I love playing with reflections in camera and also water. It was no surprise that my first shoot of 2022 would involve both of them.

I used a long length of black polythene sheeting and several lengths of 4 x 2 timber. With these materials, I constructed a reflecting pool in the back garden. I filled it up with about 2 inches of water. I then left it to heat during the day. As it was the middle of summer the water managed to get to a very balmy 42°C which is 107.3°F for my American readers.

Sian had agreed to be my model for the shoot which was booked for 5 January. To avoid wasting her time, the pool was built the day before. That night, I moved my mannequin out and lights out. I did this to set up lights and determine what settings were needed to capture the images I was after.

I initially tried a single light from the end of the pool. I discovered that it was not strong enough to give me a strong reflection.

So I ended up positioning two gridded soft boxes on either side. In addition a softbox was positioned just to the left of the camera. This gave me the look it was trying to achieve.

The camera settings were my usual when I wanted to control light and have a decent depth to the field. (1/200s f8 ISO200 using a 50mm equivalent on my Lumix G9).

Running a test shoot under the same lighting conditions as you plan to use is advantageous. It enables you to identify issues early and also make the shoot smoother. Any problems that need rectifying can then be addressed.

I noticed that the black plastic at the rear of the pool was picking up too much light from the strobes. This was proving to be a distraction and needed to be eliminated. This was simply achieved by running the fabric background into the water.

In the next post I will cover the actual shoot.