Bellis Perennis (NSFW)

Bellis Perennis, wild growing beautiful little flowers, an ideal match for a more than inspiring model :-). This was going to be one of these very quick "tussen de soep en de patatten" shoots that are usualy only mediocre in results, but not this time, Maries did an excellent job with styling, posing, emotions and i really love these shots that show a lot of her skin, so NSFW warning here (Not Safe For Work, sorry dudes)

We started out in a little field, under a tree that provided us with a little shadow, but still there was a lot of light at noon (sunny day) and i really wanted very shallow dept-of-field (DOF) so i used about f2.2 / f2.5 on the 85mm Af-d nikkor, problem is that at ISO 200, the shutter speeds easily exceed 1/250th of a second an climb up into the 1/1500 to 1/4000...

As we were in a shadow area i needed to add some light... Luckily, last year i ordered the Flashzebra Nikon TTL extension cord (7.5m) so i was able to light this with the SB-900 on a light stand with white shoot-through umbrella, everything in total Manual control but with the benefit of high speed sync (Auto-FP).

Check the catch-lights for the position of the umbrella ;-)

I think the SB-900 was a 1/4 power with the extra battery pack to get good recycle times but this also prevents the overheating of the circuit in the SB-900 because the battery heat is now generated in the battery pack and not in the flashgun. Nikon battery pack cost me about €160 and i think you could better spend this on a cheaper solution from other manufacturers ;-)

We changed location as too many curious people came by while shooting, can't blame them...

Corn fields tend to present a quick & easy backdrop en shoot location

Lighting setup is just the same as the previous series, but the sun was gone most of the time behind some thin clouds, didn't feel like bouncing that day i guess.

The cornfield is not only a nice backdrop but as you can see it is also a fine item to hide your model behind, or some parts of her in this case

Back to the Bellis Perennis! Little piece of untouched wild nature was going to be the backdrop for this little series, lighting info is still the same, SB900 with TTL cord total manual control and high speed sync :-)

Comments are more than welcome :-)