The final word Joe McNally
When the sun causes difficulties on a shoot, Joe has found there are a number of clever workarounds
Been posting a few ‘fashion in the desert’ pics on Instagram, and there were some questions about the lighting, and the notion of achieving soft light quality in the midst of the roaring desert sun.
One of the best ways, as always, is to seek what little precious shade might be out there. The other is to make your own shade. Our model is in a shady corner of a building, but there were still slivers of hot, high, desert sun glinting through into the corner. Jon Cospito ably blocked all this with a 3×3 Lastolite Skylite diffuser. Simple stuff, super-low tech. He just handheld it over our scene, while I popped a small amount of fill flash into the model’s face, using a small Profoto strip light, arranged vertically.
This is an age-old technique, nothing special, just super-practical, down-and-dirty location tactics. If the light sucks, block it.
The extreme, of course, is to build, essentially, a roof overhead, via the deployment of a blackout, or what’s referred to as a solid, over the scene. Which is what we did (inset), in another brutal desert environment, where the sun rules, in Peru. This then gives you free rein to basically light whatever way you want, underneath that blanket of shade.
Then, of course, there’s the old, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em strategy. If no shade is available, either from a building or a tree or of your own making, just take one of your lights and blast it at your subject, just like the sun is doing. This matches the raw quality of the sun, and does not alter it. But it does give you command of the direction of the ‘sun’.
Subtracting light, and then adding your own. I was horrible at maths, but this equation does work with light.