Photoshoot - Day 3 Summary

Another morning out in the desert. The weather was suffering multiple personality disorder; Heavy fog for half an hour, then clouds covering the whole sky from the horizon up. The said clouds had little patches of blue in them and differed in thickness, which meant that the light exposures were bouncing up and down by the second.
To add to the trickiness factor - I was shooting in a northerly direction (sidelight on the models - heavy shadow when the sun popped out sporadically) so as to get a mountain as the backdrop. Models wore white tops, have black skin - an exposure nightmare considering all the aforementioned factors, and include that my brief was for a natural light shoot only. So, without the option of fill-flash... tough going!

The evening shoot was meant to be the crowning jewel of the three days. Fog as thick and dark as storm clouds as we arrived. I cursed. Dark, flat light meant slow shooting or pushing up the iso. Both could potentially mean high noise factors in the dark areas (the models skin). I opted out of the high iso and shot what I could at the fastest possible shutter speeds I could get without compromising my depth of field to much. Once again, a fill-flash would have made things easier, but was not to be. A strong, icy wind whipped over the dunes and Judith and Ester were amazing - although they were getting very cold, they did not complain once and were extremely patient with the designers and I when we pushed for 'just one more' in each outfit/setup. As you may suspect, that 'one more' always became another ten minutes before they could be covered by a blanket. I really felt sorry for both of them, but was so concerned about getting a decent shot that I pushed them as hard as I could. We bled the little bit of light that we had right to the end, and then all collapsed onto the ground in elation that we had done as much as we could for the past three days to try and get the best possible shots we were capable of as a group.
The shoot was over, and there was nothing else we could do...