For those interested, most of the shots were taken with a 70-200mm f2.8 on a D3, with a few extras on a D200 with 10.5mm f2.8, and 24-70mm f2.8.

Additionally, the obligatory video slideshow is now available on YouTube below (if you click through to YouTube, you can watch the full-sized version there)…

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1. Wasing Park Strobist Shoot
2. Smokey Joe’s Café
3. Science Museum, May 09

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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1. View with a Room
2. Smokey Joe’s Café
3. Strobist Boot Camp II – Assignment 1

I spent Sunday evening with the cast of Kingston Vale Operatic and Dramatic Society‘s production of Smokey Joe’s Café, photographing their dress rehearsal.

The full gallery of the photos can be viewed and downloaded here (or by clicking on the image above).

I’ve also put together a video slideshow of all the photos, of which you can view a small version below:

For the full quality, large sized version, visit the gallery where the video heads up the whole set of photos in glorious high resolution – click here.  You can also download the video from the same location.

As a final option for the video slideshow, you can also look on YouTube (albeit at lower quality).  Additionally, I’ve done the full processing treatment on a couple of the shots, which can be seen on my Flickr site.

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1. Pirates of Penzance
2. Science Museum, May 09
3. Francesca’s 4th Birthday

I went up early to take some pictures, and Louise would have joined later, except someone decided to throw themselves in front of a train on the District Line, so Louise was stranded for a couple of hours in the rain, and I had no trains running to get back to her… When public transport fails, it really scr*ws you!

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1. Malden DSME Miniature Railway

You can also watch a video slideshow of the shots, either by downloading the high resolution version from the gallery above (same link as the photos), or a low quality version at YouTube:

If you liked this post, you may also like:

1. Smokey Joe’s Café
2. Science Museum, May 09
3. Science Museum Video