Lisa-Marie at the Beach Shack: Photo Series and a Photo-Painting with Shooting Tips

The beach but not quite - a shelter becomes a light-box

This series was taken next to the beach in summer.  We were standing in a a sun/shade shelter which has one side open and the other side (facing the beach) is made up of lots of arge windows and pillars.  The sun was coming in from the North sea and turning the whole structure into a giant light-box.

The model is the lovely Lisa-Marie Thompson who is a great friend as well as being great fun to work with.

This is another of my more painterly portraits.  These take several days or more to produce and involve a combination of painting and regular retouching in Photoshop.  Regular retouching comes first then I use that as a guide for the painted image.

The final painted image is then merged with the original (retouched) photograph to create a photo-painting as I like to call them.  It is often difficult to decide quite where to set the balance and how much painting to have vs how much photo.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

A close up of Lisa- Marie. The positioning is very similar to the aforementioned photo-painting with the window to camera right

Another fairly close shot where you can see the corrugated iron of the structure of the shack.

Here Lisa-Marie is standing directly in front of the window with the sun behind her blowing out the entire scene.  I love the effect of backlighting for portraits.  

It creates an ethereal glow and also prevents the squinting eyes and scrunched up face that results from having the sun in front of the subject.  

It is important in this case to use either a reflector or a flash to fill in the face - particularly if the there is insufficient light naturally being reflected onto the face to give a fast enough exposure for a sharp image.

This is another similar shot again taken with the window acting as a perfect backlight and creating a white background.

This shot and the one below gives an idea of what the whole beach structure looks like.  Unfortunately I missed the dirty feet.  Hopefully it doesn't detract from the image too much.

In this shot you can see the windows a bit better.  Unfortunately there weren't any shots that show the windows directly that I could use due to Lisa-Marie having a wardrobe malfunction with her skirt and underwear that neither of us noticed at the time.  

That's why you have to be on your guard at all times to check the whole frame for any problems and that includes preserving the modesty of your model.

Equipment used:

Nikon D800 Camera

Sigma 24-70mm/2.8 lens

Hand held triangular white reflector (foldable)

The Sun and shack - most important!

You can see more of my work @thecryptofiend - hope you enjoy.

(Verification for me here: http://www.aapicture.com/about-me)