Sandcastles

October 23, 2019

I have always been fascinated by mixing natural light with strobes and so for the idea of an outdoor shoot that I had in mind it seemed like the perfect choice.
My recent project “Sandcastles” was all about sun, sand and fun. It is an ode to a child within us, a tribute to letting ourselves not give up on viewing the world in color, to childhood imagination that for many people is as fleeting as a sandcastle. Once waves of adult problems appear- it gets washed away never to return.
Why don’t we keep building these castles? Sand is always there. Yes, it will eventually fade. But our ability to build new ones will remain within us if we will just let it out to play. Keeping the child within alive, gathering that sand and enjoying the breeze. No matter the currants to come.

When shooting with natural light and strobes, a starting point is always to set the ISO that controls the scene sensitivity. By setting ISO first you are deciding how dark/light and how detailed you expect your background to be.
After ISO is set, shutter speed will help define how much natural light is leaking in your frame. The slower you keep it- the more natural light will come through. At the same time, I needed to keep it fast enough to not have motion in my images, since I didn’t want to use a tripod, yet wanted my model to move a lot to capture more moody shots, rather than static.
So i kept my shutter speed on 100.

Working with natural light and strobes, I prefer a more realistic feel to images. The kind where strobe is just filling the darkest areas. Images turn out softer, not too “flashy”, look less forced and imitate absence of strobes. That meant my ISO needs to be around 200-300 and intensity of strobe set accordingly.
For this shoot I used the most convenient light- Siros L 800. It is light, mobile and easily transportable, so it’s a perfect choice for location. It also had a color temperature that, in my opinion compliments natural light best.