In photography, as with other art forms, there is nothing wrong with taking inspiration from the work of others. Or even copying it as long as you don’t try to pass it off as your own.

I have long time admirer of work of New Zealand photographer Brian Brake OBE. He shot editorial series through the 1950’s – 1970’s appearing in such publications as Life.

Monsoon girl is Brake’s most famous image. It was also controversial because it was a ‘set-up’ shot shown in the context of photojournalism, where viewers assume the images are ‘real life’ witnessed by the photographer.

The subject, Aparna Das Gupta (later Aparna Sen), was an actress on a movie set. Many years later, she recalled that Brake, ‘…took me up to the terrace, had me wear a red sari in the way a village girl does, and asked me to wear a green stud in my nose. …Someone had a large watering can, and they poured water over me. Brake said, “Feel the rain on your face.”’

Given that it was a set up shot I knew we could recreate it without having to travel to India. I posted a casting call on Facebook for a model with Indian heritage and Sara responded so we set up a time.

As in the original the rain was provided via a watering can which was held by my daughter . We filled it with warm water.

To recreate the golden light of the original, I placed a full CTO gel over the AD600 that was firing into a 65cm soft box. If you look carefully at the first shot you will see that the orange is picked up in some of the water droplets.

Because I did not want a direct copy of Brian’s image I did not get Sara to wear a sari. Rather she chose a simple white dress.

All images were taken with my Nikon D 600 camera using a 70-200mm f2 .8 lens. The lens gave with the option of keeping well away from the water. The images were mainly shot at 1/200s f5 ISO200.

Sara really nailed the look I was going for and I was really pleased with the final image.