The new cover for Coastal Lifestyle magazine has been released. We shot this about a month ago along the coast in a very nice and expensive home. Coastal Lifestyle typically does two covers, one fashion (which I shoot), and one architectural shot by a architectural photographer.

This month the publisher wanted to do one cover that featured the fashion models and the property. He chose a room that looked out over the beach and asked if I would shoot the models and the room so that the beach and room were clearly visible.

The solution for this was to balance the light outside along with the light inside the house. I took several spot meter reading from outside and found that at 1/160th of a second I would have an f-stop of 11. Knowing my lights max sync speed was 1/160th I knew now I had to get their power up to f-11.

I placed one light with a silver reflector on a stand out of frame aimed at the roof. The white ceiling provided a great overall fill light. For the key light I placed a strobe in a 42” white shoot through umbrella behind and slightly to the right of the camera position. The two lights have a large and  almost shadowless light which blended perfectly with the out door lighting. Since I was dealing with very bright sunlight outside with no clouds my color temperature between the the strobes and outside matched.

In post there wasn’t much to do other than remove some dust and blemishes on the frame and add a little contrast with curves to pop the colors out more. In the end I got a cover that met the standard for both covers. 

I’ve also place a few images from this issue here in the blog. the magazine hits the stands June 15th so be sure to pick up a copy (or two, or three).