So the other day we had some wonderful clouds in the sky. I never seem to be in good position to take advantage of days like that. I’ve always got other things planned. I was so excited to be in the studio with some friends and have the clouds start to do some amazing things. I was fortunate to have Christine in studio that day prepping for an event as well as Stacey Barton for hair and Gene and Carl for assistance.

I grabbed an alien bee 1600ws light and a grid and went outside. Now one the of first things I learned in photography was the sunny 16 rule that states that at normal daylight the exposure is 

• f16
• 1/60
• ISO 100 

So I set my camera for

• f16
• 1/160
• ISO 100 

 I used 1/160 because I wanted the sky to be a little bit darker than it was. I then set my light for almost full power. I wasn’t far off on my first exposure. So I moved the light back until I got the exposure that I wanted. 

I  played with that set up for a few minutes and then switched to a long mirror as my light source.  You must use this technique sparingly because it’s very difficult on the model, the reflection is very intense. The entire shoot only took about 10 minutes.

The final part was importing them into Aperture for some cleanup and black and white conversion in Silver Effects Pro. Then back to Aperture for some additional tone work.

I wish I had more days to work with clouds like that, but you have to take advantage of them when they’re there.

I originally was going to make these color, but after doing a test in black-and-white I thought they had a much more timeless kind of old Hollywood starlet feel to them.

Happy clicking!