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Parachute at Carriage Hill

(ISO 200, Aperture F5, Shutter 1/200s, Focal Length 18mm)

On November 8th, I worked with the lovely Megan Rice to shoot my green parachute dress at Carriage Hill Metro Park. This is a different location from were I have been shooting the parachute dress, so the shots have a different feel about them.  Carriage Hill is a farm park, so there are several old/restored farm buildings, farm animals, and fields.  For this shoot I was glad the Megan brought her boyfriend, because he helped fluff the dress up to get the nice billow effect.  While my husband managed the lighting by holding the painter’s pole with a speed light on it.

For this shoot I used:

  • Canon 80D
  • 2 Speed lights
  • Painter’s Pole
  • Assistant

I shot 214 frames between ISO 200.  My aperture varied depending on where we were shooting in the park.  In some cases, I was shooting almost directly into the sun while in other cases we were in the shade. Thus, my aperture varied from F5 to F13, with a majority of the shots occurring at F5. My shutter speed ranged from 1/100s to 1/250s with a majority of the frames being shot at 1/250s.  It should be noted I was not using high speed sync on my speed lights so my shutter speed maxes out at 1/250s.  My focal range varied from 18mm to 40mm with the most common focal length being 18mm. 

My favorite shot from the whole shoot has lens flair in it, which is usually a bad thing unless you are going for artistic images. But in this case, it works because it gives the image a bit of mystical feeling.  We were shooting at around 1:30 on a very sunny day, but the large gray barn provided a nice large shady spot. However, this meant depending on the angle I held the camera I could get lens flare.  In this case it work, by adding a nice set of sunbeams that seem to highlight the model.  In this case the flash was located on my left, raised, pointed down at the model and zoomed to around 70mm. The lighting matches the direction of the sunbeams and flare.  When editing the image, I adjusted the white balance, adjusted the exposure slightly, and added a bit of a vignette to the image.

(ISO 200, Aperture F5, Shutter 1/200s, Focal Length 18mm)

I went back and forth on this shot, because it is close to a silhouette, but not quite because you can still the color and the billowing in the dress.  To get this image I hooked part of the parachute dress onto the fence so it would catch the wind to billow.  Don’t worry the model was wearing leggings under the dress. As you can tell I was shooting directly towards the sun, however my poor little flash could not compete with the sun, plus the batteries were near the end of their charge so the recycle time was rather long.  In the raw image the sky was blown out thus I adjusted the exposure of the images, which reduced the exposure on the model. To adjust for this, I added two circular adjustment to increase the exposure on the model’s face and body to balance the image.  I also adjusted the white balance slightly. 

(ISO 200, Aperture F9, Shutter 1/250s, Focal Length 20mm)

Overall, I’m happy with how the images from this shoot turned out. You can see all the images from this shoot here: Parachute at Carriage Hill

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