Outdoor photoshoots in the wintertime are challenging. The Scottish weather is even less predictable than during the summer. The cold temperatures don’t help either.
It is easier to shoot indoors during that time of year. Some locations in Edinburgh or Glasgow offer good production value, but the fees can be outside a client’s budget.
A while back, I collaborated with guitarist Cam Ferguson. The best available location that December for Cam was a rehearsal studio in Glasgow. An ordinary location to say the least.
This is where light painting and Photoshop can come to the rescue. Light painting allows me to create a mood and drama. I use an LED light torch and light the scene frame by frame during two-second exposures. I combine the many frames later in Photoshop to create my final image.
Two seconds give me enough time to light an object or face and is short enough not to require a pitch-dark location. It’s easy to determine if the place is dark enough. I take a two-second exposure with my chosen aperture and I look at the back of the camera to check I have a pure black frame. Voila! In the case of the rehearsal studio with no windows to the outside and the lights off, it was plenty dark indeed.
After I put the light paintings together, I added some atmosphere in Photoshop. A while back I got a smoke machine, but the problem with such a device is that I cannot control where the smoke ends up. It’s much easier to add the atmosphere later in post-production. One has total control and the results are believable.
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