3 mistakes we made tonight

Black Friday 2023 deals: this way!

One night in Rawdon

One of our goals for this summer was to shoot in a river or stream. We did a few experiments in the past few years with flowing water, but rarely do we seek that kind of environment when we travel. We want to create a whole series dedicated to flowing water, as we know there is a lot to explore and some magic to be created with it. As we were talking about that idea, I recalled a location I used to go to when I was a kid that could potentially fit our criteria… So we decided at the very last minute to do a 1h30 drive outside of the city to try it out… 

As we didn’t know the place and decided last minute to get on this short adventure, we made a few mistakes. My main one was to not look at Photopills to know where the Moon would be on location. Turns out that the nearly full Moon was possibly at the worst place we could ask for. It was not covered by the clouds and had a considerable unflattering impact on the scene.

Also, the bridge & wires in the background were impossible to avoid in our framing without putting ourselves or our gear at risk. 

Last but not least, whenever we shoot in nature in Quebec, we always share the blue hour with some undesirable friends… Mosquitos & black flies were with us, taking little bites of our skin while we were trying to focus…

Three mistakes we made tonight  

1. Failing to check the moon phase & alignment.
   As the moon was quite bright and pointing straight at Kim’s face, we got unflattering light on her and the foreground. But the other problem this brings is the fact that she was fully lit up for the full duration of the exposure. That makes a big difference. To clarify this point: when I trace my light, I expose only parts of the body as I move from one direction to another. This means for example that her right hand might be exposed just for a fraction of a second. But having a constant source of light facing straight means a slightly less sharp image

2. Not checking the park opening hours.
   We’ve been lucky we got to access the river after the closing time (and yes, we did pay our entry fee).

3. Arriving too late on the location
   We arrived exactly when it was time to start shooting, meaning I was in a rush to set up everything and didn’t have much time to test various framing options.

Overall, we’re not super proud of or excited about what we created during that session. It was probably our Worse Shooting of the Year! Oh wait, can we use AI to cheat our way in? Ok, maybe not. Joke apart, we know it’s not a terrible picture, but over the years, we came to aim not only for high technical quality in our images, but also for some magic. We’ve been lucky so many times in the past years. But that simply didn’t happen tonight, and it’s ok.

Despite it all, we had a great night… And we’ll keep on practicing, so I’m sure we’ll get our magical flow images near a river at some point. Hang on with us, we’ll be back in summer 2024!