Tricia lives and works on a dairy farm just outside the small township of Apiti which is 45 minutes north of Palmerston North. She has been keen to take part in one of my shoots for a number of years but we have never managed to time it right.

So when I booked the shoot at the kiln in Palmerston North I made contact with her to see if she wanted to get together in the morning. I left it totally up to her as to what she wanted to shoot.

It ended up that Tricia wanted two looks. The first was a country & western look. The second involved a sequinned dress and a local bridge. She hoped to shoot the first look inside of a shearing shed but had not been able to get permission to do so as many people now are over cautious sighting new health & safety regulations. So we opted for shooting on a gravel road not far from her house.

Now normally I shoot in the studio which means I have full control over the lights. For both of these shots I would be shooting outside. In my opinion shooting in a studio is considerably easier than outside. The morning was a mixture of blue sky and dark clouds which meant that at any time was light was changing by several stops. I did not want to overpower the natural light with strobes so ended up using a large reflector to add in a little light in the shadows. Fortunately I packed a reflector holder as I did not have anyone else to help hold it.

The arrangement seemed to work reasonable well especially as I knew that with shooting in RAW I would have some margin of error when it came to both the shadows and highlights.

We then went back to her home and Tricia put on a black sequin dress and we headed to the local bridge. We had initially thought of shooting on the bridge but Tricia decided that she would like to shoot in the river itself. I was a little reluctant at first, as there was only the two of us, as for shoots involving dresses and water I tend to like having other people involved should the model get into trouble in the water. The dresses are often heavy when they are dry and triple their weight when wet.

This part of the shoot was really fun and the images came out really good.

It was quite a fun shoot and I look forward to do others with Tricia in the future.