The main intention when setting up this shoot was to create dominant reflections from a water surface on the model's face and body. Additional fill-in lights were planned to be rather dark and deeply blue.
Large and therefore soft light sources would never cause clear reflections and it would be very difficult to keep their light away from hitting the model directly. A picolite with its projecting attachment was the best (and beside a Pulso Spot 4 the only) choice to receive the desired effect: It emits a very hard light and thanks to the precise templates, the light can be kept away very easily from the model's body - so only very clear reflections from the water's surface hit her. The picolite was filtered with a single blue gel (one stop).
As a general fill-in light, I used a P70 standard reflector indirectly via the white walls of the studio. This light was filtered with two stops blue and was kept very low in intensity.
Finally, as a backlight over hair and shoulder, I used an Octabox 75 with grids. The grids were essential, as I did not want this light to hit my lens or the grey background paper. Otherwise, the blue would have been heavily reduced and turned into a pale grey.
The model was constantly moving her hand to provoke small waves. It was my goal to push the button at the right moment to get some nice reflections hitting the eyes and creating highlights there.
The picture was shot with a digital medium format camera at ISO 100 and a focal length of 150 mm. The exposure time was 1/180 s and the aperture f/ 11.
