In this photoshoot, the plan was to shoot natural light portraits indoors. However, the circumstances changed, and on short notice, model Reeree Keeler and I decided to proceed with the photoshoot in Trosley Country Park in Kent, England. I had never been there, so I googled the park, looked at a few photos, and liked what I saw. It was a situation where you had to evaluate the location on the spot and deal with it as a photographer without preparation. I'm not particularly eager to shoot unprepared. I generally like to visit the site beforehand to evaluate the lighting situation and other considerations such as crowdedness.

I took my Nikon D3400 camera, Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.4G lens with an extra charged battery for the shoot. I also took a Yongnuo YN560-IV Speedlite just in case. Because of the darkness caused by the clouds and the tall trees in the park, my sensor was not getting enough light, so I tried the Speedlight. The Speedlight images were not to my taste because of the harsh directionality, so I abandoned it and went for natural light.

Natural light was also tricky because of the darkness. To achieve a properly exposed image, I increased my ISO to 800 and slowed my shutter speed to 1/80th. Unfortunately, this resulted in plenty of blurry unusable grainy photos. However, the ones here turned out to be splendid.

A light modifier, a stand, and a wireless connection to my Speedlight could have saved the day. But in my case, lightroom and photoshop saved the day. Thank you, Adobe.

I was not anticipating that, but the light brown (camel brown) colour of the wardrobe worn by Reeree complemented the green background.

The Gear I Used

I hope you learned a lot from this blog. If you are interested in a one-on-one training session, drop me a direct message on my Instagram account.