Just Another Hippy Shoot

 

I had a shoot scheduled for today. While on my way to pick up the model, I got a text from her saying her partner would drop her off at the shoot location. After waiting there for almost an hour, I gave up and came home. So, instead of shooting today, let me tell you about yesterday's shoot with Floofie.

Kira and I had planned this shoot since before my roadtrip to Georgia and back. We had asked our friend, Dan, to use his property for the shoot, and he graciously agreed. It fit well with the hippy concept of the shoot. On his large acreage, Dan has a field, woodland trails, a flower garden, ancient trees, and even an outdoor shower. We made use of everything but the outdoor shower. 

I planned to use two cameras, one with a 24-105 zoom mounted to it, and another using a recently purchased RF 135 f/1.8 L prime lens. Unfortunately, I left both my Speedlight flashes sitting on my filing cabinet at home. I use them during my outdoor shoots at about -1/3 FEC (Flash Exposure Compensation) to lift the shadows when shooting on bright days. That was the first technical glitch of the day.

Despite my lack of Speedlights, the shoot went quite well. Floofie did her usual fantastic job as a model. She has the perfect look for a 1960s-style hippy with her long hair, lean torso, and attitude. She brought a few costume pieces with her that we incorporated into the shoot, and the items worked quite well.

We had only one costume kerfuffle, and that was with what we called the impossible dress. A tie-dyed, asymmetrical wrap-dress, it was nearly impossible for us to figure out how to don it. Even with a picture of another model wearing it, we never quite got it right. We made it work, but not without some frustration. 

Otherwise, the shoot went as planned. We wrapped up after about 2 and a half hours of shooting, thanked Dan for the use of his property, and headed home. I gave Floofie the impossible dress in hopes she could figure it out and use it for another shoot in her future. 

Unfortunately, only after I had downloaded and started viewing the shots did I realize that the camera with the 135mm lens had an SD card that failed to download its images. My normal process is to copy the images to an external hard drive, put the shots into individual descriptive folders, rename the file within the folders, then import them into Lightroom by copying the files onto another hard drive. This way, I have a copy and a backup of the original files before I format the camera cards to be used for the next shoot. 

I finished my process and formatted the cards before I realized I was missing the images. Lesson learned: review everything before formatting the cards. Fortunately, the bulk of the images were on the first card. Here's hoping Friday's shoot has no glitches, technical or otherwise.