Behind the Scenes - Independent School's Admissions Photography

I just got back from shooting at Shore Country Day School in Beverly MA. This was my second trip to the school. This time they had me up to create the cover image to their viewbook. Every year the Head of School takes a group of 9th grade boys and girls on a 2 night camping trip to Squam Lake in Holderness NH. The idea was to have a photograph of the Head of School with several students having fun around a camp fire. I've shot campfires before, and I know they can be disastrous. The heat rising from the fire will cause light to bend and anyone behind that bending light will be out of focus. So my plan was to eliminate the fire from the equation. (more on that in a second)

Here's the result:

My idea was to shoot the Head and students having fun around a fake fire that I would make from a portable flash with a diffuser and an amber gel. That way they would all be crisp and clean and still look like the light was coming from where it was supposed to be coming from. No blur, no smoke in their eyes, and no weird shapes coming from the flames. I would then photograph the fire separately and shoot a lot of flames so I could pick the one that looks the best, and put it in later. I would also photograph the background and a tent separately so each element could be controlled to the exact look I was after.

It was a beautiful New Hampshire day. Thank goodness the weather cooperated with us.

Here's my gear packed onto the boat, ready to go to the island campsite:

Once on the island we surveyed the location and decided that big fire pit needed to be moved about 10 feet to the left... Have fun guys!

Oh, yeah... this was my 1st 18 hour day on my feet since I shattered my heel. The crutch didn't slow me down too much.

So here I am adding the amber gel to the Gary Fong diffuser for my SB800 flash unit. I also put some black foil in it to try to keep the light from shooting back to my camera. It did anyway, but the flare wasn't bad. I didn't want to flag it because I wanted to be able to use the rocks that were lit from this light as well.

Here is my SB800 "fire"... Setting it on the ground proved to be too low and cast shadows from the rocks on the students, so I eventually got out a floor stand and mounted it to that.

The craziest part of the day was after the shoot, getting the equipment packed up in the dark, and put on the boat to get back to the mainland. The moon wasn't even up, so it was pitch black dark. I wasn't sure we were going to make it back to the right dock! To give you an idea about just how dark it was, this image was shot at ISO 6400, f2.8 at a 20th of a second... Dark!

Here are the images that I used for the composite:

I started with image 1, the background. We weren't blessed with a very colorful sunset so I had to make due in post. I also noticed that if I aligned the image with the trees, the horizon was not level... oh well, I cant straighten the trees, so the horizon would be straightened later. I added the campers, image 2, shot with my portable flash. Then I added the image of the fire, #3. The final image actually contains 3 fire shots combined. Image 4... this is an image I shot using real studio strobes on stands powered by a generator. I brought these just in case I had trouble with the portable flash. I didn't have any trouble, but thought I should shoot it this way anyway, just to cover all the bases. I ended up using it to add detail in the foreground. And finally the tent shot, #5, was added. You can really see the difference in exposures between #1 and # 5, it was dark in the woods!

And here is how it all came together...