From rain to sunshine
The weather. Most of us are currently either loving it (yay, warm!) or hating it (ugh! hot!). I unfortunately find myself in the second category, as I cannot stand anything above 25 degrees..
For outdoor photographers there is no such thing as important as the weather. It influences and ultimately decides how a shoot should go.. Catching the morning sunlight is difficult with clouds, and catching a thunderstorm is difficult when there's no cloud to be seen. But even when the weather itself is not the subject it still influences how subjects should be lit. The typical Dutch weather only gives us a dreary uniformly overly bright white lightsource. I find that a bit boring, so you'll often catch me grabbing extra flashes even during bright daylight. However, the weather can also provide some very interesting contrasts. For example, compare these two photos:
Running through the rain
Dancing in the sun
Originally, both of these shoots were planned as a single shoot with a "contrast" kind of theme: what kind of contrasts could we make? Facial expression? Mood? Clothing? Action? Location? We tried a variety of studio shots just to see what kind of clothing would work, and then decided on doing two separate outdoor shoots at two separate locations in two separate seasons. This worked out, and we ended up being able to combine everything: from sad, cold, darkish running to warm, sunny, happy dancing! Without the weather this contrast would never have been as strong. I'm happy with the results!
Maybe an interesting question to ask. In the above example the weather facilitates the given contrasts, but it also enforce them? In this case it does, but I have the feeling that this does not have to be the case and that "happy dancing in the rain" should be possible, as much as that "sad in the sunshine" should be possible, though this feels contrasty.. possible? Or only deterring from the idea?
Just thinking by typing out loud here.. in itself these are contrasts.. what would be the ultimate weather related contrast? And I don't mean weathertype vs weathertype, but weathertype vs situation, like in the above examples, anyone care to guess? Any cool challenges?
Hmm, oh wait I was supposed to be working... oh well, back to work! (in our air conditioned office, weather problem solved) The good news seems to be that work pressure has decreased slightly as I find myself slightly more creative with photoshoots and other things cool again, yay!