Our friend and long-time member Eric came over for a dedicated tutorial a while ago. He wanted to experiment with natural light in the bedroom, and the presence of the eye-bolts in the ceiling suggested certain possibilities! So Ariel was duly chained to the ceiling in a slinky black chinese-style dressed for our amusement, and the photography experiment was on!

What we hadn't quite realised was that at that time of day, there was no direct sun, but the strong sunlight on the lawn was like lighting up a massive green reflector. What's more, it was acting as a bit of an uplight. The rest of the light was northern summer sky light, very blue. And Ariel was standing against a turquoise wall which split those two colours, too.

The net result was that while the intensity of the light was nice, and made for dramatic shots, the colour of the light was all over the place. It just wasn't possible to find a good looking single white balance point for the images. Get the skin tones on the highlight right and the shadows leapt to magenta. Get the shadows right, the highlights on the skin went zombie green... and the indirect light on Ariel's legs went blue.

And actually, I really like the result- I think it's quite light and charming, whilst still having a good bit of drama. Hooray!