Bridal Shoot – Bombo – Illawarra Wedding Photographer

And this weeks test shoot was a bridal shoot featuring Bombo Quarry, about a 10 minute hike from Bombo beach.

I first saw this location a year ago when Mark Nolan shot down here. He ever so kindly let me tag along and learnt a fair bit from him just from this one shoot. Amongst many other things I learnt the purpose of a strobe grid ..and that Bombo is infested with mozzies..

I decided to shoot a bridal down here to test some off camera flash. We tried mounting the light stand with rocks and loose pebbles but seeing as though I had to do without an assistant to hold it, we scrapped that idea the minute a huge wave came gushing over the rock wall from the ocean.. *sigh* ..and 10 minutes of cleaning the sodium chloride off of my tripod I have it back to the way it was 🙂

Back to the shoot.. The rock formations were absolutely amazing and it was a shame the waves unpredictability restricted us from getting too close to the edge. First shot is below – resorted to the natural sunlight of 2:30pm which was annoying me a little bit, but when a model is coming down from Sydney you have to take what ever time you can get lol. I believe this one was 4 shots stitched into 1. I waited for the wave to completely pass whilst I had my camera on burst over 1000 sec to catch the droplets. I must say I give credit to Ally (model), the poor girl was freezing .. the shot was worth it though 🙂 In a nutshell, 50 layers and masks in photo shop, 70 strokes of the patch tool and a painfully long bar of  ‘writing tiff format’ in the end = this shot! 🙂 Masked in the reflection as well. Might try it with a polar filter next time.. hmm .. now you’ve got me thinking.

Second shot, asked Ally to hold the diffuser umbrella out of the shot so the light wouldn’t be as harsh. But I kind of like it in the shot, don’t think many people would notice the missing handle to reveal it’s not actually a rain umbrella 😉

And now on the more artistic side of things, Ally stood up on a rock and a gush of wind came parading through the rocks.. There were about 30 frames here with Ally doing the Marilyn and these two were my favourite. High contrast effect is compliments of the new Lightroom 3 which I am addicted to ..guilty.

And to finish the set off.. my personal favourites (I use that word a lot, so ignore this if I mentioned the first shot to be my favourite lol) I love the power of her look in the first shot, the pose and the lighting. The sun created a natural rembrandt light on her face (triangle shape on one cheek) which I was very pleased at. And this second shot on the right screams beauty! A netball photographer once said to me it’s all in the ‘eyes’ – he meant you have to see the eyes to get a winning shot. Well Ally just proved him wrong 🙂

The make up was stunning, done by Ally herself (perks of being a make up artist is you don’t have to track down an MUA available on that day). The blush accentuated her cheek bones and the light fell beautifully on her entire face.

Well that will wrap it up for tonight. I’m listening to a great song called ‘Two is better than one’ by Boys Like Girls feat Taylor Swift.. Just between us, I am planning on singing this at my girlfriends engagement party this Friday and am super excited! shhh.. it’s a surprise though 🙂 ..My mate Matty and I will never let the days of high school music die! 🙂 ..Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll sneak in a video link on my site so you can see the windows breaking lol .. Ok really I’m not that bad.

Your Photographer.. Ela! 🙂

xx