My aim was to go for something rather pensive, with the subject looking like they were deep in thought over some (unknown to the viewer) event earlier on. I needed a background which had some reasonable interest, to avoid too sterile a feel, and the subject sat looking lost in thought.

Tony Forbes kindly volunteered to be my “victim” and did a great job. For the lights, I wanted to have some smooth, but clear light across the background and table, providing a (seemingly) ambient light which was gently pooled to draw the eyes towards Tony. This was achieved with an SB-900 fired through a white shoot-through umbrella just out of shot to the right. The light was feathered along the wall in such a way as to start to provide some natural vignetting in the frame. The real ambient itself was killed completely by dropping the EV by around 3 or 4 stops. The main light on Tony was an SB-800 fired through a Honl grid at a similar power to the other light (maybe a stop higher). The tighter focus in the beam strengthened the light where it fell on Tony’s face, and the light was positioned (mounted on a Justin clamp on the table just to right of the frame) so as to glance against the side on Tony’s face and body. The final touch was a reflector well off to the left of the frame, added in at the suggestion of Callum Winton for a touch of fill on the back of Tony’s head. You can see a plan of the rough layout of the lighting elements in the diagram above (click for a slightly larger version).

Thanks to Callum and Tony for their help in putting this together. A fairly simple setup (just the two lights), but a rather pleasing end result.

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The interesting thing for me about this shoot was the comparison of two very different lighting styles. As the day progressed, I was able to do some static setups which comprised reasonably well thought through lighting, which gave me the kind of look I was hoping for.  However, at other times, time pressures demanded that I was almost operating in  ”point and shoot” manner, and had to rely on the fast light-on-a-stick setup which I described back here.  My personal preference has to be for the former, something which I think comes through (to me at least) in the variation in lighting quality in the shots.

This, to me, raises an interesting question… Is it more important to spend the time to get the lighting bang on for only a low number of shots, or is it more important to get more shots of more models, but with somewhat rushed lighting?  For me, it has to be the former, but it would be interesting to hear what others think, especially regarding shoots with a plethora of models available.

Anyway, the shots can be accessed from the image at the start of this post, and the obligatory Animoto slideshow is below (if you’re interested in giving making one of these a try, click on the banner at the top of these pages to get to the Animoto site).

Many thanks to Tony for organising the day, and it was great to meet a few new faces.

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3. Fixed but Flexible

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 )

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So, the basic setup was two Nikon SB-800s, each setup in a shoot-through white umbrella, positioned parallel to the “film” plane. We added into this symmetrical mix a Nikon SB-26 behind the model, to act as a separation/hair light.  One of the SB-800s was triggered via PocketWizard (to get the ball rolling reliably), then the other two flashes were on optical trigger mode.

As the shoot developed, the real advantage of this setup shone through (fairly obvious with hindsight!) By simply moving the model from left to right between the two lights, the effects of the lights would change providing some quite different looks:

• As the model moved closer to one of the lights, the power of the light would obviously increase, whilst the power of the opposing light would decrease, so almost like remote control of the relative levels, just by nudging the model from side to side.
• Again, in moving closer to one of the lights, the relative size of the umbrella light source would increase as the model approached it, and the light would become softer, with the light from the opposite SB-800 getting harder.

Combinations of sideways shuffling could then give some really nice changes to the look, without touching the lights at all, so pretty much a fixed setup, but with flexible levels, just my moving a slider (or to put it another way, the model!)

The only physical adjustment required was to move the position of the rear SB-26 to ensure that it was doing something sensible, but more importantly, wasn’t in shot (or was masked by the model).

For the odd shot, depending on the exact position of the mode, I also added in the light from an on-camera Nikon SB-900, powered right down to either 1/64, or 1/128, to add in a splash of front fill for when the side lighting left a little too much shadow on the front “edge” of the model’s face.

The models were Earl and Maria (drop me a line with you Model Mayhem IDs, and I’ll leave a link here) – thanks for posing.

You can take a look at some more of the shots here on Flickr.

Finally, the usual video slideshow in YouTube is available to view:

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In the meantime, here’s a video slideshow of the shots:

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Without any lighting, the location was still very photogenic (shot to the right courtesy of my iPhone), but the constantly changing sunlight was all over the place, and in test shots, was drawing the eye all over the frame. I decided to bring the sunlight under control, and use flashes to focus the eyes where I wanted them to be.

Deciding to shoot with the model, Frankie, on the path running above the lower pool, I dropped the ambient down quite considerably with a fast shutter (running at my PocketWizard limit of 1/250), and smallish aperture (~f8, although I varied that from shot to shot, depending on my shooting position).  I always find that getting the ambient to the level I desire first of all makes placing the lights far easier, otherwise you’re trying to balance too many variables at once.

There was a fair amount of wind, so I decided that using shoot-through umbrellas was just asking for a flash to end up in the pond.  So, bare flash all round, just using the zoom of the flash to spread the light.  This meant I’d need to be careful with my flash placements to ensure I only got hard shadows where they wouldn’t look too odd.

The main unit was the SB-900, which I was triggering with a PocketWizard, and depending on the shot, would place either on the left or right hand side, slightly in front of the path between the ponds; fairly narrow beam, and at around 1/2 power.  All the other flashes used were set to SU-4 optical trigger mode, and acted as a chain reaction, triggering each other.  Opposite the SB-900 (depending on which side I was running the SB-900 itself) was an SB-800 at around half the power of the main light, and a wide beam, to provide some fill on the darker side of the model.  Both these lights also served to pick out some of the detail in the foliage around the model, but were carefully placed so as not to blow much of it out, and draw the eye too much away from the main subject.

A third SB-800 was placed on the near bank of the lower pond, again around 1/2 the power of the main light, wide beam, to provide some front fill of the foliage below the model.

Finally, an SB-26 sat low down to the right of the rear pool (behind the model), around 1/8 power, to provide some illumination of the background.

The lack of light on the water itself meant the the reflection was far easier to see, and hopefully would lift out of the surface of the water (if that makes sense!)

The key here was for me to have the location itself lit in a pleasing manner which brought out the detail in appropriate places, but not to be obtrusive enough to take too much attention away from the model.  Hopefully I pulled it off!!!

As I’ve got a track record of falling in lakes while taking photos (my little girl still hasn’t forgiven me for not waiting in the lake so she could see last time I did this!), I was rather relived to get away from this one completely dry, although there were a couple of close shaves when I slipped in the mud on the bank – good job no-one else was around to grab the “action shot” as I fell

Thanks to Frankie (who is in the UK just for a couple of weeks visiting from the USA) – your patience was much appreciated!

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To our right of the model is the exterior wall of the building, which hosts a number of small slits. To create the narrow, vertical beam of light, an SB-900 was placed outside the building, oriented vertically to match the spread of the light to the shape of the slit, and the power punched up to around 1/2.

Back inside the building, in order to create a steep contrast between the external beam of light and the internal ambient, the ambient was dropped down so as to be almost non-existent; not too difficult, as the room was fairly dim to begin with.

The final touch was another light to our left at a minimal power level, to add a tiny bit of fill to the shadowed side of Megan, and coincidentally to throw a touch of light on the brick wall behind the model for some additional texture.

The key to making this shot work was the exact placement and angle of Megan’s face.  Tiny turns of the head would drastically change the way the narrow beam played across her features, and the feel of the shot could be significantly changed, as can be seen in the second shot.

Thanks to Megan for posing, and I found using the architecture to help with the light shaping to be a very interesting exercise. Give it a try, and if you’re really brave, see if you can achieve a similar effect in bright day light – potential for some interesting experimentation there!

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A shoot that slipped past the blog – the official photo of the Cast of Smokey Joe’s Café, performed by Kingston Vale Operatic & Dramatic Society. This shot was for use in the production programme. Some basic ideas for the setup came from David Hobby’s Strobist DVD set, where he takes a group shot in a large auditorium. However, the problems for me were slightly different to those he faced…

To get a good vertical spread of the cast members, I needed to pose them on the front of the stage. Whilst I would have liked to have some more effective lights behind the cast members, this wasn’t going to be practical, as the red curtain was only a couple of feet from the edge of the stage. Opening the curtain wasn’t a realistic option, as the stage was full of part built scenery. The only way around the problem was to squeeze a light in right behind the back row, and squeeze as much separation out of it as I could get.

The lighting in the final shot is a little hot in places, but for shoots such as this, you only get a minute or two with everyone in position, so I had to try to pre-visualise the results as much as possible, with very little opportunity for fine tuning once the cast were in place.

So, the full setup was as follows:

SB-26 behind back row (tightly wedged in front of the curtain) on ~1/8 for some hairlight/separation in the back row;
SB-800 ~1/8 to high rear left for more of the same, clamped onto a beam at the side of the stage;
SB-900 (~1/4; may even have been as high as 1/2) through umbrella from high camera left;
SB-800 through umbrella from mid camera right (~1/8).

The SB-900 was triggered by a PocketWizard with all the other flashes in optical slave mode, and all settings on manual.

And finally, for those who are interested in shots I took from the production itself, you can get to them here.

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Chicken marinaded in a lime and coriander sauce.
Local pork sausages basted in a BBQ sauce.
Lamb steaks marinaded in a mint sauce.
Sweetcorn.

Definitely working on the KISS (keep it simple stupid) approach, this shot uses just one light, and is my entry for Strobist Boot Camp II, assignment 2. If nothing anything can get a red blooded male off a diet, a plate of freshly BBQ’d meat surely can!

Strobist info: SB-800 through a Lumiquest Softbox III triggered by a PW, positioned to the right rear of the food (supported by a voice activated light stand – my wife), fired back towards the camera, to pick out the texture of the barbequed food, and also to provide more reflection of the freshly cooked surface of the meat. Ambient taken down only around 1 stop (shot taken in the garden early evening, in the shade), with the SB-800 around 1/16 power.

I used the Lumiquest, to get a semi-hard light which would give more specular light, and more of the slightly hard shadows as it fell across the meat. Earlier trials with an umbrella just made the food look too “kitchen prepared” with the very diffuse light, rather than fresh off a flaming BBQ grill.

Big bonus of this shoot – when I’d finished, me and the missus ate the lot!

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