Featured Project – Adapting Lighting for Unique Situations with Irina Jomir

Irina Jomir is an amazing photographer in our community. We’ve been following her work closely and she recently had a challenge where she had to adapt in order to create the imagery that she was proud of. She integrated Infinite Color beautifully into the shots! We had to know more about the shoot itself and Irina shares her story below.

Be sure to follow her Website and Instagram account!

I´m a photographer that shoots majority of work at studio. I love the comfort it gives, the control over light. I rarely want to shoot anywhere else.

The project I and my MUAH came up with was a challenge – new, unknown space, unpredictable lighting scenario and new genre. We´ve decided to shoot boudoir in a hotel room. The team was small, just me and MUAH as model which perhaps was a challenge too for both of us. We booked a room, prepared a mood board and were ready to experiment for as long as possible.

I remember coming into hotel room where the shoot was going to be taken place at, being completely terrified – narrow room, no white walls or white ceiling to bounce my strobes from, last hour of day light to use as fill light and mix with strobe… nothing I’m used to at all. Harsh light is not my thing and strobes are soon the only source of light in pitch black space with red walls. Basically that moment was a moment of regret and if could get the refund I would absolutely leave.

I kinda felt like an amateur in that situation and the only solution was to experiment. As we started to warm up and I let my creative part take over. My fear of failure faded and all of a sudden I learned knowledge of light that naturally mixed in. By the time there was no more day light the only option was to soften the strobe as much as possible and the further we were moving into the room to change the set up, the darker and narrower it was. I decided to use the Photek Softlighter with one strobe and double diffusion plus an extra large diffuser from the largest reflector I had which I placed in between the model and the strobe. The distance between model, diffuser and strobe varies from picture to picture.

Our shoot started at 6pm and we finished 6am, 12 hours straight with one break only. It´s so far the longest I had and perhaps most fun as well. We tend to forget how much we learn when we experiment. If I may draw a conclusion and give my recommendation, that would be to experiment more and challenge yourself more.

To see more from this set, be sure to visit her Instagram!