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| Final, composite shot. |
The warm orange glow of halogen lights coupled with a "blue hour" sky is one of the classic complementary color scenarios and shooting at blue hour can result in some of the most aesthetically satisfying shots. Additionally, this scenario offers the opportunity to use your imagination and create a shot that doesn't exist, which is my favorite part of photography. When I got the opportunity to shoot this custom mid-century modern home built in 1959, I jumped at it.
In this case, the backyard didn't have any lighting so shooting the existing scene resulted in at least a third of the shot being a big black hole (below). Knowing this in advance, it's important to envision the final scene and add light accordingly.
The light was in my favor, actually, because I only had to expose for the interior of the house and wait for the blue sky to drop into my exposure (ISO 400, f6.3, 0.3s). If there had been flood lights in the backyard, I would have turned them off because they would almost certainly be a different intensity than the interior of the house and that would create a "hot spot" nightmare scenario. In this case, I simply set the power of my flash to match the camera's exposure settings. Once the flash was set, I didn't have to change any settings (camera or flash).
Here are the basics for getting the final shot:
2. Set exposure for house interior
3. Wait for sky to drop to your exposure
4. Light trees (camera exposure remains constant, so once appropriate flash power is dialed in, it doesn't change)
5. Composite shots in Photoshop
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| This is the base shot I used for the composite, the combination of blue sky and orange interior I'm looking for. You can see how much of the photo is complete darkness. |
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| Exposure is set to the interior of the house, waiting for the sky to drop into my exposure. Meanwhile, I start lighting the trees. I also used this grass in the final shot. Also notice the reflection in the windows. That fades significantly once the light drops into a nice blue. |
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| Lighting the tree on the left. You can see the sky is starting to drop into my exposure. |
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| Lighnting tree on the right. The sky has actually gone a little too dark in this shot. No worries, I already have the base shot established. |
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| A little more light on the tree. |
