Back in May 2012 during his Von Wong Does Europe Tour, Benjamin Von Wong was asked to shoot the album cover for the Belgium band, SX.

It was important to have a natural look to the finished image, which also included having the caustic water reflections of the band members and the sunrise in, as well.

With only a couple of hours to shoot, no assistants, an ordinary-looking swimming pool that spilled a lot of sunlight through its giant windows in the background, and no light modifiers, Ben definitely had his work cut out for him. So here is how he shot the SX Band Epic Sunrise Shoot in a Swimming Pool:

(Video shot by Erwan Cloarec)

Even with the linkstar studio strobes provided by LovinPix.com, he was not able to entirely kill the background windows.

Ben solved this issue by switching out his Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S zoom lens for his Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II AF-S zoom lens. With the longer focal length, he was able to clear the windows while still staying low enough to the water to get a great horizon behind the band members.

As for the lighting, Ben had to overcome the fact that he didn’t have any lighting modifiers and that he couldn’t submerge his lightstands in order to get the lights closer to the talent. So instead, he bounced the lights of the bare strobes off the surface of the water. This created a softer fill and added the caustic reflections that he was looking for. Problem solved!

Lighting setup courtesy of Sylights & lovinpix.com:

To learn even more details on this shoot, be sure to visit Benjamin Von Wong’s SX Band Epic Sunrise Shoot in a Swimming Pool.

You can also check out this video to learn more about Benjamin Von Wong’s Von Wong Does Europe trip:

Von Wong Does Europe from LightExploring on Vimeo.

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