo gear.

Justine's favourite colour is green, and there was indeed so much green in the national park. Justine was an absolute blast to work with, and there were many, many laughs shared.

Here's the first image from many that I'll post more of in the coming days.

Shot on my Nikon D750, with a Godox AD200 in a 80CM softbox as the fill light. The rest of the lighting was provided by the star in the sky (the sun). This was on my 70-200 at f/2.8 This shot is a combination of natural light and fill flash. The sun is lighting the right part of the frame, with a softbox lighting Justine from the left.

I cannot stress how much I enjoy using flash outdoors, and in the middle of the day, at that! It's great to balance natural light with flash - and getting the right exposure through meticious control of the flash power output (and distance from the model) is something I relish in - it's a science that involves a lot of feeling and the ability to see how the environment changes in the exposure.

I often tell myself that I'll try to improve one thing in every photoshoot I complete, and a friend told me that I could use some more catch light in the eyes, so that was my quiet objective on this shoot. I think I pulled it off!

More to come from this shoot, I'm pleased with the outcome, and have a ton of images to share - I'm also in the process of retouching, and am likely to post a few retouching videos documenting my photoshop flow as well.

Thanks for stopping by, and I'd love to hear your feedback!