Having done the outdoor "Inflate-Deflate" pics (see the last blog post), the next night I decided to take the project back to its roots and shoot some pics indoors. Same basic rules as the earlier studio pics; single light source, and a black background (in this case a reading light and a cheap bed sheet bought that afternoon from Wilkinsons in town... all glamour on my shoots).
Under normal circumstances I'd have done this shoot first as it is the less high-risk in terms of potential damage to the props; shooting outdoors poses more risk of damage and loss, which given that I couldn't replace either of these floats was a definite issue. But the weather promised to be even worse on the second night than the first, so I had to do the shoots in reverse order.
Having gone through the long-winded process of re-inflating the toys and cleaning all the sand off them, it was time to shoot the pics.
There were some slight issues; I was convinced one of the rings was deflating (see the crease lines above), but actually it was an air pressure issue caused by how cold the room was. Another word on the quality of these toys, as photography props for this shoot, these are about the most indestructible inflatables I've used; during the shoot the night before, they'd survived contact with sharp rocks and even brambles with no damage. I'm not sure if, in 'normal' use that indestructibility would be worth it when compared with their size/time to inflate and deflate, but for my purposes, very useful.
Anyway, the pics turned out exactly how I'd wanted...
...so given I'd managed to stop it blowing away into the sea and ending up in Dublin, I thought I'd do some with the polkadot-patterned ball too.
The material was surprisingly battered and marked given it had only been used on two location shoots, but I did quite like the texture.
Another successful shoot- though, again, it did prove that I should shoot some more stuff with the higher quality available with the newer SLR... Maybe a job for later in the winter. As a shoot though, this time went much more smoothly than the two other beach visits, which is probably a matter of experience and practise. Odd to think that the beach-based shoots have been spread over a whole year, but these pics with the better SLR indicate a fourth visit may be in order early next year.
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