A few days ago I got the opportunity to be part of a somewhat 'spur of the moment' indoor photoshoot on campus. Initially the plan was to meet up in the evening and do some environmental portrait night photography shots around campus. However, when the night actually came around and we all met together at the first location it was way too cold to stay out for long. Believe it or not it was actually -17 degrees outside! We tried to capture a couple of images at the first location to see if we could make something happen but after about 10 minutes or so we collectively decided to go inside of the nearby building to get warm. I guess this was a good lesson that I can apply to things outside of photography, having the ability to be ready in case the an initial plan to doesn't work and being confident enough to think on my feet about plausible alternatives.

Once inside, I started to look for potential locations and angles that would complement the models outfits. I then began to give some slight directions to the models on what was a laid back/candid type of photoshoot, asking them to hold a look they were currently giving, or to look off into the distance or even to lower their chin in certain situations. I was continuously conscious of how the light was hitting my subjects as I was using off camera flash. In the image above I was somewhat attempting recreate a 'Rembrandt' lighting affect, but I think the light is positioned a little too much to the left of frame. This is something I'll be paying more attention to next time out when reviewing the images on the back of my camera at each location. Finally, in the two images below I was experimenting with the difference between the fluorescent lights on the ceiling of the lecture theatre that created highlights and shadows on my subjects face, in contrast to my speedlight that was positioned to the upper right of frame that created a more 'even' spread of light on the broad side of my subjects face. On reflection, this was definitely an enjoyable photoshoot because I didn't exactly know what to expect as I did some last minute location scouting.

Impromptu Indoor Photoshoot