Dusk Moth Designs

Another great day spent with the crew from Dusk Moth Designs – great clothes, great people, always a top day for me!! This time around it was a location shoot, and we chose the abandoned brickworks in Brunswick, Melbourne (Australia) as one of our backdrops.

I’ve done at least half a dozen shoots at the brickworks, for a variety of purposes – despite the regular use the Melbourne photography community makes of the site, there’s always something new to be explored, particularly as the graffiti evolves (much more every time we visit!). As far as abandoned sites go, it has a number of features working in its favour – most notably it’s nice and cool on a hot day, like today was!!

But the brickworks has its challenges as well, and it all starts with the lighting in the kilns. With the doors removed long ago, on a sunny day there is an extremely bright reflected light pouring in to a space that is basically pitch black – the result is a major dynamic range issue, as the lighting extremes push the limits of the gear and greatly affect the number of viable shooting positions.

Another challenge in this case was the subject of the shoot – Dusk Moth Designs are one of my favourite designers, and they produce amazing gear of excellent quality. And a lot of it is black!! So, we were looking at shooting black clothes, in a dark space that was being lit by bright reflected sunlight!! Gotta love a challenge…

For the shooters out there reading this, tough lighting conditions are an opportunity for some creativity, with a bit of lateral thinking:

• Use the light – even a bright reflected light can be useful, as seen in this image here. Why fight it, there’s some good results to be had!!
• Light direction – since the reflected ambient is going to be your keylight, the direction is really important. It’s amazing the amount of difference between images if you just move the models a couple of feet in and out of the light. Fall-off can be particularly effective when shooting dark clothes as well
• Work the dynamic range – negative space in images can add real depth to an image. Composition is critical, don’t be afraid to frame loosely and crop later if necessary
• Balance with strobe – in some cases, it will be necessary to balance the light. With limited options for a reflector, a small strobe or 2 can make all the difference for some balanced fill. Just remember the light you are shooting in – maybe some gels are required to correct colour, or keep the style intact. A little CTO works well in the brickworks, the location is already largely orange and a bare strobe would be a little too “white”
• Change your lenses – Depth of Field (DoF) tricks can make a huge difference!! I’ll shoot close-up headshots from above using my 24-70mm (at around 50mm), and I’ll do half-body crops using the 70-200 (at about 180mm). Anything is fair game, just be careful with the close-ups on wider lenses, you’ll get some proportion/distortion issues. And in tough lighting conditions, DoF is a greater challenge if you have to shoot down at open apertures (less than f4.0)

The second part of the shoot involved a change in location – this time off to “New Quay”, in the Docklands in Melbourne, around the old piers awaiting demolition for more development. The challenge here was the rapidly falling ambient light (it was the end of the day by this stage), and quite a brisk breeze coming off the water. Comfortable models usually result in better images, so the goal here was a quick shoot – get the images and get out before we were freezing in the dark!!

Even in technically challenging situations, it’s possible to get great results if you work with what you have and adapt to the conditions by thinking a little outside the standards. Plus, your shots will all be creatively different every shoot!!

Designer: Dusk Moth Designs
Location: Brunswick Brickworks (Melbourne Victoria) and Docklands “New Quay” (Melbourne Victoria)