Model was used previously in THIS shoot.
I subtitled the post Electric Eyes, for he model's amazingly bight aqua eyes.
This shoot is rather special, because its a combination of three things that I'd never tried before: Manual settings, a Canon 7D body & smoke bombs.
Yep, thats right. Before this shoot, I'd never before used the manual settings on my camera. My brain isn't exactly attuned to maths, or in fact... numbers. So, no matter how many people tried to teach me about amount of aperture vs amount of shutter speed, I just couldn't get it into my head. However, since acquiring a 7D camera that I was lent to use over the holidays, I began experimenting. Now, I finally seem to be getting the hang of it. Before I had only ever used aperture priority (AV) and simply stayed on 1.8. Always. Now, however... I did the entire shoot on manual!
Ha-lle-lu-jah!
So, smoke bombs.
I'd seen smoke bombs used in photography before and thought it looked pretty cool. So, I acquired myself some different colours and waited a year or two until finding a chance to use them. I took some blue pellets and we were initially going to use them outside, but the lighter wouldn't light. So, we tried lighting them inside, then taking them outside. The smoke was too close to the ground and nowhere near the model. So, I decided that we use them in my room, where we'd already been shooting. I quickly learnt that: the smoke expired very quickly, the pellet got VERY hot and would melt something if not on the right surface and also, it stained my hands blue.
So, we went back into my room and I shut all doors and windows. The model sat, I made sure the settings were right, then placed the pellet next to the model. For the first three seconds it seemed to work, but then the smoke thickened and I couldn't see. Then the model started coughing. Then I started coughing. When the smoke had cleared a little, the model's eyes were too watery and it was getting hard to breathe, so we had to open the window.
The moral of the story is: For pete's sake, get an assistant to do it for you & don't kill your model!
