We have said it before and we will say it again, we love our clients. We will be photographing Shepherd and Megan’s wedding next month at Vintage Villas. While going through our initial consultation with them I discovered that they felt their engagement pictures could be better suited to their personalities. When asked about their personalities it came out that they loved dancing together and were up for about anything. I casually mentioned that I was shooting a series called “Soaked” and they were instantly interested and willing to participate. Oh, and they are also super talented dancers. 2 weeks later we had them in my garage shooting in “rain” on a 60 degree day with 20 mph wind. Megan’s lips were blue after the 45 minute water torture, er, portrait session but she stayed committed throughout. Are these the best of the series so far?
I know you can feel the warmth and passion this couple has for each other and it was shining through even as they were shivering together. Such a pleasure for us to watch them work out their choreography and moves on the spot. Then they would just bring it when the rain came down. Like a hip hop Singin in the Rain!
Let me take a second to run through our process for capturing these Soaked shots. Due to the high wind we setup a 10 foot roll of black background paper inside my garage to shield it from the wind and to put the exposure of the black further into the shadowed ambient. The couple is just in front of the edge of the roof to get the water falloff on, in front and behind them. We have a AlienBee 800 with a small softbox from behind and a LP160 gelled red from the opposite corner. They were both on 1/2 ish power. The key light is an Einstein640 with a sport reflector on full power. That’s because we were at an ambient killing iso50, f18, 1/320th exposure. Cue the rain from Austin on a ladder and Bob’s your uncle. Austin is the premiere provider of rain in Travis County.
We also took some proper engagements before the wet and wild part of the session. Made sure we had enough good ones where we could shoot without hesitation on the rain soaked section. There is this great old barn in my neighborhood that I am always looking to photograph in new ways. Lucky for us the clouds stayed together and dramatic. The vertical photograph above is maybe my favorite of the entire day because it shows Megan and Shepherd in their true state of happiness together, a small slice of time that represents their future time together. And from up close to tiny in the frame, I think these pair well together in a narrative fashion.
Hope you have enjoyed the continuation of our Soaked Series, any requests for what to photograph in the rain next?
–JB
