This weekend, a young lady wanted some shots taken to give to her husband this holiday season. Initially, she wanted bare trees and an overall "wintery" look for the images. However, she decided she wanted the pictures sooner rather than later, and asked for a more "urban" look. I suggested we shoot at a location I had used before, because I thought it would be a good combination of urban and landscape foliage. I also envisioned letting the sky play a dominate role in the photo.
The location was a high spot overlooking a Hobby Lobby / Dollar General Market shopping center. I shot from a low angle. In fact, I was laying on the ground with my camera about as close to the ground as I could get it. If I hadn't been that low, the framing would have included much of the parking lot (as you can see in the setup shot).
In the uncropped version, there's a little more of an urban look to the scene. However, I cropped out a billboard on the left, the Hobby Lobby building on the right, and cloned out one parking lot light for the version I posted to Flickr.
The lighting setup was 1 White Lightning x2400, camera right, 1/4 CTS gelled, diffused by a 22" Paul C. Buff HOBD (High Output Beauty Dish). 1 White Lightning Ultrazap 1600, camera left, diffused by a 64" Paul C. Buff PLM (Parabolic Light Modifier). Strobes triggered via Cybersyncs and Cyber Commander; powered via Vagabond II & Innovatronix Explorer XT. A CPL (circular polarizer) was used. Of course, a picture is worth 1000 words...