Perhaps only the sharpest of my hardcore readers will make this realization, but I am absolutely rotten at keeping up with my Nice Photo of the Week posts. Even when I thought I came up with a solution by making it a photo of the month I failed miserably. It is with that spirit I post this week’s photo of the month. Wait until you see next week’s. Oh, and you’re going to have to wait, because it might take me seven months to get to it.

The Idea:

In this Nice Photo of the Week I have two remarkably talented actors to work with: Mark Daniel Cade who you may recognize from “The Unicyclist,” and Casey Strand.

I found this great clearing in the woods just a mile and a half from my house and Mark and Casey had rented these fun period costumes, so I thought to myself, let’s give Mark a secret to tell Casey, and then the fact that he told her the secret is also going to have to be a secret. Whatever he’s telling her is something no one would ever want to know. But once you know it, it’s too late. This is not an uncommon theme in my work. Giving your models or actors a secret can help to load the image with drama, even if you don’t tell them what the secret is.

You see, I didn’t tell them what the secret was. I just said, “It’s a bad, bad secret. And you’re going to wish you’d never heard it.”

The Tech:

“Secret In The Woods” was taken with a Canon 5D mII and the unbelievably creamy 85mm 1.2 at f3.5 1/50 sec. I LOVE this lens. The image was lit with a Canon 580exII splashed into a large soft box and a second 580exII hanging from a tree branch via a Nasty Clamp. I never head out for a shoot without it. Here is the lighting diagram to make it all a bit more clear:

Nice!

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