One day when Jonathan Menga was out walking in his neighborhood, he fell upon a baseball park he hadn’t really noticed before. Jonathan’s mind started working. Soon, he had an idea. With a clever use of gelled flashes and smoke machines, he would be able to turn the small park into something else.
A few days later, Jonathan returned with a model, an assistant and a make up artist. In his gear bag was two Profoto Acute2 packs, two Acute/D4 Heads, a speedlight, a Softlight Reflector and a bunch of colored gels.
“I wanted these forest photoshoot images to have some sort of mood to them and give off a story,” writes Jonathan on his blog.
Jonathan had some help from the weather conditions. It was a cloudy day and the trees were dark. The mood was further enhanced by the gelled flashes and the smoke machine that Jonathan had brought.
![](https://cdn.profoto.com/cdn/0521a7d/contentassets/e798b67eb6104b40bfb2c67ba1b1c0d2/profoto-jonathan-menga-web-forest-run-600x403.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&format=jpg)
![](https://cdn.profoto.com/cdn/0521a61/contentassets/e798b67eb6104b40bfb2c67ba1b1c0d2/profoto-jonathan-menga-setup-3-600x591.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&format=jpg)
Jonathan explains how the image above was created:
“I wanted to create a scene flooded with smoke to give it a little mystery. It was lit with 3 lights, a YoungNuo speedlight, a Profoto Acute/D4 Head and another one in a silver beauty dish. On camera left, my assistant held the speedlight up high and further within the woods while on the opposite side, I had the Acute/D4 Head on the stand and much closer to the model. This light was specifically placed behind the tree to create a light splash while defining the smoke. I used multiple coloured tiny smoke bombs that created rapid smoke burst,but didn’t last as long as I had hoped. Therefore, I had to use about 6 of them in different places and combined them in post later on. I used the beauty dish on camera left, slightly feathering the model. Shooting lights through trees created a very mystical mood, and by shutting down a bit of the ambient light, it really gave it a night look.”
Head over to Jonathan’s blog for the full story, including lighting breakdowns for the images below.
![](https://cdn.profoto.com/cdn/0521a70/contentassets/e798b67eb6104b40bfb2c67ba1b1c0d2/profoto-jonathan-menga-forest-shoot-2-600x438.jpeg?width=1280&quality=75&format=jpg)
![](https://cdn.profoto.com/cdn/0521a57/contentassets/e798b67eb6104b40bfb2c67ba1b1c0d2/profoto-jonathan-menga-forest-shoot-1-600x399.jpeg?width=1280&quality=75&format=jpg)