Last last month I shot last month’s cover of Cycling Plus (so that’s the August cover, in case, like me, you’re confused). Due to British Summertime it was shot in a studio and then cleverly overlaid on the beautiful background by Cycling Plus’s art team. The reality was more crashing. Turns out roller trainers for bikes are pretty hard to stay up on, let alone put some power down. Lighting after that there break.
The hardest thing to do is to make it look like it was shot outdoors on a nice sunny day. The lighting ended up being a lot more complex (probably more complex than it needed to be in honesty). There are strip softboxes either side and slightly behind the rider for the edges. The one on camera left is a couple of stops above camera right. In the foreground are 5-6 silver card reflectors in an arc, with 3 heads firing into those. There are two lights bouncing off a false white ceiling above for a general fill. All the bare lights are gridded. I think I ended up using seven Profoto heads for this… Like I said, bit too much.
September 2, 2012