One of the advantages of living in the Pacific Northwest is that we have a lot of beautiful evergreen forests around.  I’ve driven past a stretch of trees near the research lot along Dewdney Trunk in Maple Ridge many times and thought “you know, with the right light, at the right time of day, that could make a killer shoot location.”

This Easter long weekend I had a ton of plans, then plans changed, weather disrupted things, and basically all my shoots and fun stuff (other than seeing the new Batman V Superman with a couple of buddies) fell through.  At the last minute a local model, Janelle, was available, had her makeup done up by her sister and with her boyfriend in tow (I am always happy to have an unpaid pack mule and VAL – Voice Activated Nightstand) we headed out.

Timing is always important, and we managed to hit things just about right.

• There was cloud cover to prevent super harsh sun from creeping in.
• There wasn’t so much cloud cover that we didn’t get to see the sun as it set.
• Weather wasn’t that cold (though I did Photoshop a few goosebumps off her arms!)

I love how the 85/1.4 was able to separate her from the background beautifully!

While we started off with some more simple “girl in forest” but as the sun went down I really loved how the light filtered through the trees.  We didn’t have the budget or gear to get a couple of air blowers to kick up a bunch of dust to get the “god rays” visible, so we had to make do with just beautiful backlit cedar trees.

I did accentuate the backlighting a bit.  Careful observers may see a gelled bare flash to the back and left of Janelle, giving a bit of a boost to the natural sunset behind her.

Here’s a quick behind the scenes shot with the boyfriend, acting as lightstand holder, coat holder, and pretty much holder for anything we didn’t want falling over or touching the (still wet from the rain the day before) ground.  He was a good sport about it though!

Thanks for reading!  If you’re interested in doing a cool fashion shoot like this in or around the lower mainland please contact me and lets set something up!