The banks of the creek outside of Columbus, Ohio were flooded, and the waterfall I had intended to shoot at was unreachable. The main reason I try and get near and around waterfalls for shooting are because they normally are in some sort of steep canyon, which means shade, which means nice soft light. As soon as we realized that wasn't going to be possible for our shoot we decided to try something a little different and hiked into some deeper forest.
Normally I wouldn't really try and shoot under an intensely green canopy. If you have ever tried it you know that color correcting it perfectly can be a serious pain. Different spots under the tree's reflect different amounts of green, so a custom white balance or gray card is pretty much useless. In this situation I will often opt to shoot with my 85mm F1.4 due to the low light, and its ability to throw much of the scene out of focus, and plan on shooting everything with the knowledge that it will be converted to black and white later because while the color of the light is a pain, but the quality of it is still very beautiful.
With the extremely low depth of field that the f1.4 provides a background with a lot of dappled lighting that would otherwise be very distracting disappears into a beautiful bokeh as does the foreground, so the only real challenge is to find a spot in the woods with a nice even light for my subjects. Reed and Dimples were real troopers as we frequently had to move around to find new spots as the sun moved through the trees. It was hot, humid, and their were spiders everywhere, but we still managed to get some great images.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hnp97wwqd70wtv6/AACiMBZ26onERWt80IWVeZ9Ja?dl=0
Lee Barrentine
2015-08-09 03:24:42 +0000 UTCLaura Jolly
2015-08-08 20:19:30 +0000 UTC