One of my good friends and artistic inspirations is Reid Strauss. She is an absolute visionary, always full of the coolest and most creative ideas!!!
A couple days ago we gathered her adorable daughters together (or did we drag them kicking and screaming…I can’t remember which?). In any event, they somehow got volunteered to be our victims as we headed out to Folly Beach for a super fun photo shoot!
Reid had ordered some organic biodegradable colored powder for us to play with. Made out of corn starch and natural dies, it was completely water soluble and wouldn’t harm the environment. When we started, the girls had no problem pelting each other with the fine grains…but when it was their turn, not so much! Just kidding!!! They were in fact quite enthusiastic and so much fun to work with, which I appreciated. Once they saw how cool the shots were coming out, the competition was ON!!!
It was an overcast gray day. But this was supposed to be all about COLOR!!! Gray just wouldn’t do. So I switched my Nikon D5 to tungsten white balance, which of course added an electric blue tone to the sky. Then I covered two of my Nikon SB-5000 Speedlights with orange CTO gels, which are thin colored filters for flashes. For protection, each flash was placed in a zip-loc bag. Using one flash as my main light, and the other as a rim light, I was able to give the skin tones a nice “sunset glow” to them, which contrasted beautifully with the electric blue sky. I used the compact and lightweight Nikkor 24-120 f4 VR lens so that I could keep my distance and move quickly. From that point on, it was just a matter of getting everyone’s timing down as they hurled fists full of colored powder at each other!!!
Many thanks to Reid, Sydney, Jacqueline, and Trinity for such a fun evening!!!
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