Portraiture in a Vintage Train Car!

Vintage fashion on an elegant train car! Mixing the fierce sun with flash, to create a subtle, stylized look. We had some questions posted on our Instagram account about lighting this shot. It’s mostly with available light, tweaked a bit by flash, and maneuvered, if you will, with a combination of f-stop and shutter speed. Which, I know, is what we do all the time. Hear me out.

First off, I dealt myself an easy hand of cards in terms of my subject. The lady in front of the lens, Marisa Roper, is the embodiment of the style and glamour of yesteryear. This vintage railcar, located at the Danbury Railway Museum, is right out of our country’s railroading history. Styled superbly by Samantha Brown. Marisa’s wardrobe is in perfect tone and tenor with the setting. Coupled with Marisa’s understated gesture is beautiful vintage makeup and hairstyles by Michelle Coursey. And of course all this impeccable coordination and production is led by Lynn DelMastro. This is a trip back in time to when the railroads had romance.

The light was a bit of a tussle, with the raw winter sun just exploding on our set. Shot with the Nikon Z 7II and the Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 S lens, I had some bargaining to do with the daylight. I wanted f/1.2, which exposed the interior of the car just fine, but allowed the slanting highlights to go nuclear. I shot some plates for retouching purposes, trying to take the edge off the blowout on the seats, but it appeared incongruous to the scene when they became dimmed. So we let fly with the highlights, as some of the bounce off the seats actually helped fill the car with some warm, glowing light. The sun was the boss that day.

Set up a Profoto flash, camera left, fitted with a 3′ soft box, as that was all the train car would accommodate. I didn’t push the power on the light, as I didn’t want to announce the strobe’s presence. It’s that fine line we all deal with out there–how much is too much? Luckily the tools we have at our command allow for the really precise shaving of an f-stop.

This framing below allowed me to interfere with the natural flow of light, and also use Marisa literally as a gobo for the heat of the background seats. Nothing like a large silk outside the blazing windows. Tames the sun, turns it beautiful. We introduced a Profoto B1X Plus, blasting through the silking, just to add some pop and directionality. Marisa did the rest.

Outside, it was find the shade time. Working on the shadow side of the car, we positioned Marisa on one of the doorways of a silvery train car. One light, again, Profoto B10X Plus, literally used as a fill. (This job was shot in 2021, hence the masks.)

And below is our last setup of the day, and the most complex. (Why does that always happen?) The locomotive – steam, smoke and gels! I was excited. But, it was also darkness, wind and freezing cold. Marisa was a trooper out there. And here, the sun, or lack thereof, won. Marisa is elegant and she is lit in a lovely, glamour way. But, it looks like she is in a studio, and the train engine is pasted into the background. The shot, in my eyes, is not successful. No fault of the crew or Marisa! This is on me, as I waited too long, and the day got dark and the wind whipped our smoke effects into the next county.

Location work. Ups and downs. But, the shot above is fuel for the fire. I will go back here and I will get the shot I want. Someday 🙂

More tk….