‘Red Breeze’ Shoot At Home With Speedlights

The idea behind the series Red Breeze is to create the combination of a soft form-flow with loud scene colors. By “loud colors” I mean expressive and attractive ones, not screaming aggressive tones.

The visual concept is clearly built around the lightness of the red fabric lace.

Having the challenge and excitement capturing unpredictable forms, visual (color) dynamics and bold poses let me classify this style as glamorous artistry or – opposite in short – Artistic Glamour.

The idea behind the series Red Breeze is to create the combination of a soft form-flow with loud scene colors. By “loud colors” I mean expressive and attractive ones, not screaming aggressive tones.

The visual concept is clearly built around the lightness of the red fabric lace.

Having the challenge and excitement capturing unpredictable forms, visual (color) dynamics and bold poses let me classify this style as glamorous artistry or – opposite in short – Artistic Glamour.

Red + Pink: Urgh! Really?

Most of the time, the combination of these two colors is not a great fit.

However, I envisioned that with a kind of accentuated and specifically modulated lighting, we could achieve some exciting results. Plus, model Nikola is a darkish brunette and that makes for a good, more visually contrasty story than when shooting a blonde.

What For? Learn A Few Things.

Working with unpredictable forms created by the fabric lace in interplay with just as much incalculable posing details are both the challenges and excitement on this set.

But as a practical lesson and a learning curve in your photography skills, this setup demands from you that you learn about a few aspects first and figure out how to control them.

For example:

• 1) Finding the right balance between the background lighting strength and the subject’s illumination. The beam hitting the pink/rose backdrop has to be carefully powered so it will not wash out the color, or on the contrary, will not to be too weak. Otherwise, the pinkish color will appear too similar to the red fabric itself.
• 2) Key light itself. When shooting fair hair or a blonde, you probably choose a bit of a softer lighting characteristic (= bigger modifier). I go here for the medium-sized octo again because it creates nice accentuated light, resulting in more deep shadows to the left which greatly separates the model’s body from the backdrop color.

• 3) The posing play and interaction with the fabric lace itself. I gave little instruction to Nikola, basically simply because I had not much of a clue what to do. I had a few ideas in my head like greatly stretching the fabric in front of her body or putting it like a veil over her head. Those were all nice approaches in theory but in praxis they turned out in a rather not so exciting way.

  Then Nikola herself came up with the idea of throwing the lace in the air and eventually interacting with it as it is falling back down. This turned out to be a great segment and we shot the more thrilling pictures in this flow. So, Nikola’s creativity and spontaneity helped a great deal here!

Lighting Design: 2 Speedlights Only

Key Light: Medium-Sized Octobox

• The key’s light character is semi-hard. It tends to be rather on the hard side but actually accentuates the body lines beautifully and therefore greatly supports the postures.
• The power of the spill towards the background is not strong so there is not much effect that could brighten up the pink backdrop. The key solely has the job to illuminate the subject for full-length shots in a medium-soft way.
• (No) Alternatives: Alternatively you can use a standard softbox but I prefer the octagonal form since this gets me round catch lights in the model’s eyes, not square ones.

  Shoot-through umbrellas are not really recommended because you will get too much of light spill onto the backdrop and the separation of the colors will be just washed out from the beginning.

Background/Effect Light: Tiny Standard Reflector

• The effect light on the backdrop uses a tiny standard reflector and creates a spot area and then a fall-off.
• Carefully choose an accurate distance to the backdrop, so the gradation will be on the smooth side, meaning the “spot effect” will not be too strong.
• It all boils down to a balancing act between the strobe’s power, the distance to the backdrop and – of course – the chosen modifier. There is no mathematic rule that helps you prepare for this scenario. You just have to figure out which effect you like best when you are on the set.
• I wanted to have a quite strongly visible pink area behind the dark hair and red lace so I pushed the strobes’ power quite a bit in order to achieve the desired result.

My Speedlight Kit

You find more details about my gear for creating inexpensive alluring nudes here: “Create Awesome Images With Speedlights”.

Model Fee Saver. Playful Model; Not An Experienced One

Flow. Energy. Action. Interaction.

We are looking for unique forms, candid expressions, and irreplicable poses. The model’s interplay with the gauzy fabric lace will never ever leave us with two identical poses. The best case scenario would be that we achieve some potential similarities, but a frame can never be captured the same way twice.

The model can move, jump, bend, twist – it is simply required of her to be in motion. An adequate large action radius is necessary, your model must feel free to move, at liberty to act. No unconscious limitations here!

For this concept you do not need an experienced model. You need a playful one 🙂

The most important attribute here is that your subject is able to move, that she possesses a
certain degree of light-footedness.

As with a lot of concepts presented in “Creative Nudes On A Budget“, the artistic side of Red Breeze helps you to find models that are keen to contribute their creative vein to your artistic endeavors. Such a shoot idea lays the ground to potentially find arrangements for no-fee (TFP) to very low-fee basis.

Replicate, Feel The Energy, Nail It

Starting a collaborative, creative flow on the set will give you and your model a great deal of images.

The shooting process, the “momentum”, will normally endure just a few (fantastic) minutes. You will feel it, you will get pumped and sensing how the energy starts flowing in a tremendous way.

Once all of this is in motion, it is your job to capture “the right moments”.

Good luck!