Fire is beautiful, vibrant, bold and dangerous. Fire can destroy, bring renewed life, light your way or give you warmth.  Fire as a light source is not the first thing that comes to mind when doing portraiture, but it is a viable source and can be fun to manipulate and play with. Many photographers find a comfort zone and stick to that: "natural light photographer" or "Studio Portrait Photographer." I am a wedding photographer and have to be prepared for any venue lighting situation, so I shoot all types of lighting. I like to challenge myself and step outside of the box. Everyone loves a good golden hour photo but it is not feasible to only shoot during the golden hours or magic hours. There can be magic in all kinds of light.

In addition to light, color brings an extra depth and emotion to portraiture. Different color stimulates senses and draws you to a photograph. When mixing color and light the effects can be phenomenal. I was inspired by fire and the color orange. I wanted to bring warmth and boldness to a portrait session so I chose to carry that orange color all the way through.

The Look:

For her makeup I chose to use a pallet of bronzes on the orange side and created a mask of color from her cheekbones to above the brow doing a Smokey eye with a brown on her lids. I finished the look with a bright orange lip. I contrasted the boldness by doing soft curls in her hair and using a crown of fall flowers to pull more of an organic feel to the fashion and retain that exquisite warm color.

The Shoot:

On a extremely cold night we chose to light a bonfire to create the column of flame in the background and just at dusk when the sun slipped below the tree line, we used a silver reflector to bounce the ambient light as well as some of the firelight back on to subject. She was sitting about 10 feet in front of bonfire so I still retained quite a bit of that soft natural light. As the night progressed we moved closer to the fire and positioned reflector directly onto her (literally touching her at times) for more dramatic contrasting light. At one point we used the setting sun behind with the fire on the other side to pull the warm light around her. The result was some stunning warm vivid portraits that showed off the subject's dewy skin and stunning dark eyes.

Do you have a favorite color that you take inspiration from? How does this orange and fire session make you feel?