Earlier this month, I profiled a new stock image series that is being licensed exclusively through Stocksy. This series, “At the Nursery/Garden Center” has a group of models browsing and shopping inside a large greenhouse. Today, I’ve got a few behind-the-scenes images from that shoot.
The greenhouse at this local nursery is not enclosed by glass, but by a heavy duty translucent plastic. As you can see, this plastic film makes a terrific diffuser:
I brought my Canon speedlights, instead of my Alien Bee strobes, just in case I needed some added punch, but I ended up not even using them at all. It was overcast that morning as storms had just passed through, which was great for a while. However, the clouds soon cleared up outside. Not only did the temperature start to rise slightly inside, but even the plastic could not diffuse the highlights enough. So I had one of the models hold my diffuser to shade some skin so it wouldn’t blow out.
I was missing one of the scheduled models that day, so the girl in blue did double duty as both shopper and grower:
We also shot in the checkout area, which, as you can see, was painted all green and yellow. It made getting the white balance right a bit of a trick. I never have much luck with grey cards, so I used the door and tin watering cans as sample points, and eyeballed from there.
So, it’s always good to come prepared. With lights in case it’s too dark. And a reflector/diffuser if it’s too bright. Thanks for reading, and check out the whole series over on Stocksy.
You might want to try using a Colorchecker Passport made by X-rite. It has a built in color chart as well as a white balance target. Just do a shot with it in the scene and then use it for the WB. Gray cards are not usually color controlled for white balance.
Les: Sean already has the X-Rite Colorchecker, that is one reason his colors pop so well. It comes with the color Munki, which he has. He is just the type that is really modest and would rather admit that it is still somewhat of a pain than to talk about how nobody but him could have pulled this off. He’s just a great guy trying to support his family… on a side note my X-Rite Colorchecker should be here really soon, took me a year to figure that out. I’m a little slower than most of you pros in photography 🙂