Continuing in our underwater portrait adventures, we went a bit more thematic this time around as we tested the pool that I hope to use for future shoots. The theme was a songwriter’s dream. Our lovely model Katha, moonlighting here as our subject is a singer songwriter in the real world. We wanted to take the dreaminess of underwater photos and add them to her dreams as a songwriter. You can see the empty music pages and the floating pen in parts of these shots. We didn’t take into account how quickly paper will disintegrate in water, next time we will try to use papyrus. Once we blew through the small amount of music paper, we shifted into straight underwater portraits.
We learned a few thing on this adventure. Bring backups of every cable you own, because chlorinated water destroys cables that make flashes go pop. Noon is a terrible time to photograph underwater, shadows are harsh and no shade for the pale photographer. Sandbags are awesome, as that is my new underwater anchor. Optical triggering works, yeah! Need less ambient to really make use of the optical triggering though. Run on sentences, fun.
Still searching for the best way to add light to our subjects. If you have any suggestions I am all waterlogged ears!
–JB
Josh loves a good adventure.