Winter Session

One snowy, winter day, in the depths of Galeria Scena, we organized a photo session as one of my personal photography projects. We had a lot of fun creating a fairytale land of the Winter Session and embodying ourselves in it. I have worked on it for quite a while and I can finally show you the results.

I must thank everyone that came that snowy day and hope you will keep the memories of it for a long time. We will do it again some day, maybe in a bit more sunny atmosphere.

You can read the story behind it and then check out the photos from the session. Don’t forget to let me know what you think in the comments.

Tech

For those of you interested a bit more in the technical details of the Winter Session, check the photo below:

The idea behind the photo session was obviously the winter-like landscape, but achieved in a studio. For a snowy background we used a plain, 10 meter long, white backdrop and then added a few graphical trees into the mix. When lighted from the front, they served as graphics, but when back-lighted, they created some crazy shadows on the floor.

Lighting was fairly simple, with four strobes in total. One sat in this big silver reflecting umbrella and served as our main light. Two bare strobes stood on the sides of the backdrop. I didn’t want blown whites so they were set just a tad lower. This way I could add a bit of a colorful life into the background during post-processing.

The last strobe wasn’t used on all photos, but we added it from time to time for additional drama. It stood just behind the background pointing down at the trees. This way we got extra shadows on the ground without affecting the overall lighting.

For additional fun we used a medium format film camera (thanks Grelus for letting us use it). The big focusing screen worked as our canvas on which we painted our winter fairyland.

Equipment

It’s interesting to point out how little you really need to pull off a session like this. Below the list of all supplies we used.

• 2 cameras: one digital Nikon, one medium format film camera
• 4 strobes: Nikon speedlights
• 1 big (150cm) silver reflective umbrella
• 1 white 10-meter backdrop
• 6 stands: 4 for strobes and 2 for backdrop
• 3 cardboards
• 1 sandbag
• gaffers tape
• some winter clothes
• cool people
• fun!

The trees

Our friend and designer, Magdalena Wierzbowiecka helped us with the trees. We cut out three in all, one big and two small, and then added them to different scenes as needed.

Let me know what you think in the comments.