Take Me To the Beach

Well wasn’t the weather in April fantastic!!  So much so that I felt the urge to get back out and do some work on the beach, weather was glorious though the water temperature was bloody freezing so we kept well clear of that!!  One of the techniques I was looking to perfect last year was the use of the Alien Bee’s Ringflash to provide fill at the times of the day when the sun was high and there were some pretty deep shadows.  The flash has an output of 400W so has plenty of juice and powered by the Vagabond II battery pack it is portable enough to have the pack slung over your shoulder and still keep relatively mobile and enough power to keep the flash charged up throughout the day.  My usual approach is to have the model with the sun behind her and use the flash to fill from the front.  Most of the images were shot at around f8 – f11 with the flash set anywhere between 1/4 and 3/4 power depending on the shooting distance

For the latest shoot I was lucky to have Charlene as the model who was looking to add some different elements to her modelling book.  The weather was lovely, if a little hazy at times, so we headed off to nearby Redcar on the north east coast of England.  Charlene has such a great look and an absolute pleasure to work with.  We spent about three hours just wandering up and down the beach looking for different places to shoot and things to shoot with.  The piece of driftwood we found presented a few challenges and was the cause of much laughter when it kept rolling over!!  We got there in the end though and despite the difficulties I thought Charlene really nailed that shot.  Fingers crossed for more days like that this summer.