Kalyn is a true Mammoth kid! Weather just doesn’t seem to phase them so when I came up with this shot, her bright eyes and smile were the perfect match for big snow. We’ve received a bunch on inquiries how I made the shot of Kalyn now appearing on Image Chaser (and some shock I do portraits). It was actually very simple keeping in mind the Inverse Square Law.
I went out scouting the day before a location that had two things going for it, curved slope background and wind. Why those two ingredients? I wanted the “air” to be filed with snow and to do that, I needed a background relatively close to bounce back some of the light into the blowing snow (you can see the after & before photos here). And the wind, to make the blowing snow. With the monster winds that can be on the slope as a storm comes in, I needed to use the Beauty Dish on the Profoto B1 so Sharon could hold it. A “cloth” light modifer would have been a sail and taken my bride far away! With the close background and wind, the shadow created by the Beauty Dish was greatly softened. So all I had to do was stand back with the D750 / 300PF with the Air in the Hot Shoe and shoot. It all took less then ten minutes to shoot. And that’s how it was done.
