Mr Riley
Recently I put together a photoshoot in London, the idea being to capture images in various locations around the city. London is very busy most of the time and so I wanted to start this shoot early in the morning where we would have only the early morning joggers to worry about and with the help of my new Broncolor Siros L lights I knew moving around would be a breeze.
I booked a lovely hotel close to the where we would be shooting, it had a amazing view over the river and so I knew it would fit in perfectly with the shoot.
The first location was near the hotel underneath a nice arched bridge I spotted when scouting locations a few weeks prior to the shoot. The bridge lights were surprisingly bright and because of this I was able to use one as my main light and use my Broncolor Siros L strobe as a hard fill light. Below you can see some behind the scenes images and see how strong the light was, the strobe is off camera left.
Here are the final images.
Then as the sun rose it was on to our second location which was to be outside of a coffee shop, it had started to rain a little bit and so I was slightly worried as I definitely wanted to capture some images outside but luckily the little bit of rain was temporary. Once we reached the coffee shop we set up outside, the staff were really friendly and even provided us with a cup of tea to use :)
For this set up I used a silver beauty dish as my main light, on my camera I used a ND filter allowing me to use a wider aperture so that I could create some separation even with Tom being so close to the wall.
Here are the final images, on the second image the lighting remains the same the only thing that changes is my position.
Next to the coffee shop was a large open square which looked fantastic and so I had Tom walking towards me and away again while I continued shooting so that I could capture a fluid motion.
Here's me demonstrating how to walk, as if people need to be told! Next to that is the final image.
For this set up I used my 24-105mm f/4L lens to give me more flexibility. My strobe is off camera left lighting the right side of Tom's face and giving me a strong shadow on his left side.
Next we headed back to the hotel and changed outfit before heading out to the next location. This location was nice, it had a row of trees with street lamps on the other side which went back into the distance, in these shots I wanted to go for a casual look and so I had Tom again walk towards me so that I could catch some movement rather than a static shot.
We found a good section of the wall to capture a few portraits, for these shots I used a 50mm f/1.4 lens, again we used a silver beauty dish high up, off camera left and angled down to create a nice hard light and some deep shadows.
Lastly we headed back to the hotel where I planned to take advantage of the beautiful view. For this set up I used a large Elinchrom Octabank placed very close to my subject and feathered slightly helping to give a nice soft quality of light and a bare strobe on the lowest power setting, behind camera to create some fill light.
Below is the final image and a diagram of the lighting setup.
I really enjoyed this shoot, everything came together nicely and we were able to walk away with some really great shots, above all I am glad it did not rain!
Thanks to Tom for being a great model and so open to ideas and as always thank you to Georgina for her incredible assistance on this shoot. You can check out the full selection of images below.
Model: Tom Riley
MUA: Georgina Davies
