A few people/photographers have asked me about the huge ball of light I used in the image on my Illuminate 2008 posting on Dec23. Yes, this is a real light source! The helium filled balloon is 6 feet in diameter and houses 4 tungsten bulbs that we were able to manipulate individually to help balance with the available light. I started shooting around 4pm catching the start of a beautiful sunset on Spanish Banks. The shoot was over fast (by 4:30pm), for a couple of reasons...
1) It was Dec 9th and -5 C....and as you can see, the model Samantha wasn't wearing much. She didn't complain once, but she was freezing cold and turned an ugly shade of greyish blue soon after her jacket came off.
2) I was shooting without a permit. While normally, this wouldn't really concern me....this gigantic ball of light in the sky on a Sunday afternoon at the beach was hardly discreet. And if that wasn't enough, we ran the light from a 900lb generator running in the back of our cargo van in the parking lot. Like i said...we were hardly discreet. I had to work fast!

In the end, we did attract a crowd of curious spectators, but thankfully no police. I still managed to fire off 200+ frames and ended up with several gems! It was great fun!!

Here are a few more images from this shoot:

And one facing in the other direction...towards the city:

Here are some of the images we shot earlier that day in the studio. Samantha's look was inspired by Sofia Coppola's film Marie Antoinette and was created by Sam herself with the help of her mother June Jocelyn. The two of them work together as a mother/daughter makeup artist/styling team.
Let them eat cake! ;)