Fast Cars and Fast Shooting

At a recent shoot at Bramble Hill Hotel, as my day of shooting drew to a close, a rare opportunity arose to do some shooting around a Ferrari Testarossa, possibly most famous in white as Crockett’s car in Miami Vice.  The only problem was, I’d already finished packing my gear and loading into my car, so to get some shots of Julia (the model), and the car, I had to act fast.

The Ferrari was parked centrally in the car park, and thus pretty much every angle had more cars in the background, and indeed, a motor home turned up and parked, wiping out a significant proportion of the viable shooting angles.  So, the key was going to be to shoot from a fairly low angle, up towards Julia and the car, to drop any unwanted background cars out of the shot.

The limitation on time (I had to get back to London), and the fact that my gear was packed, pointed me towards a single light solution, ideally without having to setup stands.  Solution – I used my SB-900 mounted on a Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe Handle, with a Lumiquest Softbox III to provide some diffusion of the speedlight. Velcro a Pocketwizard to the side of the speedlight, and I was good to go.

I was assisted by Mark who held the rig above Maria on the car, just out of shot, and I grabbed a few shots.  Whilst the Lumiquest Softbox III is fairly small, when used close enough, it provides just enough wrap around light to still be pleasingly soft, but with a slightly punchier edge than many other diffusers, that in this instance, fitted with the theme of the shot perfectly.  To add some texture to a rather dull sky (to cap everything, it was just starting to rain!), I dropped the ambient down 2 or 3 stops, and left the flash level high enough to really make Julia’s face shine out.

So, around 30 seconds to setup the light, and probably less than a minute grabbing the shots.  Fast, just like the Ferrari!  (Sorry for that cheesiness )

Related posts:

Fixed but Flexible
Caught in the Light
Woodland Glade
Strobist Boot Camp II – Assignment 2
Strobist Boot Camp II – Assignment 1

Tags: lighting, photography, slideshow, small flash, strobism, Strobist, Technique

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 10:52 pm and is filed under Strobist, Technique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.