It was snowing tonight, and I figured that'd make a really nice environment for a little product shot of the bicycle.
Gear up for shooting in the snow is a little different than shooting in warmer and dryer weather. First, you have to keep yourself warm. You could be tough, and shoot with out warm cloths and gloves so that you're mobile and nimble with the camera, but guess who ends up calling it a wrap too soon and before the right picture is taken? The trick is to be warm enough that you don't mind it, but not too bundled up that you can't even trip the shutter. Gloves are critical. The warmer the glove, the more bulky it is, and the harder it is to adjust things on your camera. So you have to find a balance between warm hands, and being able to shoot.
For you equipment, anything that's going to be snowed on needs to be water proofed. For my strobes, I stuck them in ziplock bags. That way, they don't get wet, but can still fire just fine. With my camera, I kept it out of the snow unless I was focusing or shooting. The rest of the time I kept it shielded with my body.
On to the set up. Balancing a bike is somewhat tricky. I used an empty jar of apple sauce as a platform to rest the non-drive side crank on. There are little stands you can get to hold up the tire from the back so you don't see them, and little things like that. But I don't got those. The jar was easy enough to remove in post with a simple clone/heal tool.
For lighting, I stuck both strobes in the back, about 5 feet behind the bike and 5 feet out. That being said, I think I might have had the strobe on camera right a few feet farther forward, so that there would be a little light spill on the front of the bike. I wasn't so much as going for full illumination as I was going for illuminating the natural environment of the bike. Lighting from the back really brought out the snow, and gave some awesome highlights to the bike.
I shot at f/2, 1/200, and ISO100. The strobes were at 1/8 power, so really bright for shooting at f/2, but then again they were back lighting the bike. By overexposing the lights, I got more detail in the front of the bike.
I also ran into some problems focusing. Auto focus doesn't work in the dark, so I had to use live view to focus. This meant holding the camera in the same place while I focusing, and then keeping it there while I turned off live view and composed with the view finder. I don't know why I didn't just use live view all the time, or better yet a tripod....lessons learned.
Post happened in a few steps. First, I did basic adjustments in Lr. I only did local adjustments, since the exposure and contrast were already awesome. I blurred the foreground and edges of the frame a bit though, but to draw your attention to the center. There's a lot going on with the snow falling, so the eye could get a little confused. I also upped the clarity on the edges just a hair. Blurring decreases contrast, so I need to get a little back.
In Ps, I added some light leaks of the orange and green variety. I have some I found on line, and all you do is place them in Ps and set the layer to screen blend mode. I haven't done this in a while, so why not? I felt they were a little over powering though, so I used a Gaussian blur to spread them out and tone them down. Next I muddied the blacks, which is that really odd trend that's happening in photography right now. I like it for some shots, but not for everything. It sort of gives the feel of matt paper or something. I think it worked for this one though, just because there's so much black it was a little overpowering.
Finally, I added some fake water drops on my lens by painting in large circles and setting them to a very low opacity. I think they're convincing, but you tell me. Maybe they need the cut edges like bokeh have from the aperture blades.
Anywho, that's all for editing. Enjoy!
See you tomorrow!
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