Looking at all the circus arts, I felt fire performance could give me some great pictures. It could also provide some technical challenges that would allow me to grow as a photographer.
Finding a good location is a very important part of any photoshoot. For fire, I was looking for a place that would give good tonal and/or colour contrast with the fire. A woodland area is ideal. Also, inside a forest, the light levels fall enough that I can completely control the light with small portable speedlights, even at noon.
I was delighted when Annie agreed to a shoot. At the time, she lived in Roslin and there are some very nice wooden areas near the chapel. The place is well known and we wound up having to share the location with a group of school pupils. I don’t know what the purpose of their trip was, but I’m pretty sure they had no idea they were going to be able to enjoy a fire performance.
We started with some close up shots to give the fire enough prominence in the frame. The out of focus green forest background works very well for that.
For the full length photographs, I wanted to use those two big trees to frame Annie. A frame within a frame is a classic and very effective composition tool. I lit the scene with three flashes. One on each tree and the last one on Annie.
Finally, Annie got the fire hoop. She is very skilled and I must admit that fire hoop performance was really impressive. The school kids would totally second that.
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