Behind the Scenes - Duo Massage - Scandinave Spa Whistler
This was a commercial shoot for the Scandinave Spa in Whistler. They were interested in featuring a new product, Duo Massage and the goal was to capture imagery that highlighted this experience. In my conversations leading up to this shoot I knew they wanted to create a warm welcoming feeling that gave an inviting feel to the experience.
I’ve shot in the massage rooms before so I had an idea of what they looked like. They are small room with just enough room for the massage tables and the masseuse. With very little ambient light the rooms are dark. While this would be relaxing for a massage, it doesn’t necessarily translate well to imagery and really showcase the space. The sun does come over the hill and through the windows but this is only for a short amount of time, and is obviously only there if it isn’t cloudy. I made the decision to light this scene as it would give me total control over the environment and all me to get the shots I needed.
Since it is a duo massage there was four talent and because of this I needed the light to be broad. I couldn’t light one specific spot in the room, I needed it to fill the entire room and look like it was coming in naturally. When shooting here time is pretty limited as you only have a couple hours before the spa opens. This isn’t really an issue, but just need to make sure there is a solid plan in place before shooting so the set up can be quick.
Since the space is limited I made the decision to put my main light outside the window. I wanted soft light coming in the window, as if the daylight was lighting the room. Just outside the window I set up my Elinchrom ELB 1200 and a 5-foot octabox and plenty of sandbags. I then raised it up high so it was at the top of the window and coming from a direction that felt natural. This created a soft light that would fill the room and create directional light but still wrap around the subjects and and create soft shadows.
Since I was going to be shooting out the window I couldn’t put this directly in the window so I needed to set it back a little bit and slightly to the side of my framing so it wouldn’t appear in my images.
The next light I added was a fill light inside the room. While the shadows were soft from the octabox I still wanted to fill them I a bit as that is more naturally how a room would be lit with the light coming in through the window. I didn’t need much power here so I set up my Elinchrom One and bounced it off the wall/ceiling behind the camera. I kept the frosted dome on this light to diffuse it slightly and then bouncing it diffused it more. The power on this light was pretty low as it only needed to be used to slightly fill the shadows.
For this shoot I was shooting tethered to a laptop, this allows me to better review the images and check my lighting. It also allows the client to see the images as I’m shooting, and since we were on a limited time window I wanted them to see the images we were creating so they could approve them as we shot.
After setting up the first two lights and taking a few test images I realized outside the window the tree to the left of the octabox wasn’t getting any light. While the light in the room looked natural and like there was daylight, the outside looked dark and unnatural. Having this made it pretty clear it wasn’t sunny and didn’t sell the effect of the lighting.
I was prepared for this situation and had been expecting it, but wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to need to set up a third light. I had gone back and forth about it, but in the moment decided that it was necessary to make the lighting look real. For this light I took an Elinchrom ELB 400 and set it up behind the octabox with a high performance reflector. There was a hill here so this light ended up being quite high and mimicked the sun that was breaking through the tree. This light was aimed at the tree and lit it up making it look like daylight outside as well as adding a few highlights inside.
Once all the lights were set we were able to start shooting. The three light set up illuminated the entire scene and it allowed me to move around while shooting and get varies angles. I only needed to move the fill light inside the room once, but this was due to the limited space and needing to set up a ladder to shoot the top down angle.
Client: Scandinave Whistler
Producer: Alto MM
Assistant: Shane Roy
Gear
Canon R5
Canon RF 24-105 F4
Canon EF 17-40 F4
Elinchrom ELB 1200
Elinchrom ELB 400
Elinchrom One
5 foot Impact Octabox
Elinchrom High Performance Reflector
Laptop and tripod with Capture One session