During my recent senior portrait session with Michaela, the LSU-bound pre-med major half-jokingly expressed interest in exploring her inner "swamp princess." Fortunately for those of us who live virtually surrounded by the postcard-pretty delta marshes of Southeast Louisiana (especially in lower St. Bernard Parish located 30 miles from New Orleans), you can barely throw an oyster shell without hitting a swamp or bayou.
 

We didn’t need to travel any further afield than Los Islenos Museum (www.losislenos.org), where we had already planned to shoot a few interior portraits in one of the historic and beautifully restored, former Isleno homes that have been relocated to the museum grounds to preserve and promote the unique culture of Louisiana’s first Spanish-colonial immigrants, who began arriving here in the mid-1700s. At the tail end of the museum’s bucolic nature trail was a slice of unadulterated Louisiana swamp complete with palmettos and tangled vines. To my good fortune I had at my side my dear friend and partner-in-crime Tommy Arcement, who had graciously agreed to assist on the shoot -- and, at this location, help create the swamp-at-dusk vibe I was seeking. Following is a quick snap of the swamp as we found it:
 

OK, for people living outside Louisiana and the Delta South, this is how swamps (as opposed to bayous -- there's a difference) actually look in real life as opposed to Hollywood movies. Fairly murky and humdrum affairs, for the most part, especially in the late afternoon when the ambient light is flat and beginning to fade. And this is where yours truly gets busy.
 

To remedy and light this scene I used a pair of off-camera Nikon Speedlights, both triggered remotely. One Speedlight was tucked inside a 60-inch Octobox (used with both the diffusion panel and eggcrate insert to soften the light as much as possible). The second Speedlight was affixed to a tripod placed immediately behind Michaela and aimed bare-knuckled (without any diffusion or modifier) into the swampscape directly behind her -- this to illuminate and create visual depth in the background. The following image shows the scene using only the Speedlight behind Michaela (you can see the tripod legs down around her feet):
 

The light is crude and harsh but remember I still haven't adjusted my camera settings for ambient light yet because we're still "light building." Next I added the Octobox, visible at camera left along with Tommy who was preventing it from falling into the swamp. See below:
 

Not too terribly bad -- after multiple trials and errors. After tweaking the power on the Speedlights and fiddling with the camera aperture to better blend available natural light, we seem to have achieved a decent balance of illumination that complements Michaela's inner swamp princess right down to her Renaissance-goddess flower headdress.Ultimately I wound wind up selecting an alternate version of this image.
 

But my real work was cut out for me in post-processing in order to create the 1930s-era hand-tinted image I saw in my mind's eye. In Photoshop I removed the tripod legs visible near Michaela's feet, the spindly tree branches "growing" out of her right side, and her watch (didn't match the outfit, but I didn't realize this until after the fact -- my bad). I also ramped up the swamp's natural shadows, dampened highlights on Michaela's outfit and removed a few face shadows. Finally, I adjusted the vibrance in Bridge until I achieved just the right hand-tinted look. Following is the final version of the final image:
 

It was a fun and exciting professional challenge going off-grid to make Michaela's swamp-princess personae a reality. Shoots like this remind me why I love being a photographer.