1 | PORTRAITS
Rainy-day portraits
Take advantage of the bad weather, says Claire Gillo. Try this creative project for shooting distinctive portraits
You may not think that dark, cold and wet wintery nights are perfect for photoshoots – but you’d be wrong. Taking winter portraits in the rain is a brilliant thing to do and a creative way to use the bad weather. And if it’s not raining, you can make it rain with a hosepipe, as we did here. You’ll need an extra pair of hands if you are going to do this, as it’s tricky to hold the hose yourself and shoot at the same time.
To try this project yourself, you will need two external flashguns and a trigger. We also had a softbox attachment for our main flashgun, which helped spread out the light. If you don’t have a softbox, you could also use an umbrella, or you could shoot through the diffuser panel that comes bundled with a five-in-one reflector.
For our photoshoot, we used a Nikon D850 with a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art lens attached. When it comes to lens choice, something like a 50mm enables you to focus on the model while keeping some space around them, but you can work with whichever lenses you have: there is no right or wrong option here.
1 Camera settings
As you are using flash, you should put your camera into Manual mode. We set our shutter speed to 1/200 sec to sync with the lights, and selected an aperture of f/8. The ISO was balanced with the flashes at ISO 400.
2 Lights
We used two external flashguns, positioned diagonally across from each other. The key light is the one at the rear of our model and is lighting the rain and umbrella. The one from the front is filling in the front and side of the model. Our lights were firing at 1/4 and 1/8 power.
3 Umbrella
A white or translucent umbrella in the shot works better than a coloured or patterned umbrella. For starters, it will look cleaner in the image, but also it won’t reflect a colour cast over your subject.
Water and equipment
A word of warning: water and camera equipment don’t go well together, so be sure to protect your kit. To protect our lights, we placed clear plastic bags over them and taped them down into place. If you are shooting in the rain, protect your camera body and lens by covering them with a plastic cover or a clear plastic bag, especially if your kit is not professional-grade. Pro kit is weather-sealed, so it should be able to handle bad conditions – but if it’s really pouring with rain, take extra care.
Tips for editing
When it’s time to edit your image, don’t rush. The trick for getting great
