Shutter Moment

I did my first beauty shoot yesterday on the beach. The model was Grace Chung, my friend’s sister. While shooting on the beach, the sun was slow to drop, but I didn’t anticipate the sun to go down that fast at the end (which brought up a problem as our model didn’t know what poses I want). Note to self: always talk to models beforehand and let them know the style you are going for.

I caught some close ups with my 50mm and switched to my 18-200mm for wide angle. This is one of those times when I wish I really have a super wide (ie. 14-24mmm). The sky, although it didn’t live up to my expectation, wasn’t all that bad. What’s worse is the “pile” of ships (freight vessels, private sail boats, etc) on the ocean; once I arrived, I knew there would be lots of post-processing cloning to do. I set up a SB800 shooting through an umbrella on camera right with a SU-800 on a SC29 cord so it can trigger the flash. Apart from giving directions to the model on posing, everything else was pretty easy (ie. Aperture Priority, dial down EV 2/3 and pump more power to flash, etc).

In the end, I shot something like the following…

First shot when the sun was still out with 50mm

My favorite out of the three. Looking good Grace!

Looks better when cropped in my opinion

As always, leave a comment and let me know what you like, dislike, and let me know how I can improve.

William Zhou, a high school geek, is the founder of Shutter Moment. He lives in Vancouver, Canada, and works for Design Vetica, an interactive agency. He enjoys photography and wishes he has more time to write for this blog.