A Lazy Man's Guide to Location Photography

I'm kind of a lazy guy. I always look for ways to shoot my photos efficiently and with the least effort expended. In other words, I don't like to work too hard to get the shot.

Besides studios, I work at home and business locations, many of which I've never been to before. Unfortunately, I don't always know what shooting difficulties these locations will present or what opportunities they might offer to make my job easier.

Here's an example:

Let's say I arrive at a location and the client wants me to shoot in a part of the location that requires me to climb three flights of stairs. Normally, I can do three flights of stairs easy enough. But since I rarely have an assistant, three flights of stairs means, in addition to dragging my own ass up to the third floor, schlepping a bunch of gear up there as as well. Many times, of course, there's no other alternative than to become a pack-mule and haul my stuff up there. But if, during a quick reconnoiter of the proposed shooting environment, I discover there's a way to get the shot with a minimal of equipment hauled up with me, that's what I'm going to opt for.

The shot at the top is Nikki from the other day. The location was a hillside home with lots of stairs. A quick walk through the area I was told to shoot Nikki in revealed a Northerly-facing, sliding-glass door with a small balcony on the other side of it. I needed to keep Nikki inside the house--she was going to get naked for the shots--but I figured I could still manage to use the sun as a backlight. Although it was quite bright outside, I knew I could balance the outdoor daylight with my strobes. But that sunlight was hitting Nikki awfully hard plus there was the problem of my strobes reflecting off the glass. I needed to knock some of that direct sunlight down a bit and eliminate the reflections. Since I was going to use two, front-sources, the reflections were going to limit where I could shoot from and/or where I could place those lights.

Then I noticed there was a sliding screen door outside of the sliding glass door. Perfect! I could open the glass door, eliminating the reflections, and knock down some of the sunlight with the screen. (Which suddenly doubled as a wire-mesh scrim!)

The whole setup worked out really nicely. I only had to haul two stands, a pair of monolights, and a couple of shoot-thru umbrellas up there. The shoot-thru umbrellas gave me a nice soft key and fill to work with. Nikki was able to remain inside the house and out of sight of prying eyes--she's actually standing about three feet inside the house--and the sun did the rest.

Lazy photography. I love it.

Nikki captured with my Canon 5D w/85mm prime. ISO 100, f/10 @ 1/85th. Nikki did her own makeup and hair. BTW, the screen door also did a nice job of blurring the BG a bit more than the lens was able to, optically, at f/10. It really helps her pop off the BG and give the image a sense of depth!