A 30 Minute Improvised Shoot

I was on my way to the coast to scout an indoor location. I twittered about it and pro model Sylviane saw that message on my Facebook (my Twitter status automatically updates my Facebook status).
Sylviane lives pretty close to that place and asked if I fancied a short improvised shoot.

Sylviane is the kind of woman that can splash a bit of water in her face and look better than most people after 3 hours of quality time with a skilled make up artist. So by the time I finished the scouting, she arrived at the parking lot. We walked for 200 meters and started shooting.

I only had one camera, a 24-70 and a speedlight in my bag (for the location scouting). In the trunk of my car, I also found a California Sunbounce Mini. I usually travel a bit heavier and would probably use off-camera flashes and an other lens in these shooting circumstances. But I always welcome challenges like this.

Just this morning, I watched a video that made me think about revisiting a lighting technique that I haven’t used for a long time. And thanks to this improvised shoot, I got a chance to use it before I forgot again. It worked out pretty well, I’ll probably talk about it in a later blogpost.

Sylviane is such a beautiful and skilled model, that it’s hard NOT to make good pictures of her. What I appreciate a lot is that she’s just as passionate about her job as I’m about mine. We’ve worked together for just three short, improvised shoots so far. We really need to do a ‘big’ shoot together soon.

It also felt nice to shoot just for fun, even if it was only for half an hour. I really need to do that from time to time.