Last winter I had the pleasure of working on location with photographer Bob Stevens as he shot all over Southern California for Lincoln highlighting their latest line of luxury SUVs. After shooting in locations from downtown LA to the mountains above Santa Barbara the last day of the shoot called for an early morning shot at Cal Poly in Pomona.

This particular campaign called for romantic images featuring soft colors and sun flares and we had a narrow window of time when the sun would be in just the right position to get the shot Bob was after.

Bob is a very experienced photographer who has tackled a wide range of challenges and always comes back with what he needs to create a great shot for the client. But in this case we ran into a challenge that called for a little extra magic. You see while we had clear skies as the dawn came over the next couple of hours a stubborn bank of clouds decided to come in and hide the sun that was so important to making this shot work.

As the window of opportunity slowed crept by Bob decided to get several shots with the models using a large 10k light as a stand in for the sun. This gave me something to work with and as the Art Director waited on the sun Bob and I settled into the back of the motor home and went to work.

Within a couple of hours we had the shot dialed in, and when the Art Director saw the shot she happily proclaimed “That’s beautiful!”.