Doug Webster

Coeur d' Alene, Idaho

 

 

Well, this was an interesting shoot. I had been thinking about this shot for over a year now. After scouting many locations around the area, I finally decided on this one. Now, to pull this off, perfect weather was required, and today it was sunny, cloudy, rainy, hailing, snowing, freezing, and windy. We were going to call it off, but decided to try anyways and if it didn't work, at least it'd be a good "dry run". 

 

I get to the docks where Doug had the boat stored and he was telling me about a motorboat I could use to get over there, I was planning on shooting from it, but when I saw how small it was and that it was a plastic floor, I started thinking of other options. 

 

 

Long story short, that small little motorboat was my ride 3 miles across the lake, it was incredibly slow for some reason, and took about 20 minutes to get there. On the way, I got rained and snowed on. By the time I got there I was frozen and quickly got my lighting set up. This was lit with a Profoto 7b pack and an Elinchrom 39" Deep Octa just off frame camera right on the dock. If I had it my way, we'd be out in the middle of the lake with 3 big boats with lights on them ;-)

 

 

When I started taking my test shots, it was still super cloudy, then as I got everything dialed in, the sunset came out and cast some gorgeous light all around us, it was fantastic! The wind stopped and gave us some nice and calm waters. 

 

I shot this on a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II lens, it was my first time using that lens (thanks Jesse), and it was perfect for this because of the compression. I was about an inch off the water laying down to get him as high above the horizon as possible. 

 

Overall, I'm really happy with the shots, lesson learned, don't give up just because the weather looks crappy!