I thought I had given up shooting sessions for this year but an opportunity to do some pictures of the lovely Ivory Flame came about this week. This was also especially good as I had the chance to try out a lens I had not used before.  Because my small outside studio is not easy to heat this time of year I decided to use a normal living room with an adjoining conservatory as the location for the pictures as it would be more pleasant to work in and easier to heat.  I am also an enthusiast for natural light.  As usual, the weather was not on my side and the day turned out to be dull and grey.  This is my fate.  I have only got to think about taking pictures and the skies instantly cloud over so I and now well used to working in these conditions.  However, by using larger than usual lens openings and raising the ISO rate it is usually possible to get good results in most lighting conditions.  If it gets really dark then flash is the other option.

The session had to be well organized as it was going to be short. So, a start was made by shooting some close-up portraits. The light was enough to let me set the camera on f5.6 and shoot at 1/10 sec on ISO 400. It meant working on a tripod and trying hard to avoid catching subject or camera movement.

To shoot more of my subject, all I had to do was to pull the camera back into the room behind the conservatory and use the same lighiting as before. Even so, the resulting image looks quite different.

Now, to get an entirely new look, I have turned around and put my model in the room and moved the camera out into the conservatory, something that took no time at all to do. My subject is now lit by the light coming in from the conservatory and the room behind her is lit by a combination of natural and room lights.

In this final picture I have swopped the 85mm lens for a 50mm one as I wanted a full length shot. I have also placed a flash unit high up next to the camera, to raise the light level a little. The power on the unit was turned right down so that the ambient light in the room was not overpowered. To add a little variety to the results I have turned this shot into monochrome and toned it sepia. The whole session lasted less than an hour and a half, but because it was planned in advance, it produced a range of different looking results.