Lucky me, I had two cottage shoots in a row where menacing clouds rolled across the skies. Every last ray of natural sunshine was reserved for the outdoor shots, and when indoors on the ground floor– out came trusty Mr. Sun.

Mr. Sun: the well-loved and often used reflector dish I first met while assisting the great interior photographer Ted Yarwood. It’s nothing really that special– mine is a beat up old sports reflector dish mounted to a regular strobe head, and in the case of cottage shoots, I hook it up to a  Speedotron battery pack. If there’s a light rain outside I can put a garbage bag over it to protect it, or if I’m really lucky there’s a porch to keep it from the elements.

Here’s a few examples of my trusty friend in action.

During this kitchen shot, it was pouring buckets outside. I mean POURING, so Mr. Sun was tucked safely under the highest part of the porch. You can tell by the angle of the sunny bits on the wall going up that this sun isn’t real.

Below here, it was a dull day outside and the small narrow room prevented me from putting any lights in it. There was a window to the left of the sink and since it was on the first floor, a landing outside I could safely put Mr. Sun. A softbox over the camera provided a little extra fill in the foreground and subject.

The next three were all at the same cottage the same morning.  A little drizzle outside was no problem at all.  A hard-light look in the living room here and detail, and for the kitchen shot I simply skimmed a little sun to add direction to the shadows.

We worked fast and hard and I even managed to lose my voice during the whole thing. Here they are.

On this occasion, art director Dominic Ayre and I arrived at the Donnelly Centre on College Street to photograph Peter Zandstra, a professor at U of T’s institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering. While killing a few minutes outside, we flipped through the brief and found that Peter’s expertise was in stem cell research, while looking over Dom’s shoulder it struck me that the Health Sciences Building across the street resembled a DNA chart, especially as it was a bright day and many of the blinds were partly down on every floor — that was science-y enough for me and would make for a nice graphic background! A quick test shot to convince Dom, and inside to the second floor of the Donnelly Centre where the floor-to-ceiling windows would afford us the best view.  A further advantage with an indoor exposure is that it’s several stops darker than outside, so once I exposed for Peter the background became wildly overexposed and the final shot was born.

Pretty cool stuff!

And here’s the exposure for outside, where you can see the trees, building and a couple of streetlights in the bottom corner.

Have a look around, and be sure to come back again soon as there will be fresh work and stories coming along regularly!