Chris and Alanna Take a Walk on a Non-Sunny Day

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A rainy day doesn’t always mean a wash

A tutorial by Chris Knight.

Photo by Chris Knight

Generally, most photographers would call a weather day like this one a wash and go home. I, however, after driving an hour to the beach to visit a friend of mine, decided that we were shooting come hell or high water. Unfortunately, it was the latter that made a lasting visit. Once Alanna and I got to the beach, it started to rain. We took shelter in a leaky covering as I prayed that none of my equipment would get wet (despite the fact that I brought rain gear).

We waited out the worst of it. I had my lights in hand, but ultimately, I knew I didn’t want to chance the electrical outage, so I just shot it natural. It was about 4:30 in the afternoon and still rainy, so I knew I wasn’t bringing my camera outside into those conditions. The light was extremely uniform. The sun wasn’t coming out, and the general look of everything was pretty flat. I had her step about five feet outside the shelter, collect some water on her hands and wet her hair. I metered for the daylight, balanced my white balance, and then I started shooting.

Shot Details:

Camera: Canon 5d Mk II

Lens: 70-200 2.8 IS (set on 135 mm)

F-stop: f/3.5

Shutter: 1/250^th of a second

ISO 200

Fig 1: Lighting Setup

With her in the relaxed and slightly reclined position, I captured this shot (fig 2):

Fig 2: Original shoot

I then used free transform to shape her body and used the patch and healing tools to clean up her skin. See fig 3.

Fig 3:Patch and Healing

I then applied Alien Skin Exposure 2 with the setting “Color Film – Fuji Pro 400H,” and lowered the opacity to 75%.

Fig 4: Alien Skin Exposure 2

I then added a 57% gray layer set on overlay for my dodging and burning. By doint a 57 instead of the 50, the entire tone of the image is brightened. See fig 5 for results.

Fig 5: Dodge and Burn

I then added 2 curves adjustment layers. The first gave a little more contrast to the image. The second tweaked the blue levels and brought yellow to the highlights.