The pool that I constructed for these shoots was built on a wooden frame with an internal measurement of 1.1m (3’ 9”) wide and 2m (6’ 7”) long. It was fitted with a double liming of black polythene. It was then filled with water at approximately depth of 30cm. As the ground sloped it was actually deeper at one end.

The pool was filled the day before the shoot in the hope that the sun would warm the water. 

At either end of the pool I positioned backdrop supports with a bar running between them. I then draped a double layer of frost cloth over the whole pool. The intention of this was to diffuse the light. The video below shows the pool.

My Lumix G9 camera was positioned at the end of a boom arm over the pool. I controlled it via an app on my iPad. This gave me the advantage that I could get it perfectly square to Shirley without having to stand over her.

We had started the outdoor shoot around 3 o’clock. The idea was to allow time for the pool water to heat up. The day was very bright with next to no clouds. This created an immediate problem and that the frost cloth was not sufficient to diffuse the light. The result was a very bright spot in the pool.

I tried to eliminate this by mounting the inner panel of my largest reflector on a boom. I then positioned this over the pool. While this did reduce most of the light it introduced a new problem. There was now a very strong reflection in the water.

Even with the pool water being heated by the sun, you can only work for a maximum of around 15 minutes. After that, the Model becomes too cold. Therefore I did not have the luxury of time to fully deal with the problem. The solution was to move the reflector so that it was not directly above Shirley and then to shoot from a different angle. I also shot closer so that we could eliminate the reflection.

At the end of the day I managed to get a series of usable images which Shirley was happy with. As this was the first shoot with the pool I always know that it would be challenging and that there were things I could learn from it.