I'm definitely not a religious person but I absolutely love religious artwork. I have no idea why, but there's just a magic to them.
With this in mind, I wanted to created some creative and dramatic gel photography inspired by it. The problem was how to go about it.
Last year I shot a valentines set of images with a friend who had bought so cloud material and she still had it. So that was part one sorted. It was going to be on clouds.. I didn't want a typical blue sky feel , but more of a green, with a little warm sun coming through. At that point the basics where pretty much fleshed out in my head. The model had some green lingerie that suited the theme too which was a bonus.
I was thinking about shooting this in a studio which would have made the control so much easier, but I liked the idea of having a different space for this. Just 20 minutes away from where I live is an abandoned cricket pavilion in a place called Guist in Norfolk. This little derelict spot is great as it is super easy to get to and you can actually park pretty close to the spot, which made lugging my gear across the field so much more pleasurable.
We had to hop a couple of fences, one topped with barbed wire, but it wasn't a problem. If we go back to this abandoned urbex spot again, I'd probably bring something to make the fence jump a little easier and safer for the model. Just a little thing to keep in mind.
There was a decent amount of graffiti we had to work with, along with direct sun coming into the building too. Which made finding clean backgrounds without intense sunlight pretty difficult, and the stairs to the upstairs floor had been removed! Probably down the the building being wooden and rotting away, but still!
For this shot, we emptied the bin bag of fluff over the derelict floor and had the model lay on it. I set a white umbrella to camera right and put a LEE medium green blue gel over my Godox AD200. I rarely use umbrellas, but they're so much easier to travel with! After a couple of test shots and angling the umbrella at around 75 degrees, the space to camera left needed a little something. A purple LEE filter gel was placed on a second GODOX AD200 flash and was pointed at the wall to bounce a little purple into the shadows.
For the key light, I brought along my Jinbei optical snoot projector, placed it on my GODOX AD300 pro, closed the barn doors to make a little slit, and slightly focused the light for a sharper light beam. Once the light as set, I added an orange gel for the warmth.
The model and I shot a number of shots but something felt missing. W were going for a dreamy editorial feel, and there was something that was needed! I pulled out an old 77mm filter and caked it in vaseline, leaving a section grease free. This gave us a very soft blur and hid the derelict building floor too. I felt this gave it the little part that was missing!
The light setup is posted below.
As with anything, the models' safety is priority. Especially when it comes to abandoned and derelict spots. Things can fall, break, cut etc. Always have a plan in place if things go wrong and do not trespass on private property.

Light setup for featured image: