Into The Woods Editorial

'Into the Woods' for Press Magazine's 1st Issue

I've gotten a few questions about lighting for this shoot, so I'm going to try to explain that here! A few months ago Press Magazine contacted me asking if I'd like to shoot an editorial for them, and I happily agreed. I was going for a slightly darker feeling, but still natural look with lots of textures, knits, leather and neutral and dark colours. As it were, with this shoot most things did not go according to plan. I shot this in May, which as it happens, is a month where things grow a lot in Vancouver. The location I scouted for this shoot, a small wooded area near my house was completely bare of any greenery when I went to check it out. I figured it would be perfect for a Fall themed shoot. The day we turned up to shoot there was tons of little green leaves poking out of the trees, giving the forest an entirely different feel from what I was going for. And then there was the rain. Not just a little drizzle, but a downpour that continued throughout the entire shoot, turning the ground to mud and soaking us all. Normally a little rain doesn't bother me on shoots, but when you're trying to shoot with a light it makes the experience a bit more interesting. I used an SB-800 shot through a small octobank, and ended up just sticking a garbage bag over the whole thing which kept it totally dry. All of the photos were shot fairly wide open, between f2-f2.8, ISO 100. To deal with the problem of the trees being too green, I just desaturated the whole photo and masked various parts to control how much of the colour I was taking away. Hope that explains it!