“Shoot into the light” has been a part of my photographic philosophy for a long time. I feel the most beautiful and amazing things can happen when you use this approach. In this case, I doubled-down on this idea by adding my light to the backlighting coming from the late afternoon sky. More details below…

Talent: https://www.instagram.com/carriecat.walk/
Assist and black roses: @carmen bellos
Dress: https://atelieranna.shop/
Sony A7rIV
Sigma 85mm 1.4 DG DN ART
1/160th | f 1.4 |iso 100
Godox AD300 pro strobe
7″ Fresnel spot

The Raw file is actually pretty “flat” with low contrast on the camera-facing-side of Karina. To create this final result, in Camera Raw, I used the Tone Curve in concert with the “light” adjustments to get the contrast where I wanted.

I also made liberal use of the Color Mixer to get the skin tones where they are, as well as tune the background to my taste. There is also some use of the Color Grading tool to add some blue/green to the shadow areas. It’s subtle, but it’s there. 🙂

Photoshop was used for some light retouch and local contrast edits before finishing.