I was looking to do some more fire shoots last summer and contacted Ron from Pyro Celtica to see if they’d be interested. Pyro Celtica is pioneering their own brand of Celtic Fire Theatre and pushing the boundaries of performance through the fusion of Circus, Music, Dance and Theatre melded together in flames, quoting from their website.
Luckily, Ron and his partner Jess were interested and we set up a shoot at Roslin Castle. I really liked the lines and shapes of the arches. A quick test shot revealed what I suspected, the scene looked really flat. So I put a bare speedlight at the back of the arches to back light them and I had another small flash in a soft box, camera left, to light my subjects. Underexposing the ambient light by more than a stop allowed me to create an atmosphere.
We started with their Celtic costumes and then switched to black outfits.
Fire eating is a part of many fire acts and it was perfectly logical to set up some flame tasting photographs. It turned out to be tricky to light and I’m not entirely satisfied with the picture below.
The final set up involved fire swords. I first took some photographs against a wall of the castle to give the background some texture and colour.
As the light was dimming at the end of the day, it became possible to totally kill the ambient with my speedlights and we went for some dramatic, high contrast pictures.
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