At around 9 this morning, I was copied on an email from a colleague telling another colleague that I had my camera with me at the office and might be willing to photograph several co-workers that had dressed up for some sort of special occasion. I was delighted to oblige and requested help from my friend to hold and advise with the lighting equipment. We made our general arrangements regarding location, agreed on group and individual shots, and planned to meet in the afternoon.
I went down to the area for the photo shoot about 20 minutes before the planned time to scope out the area and take a few test shots. My hope was to have everything sorted out and ready to go when everyone arrived so that we could do the group shot first (about 20 people) and then quickly crank through the individual shots.
This little experience taught me a few lessons:
- Bouncing two speedlights off of a relatively white, 9 foot ceiling is just enough to illuminate a group of 20
- If you don't get permission (a model release), you cannot display the photographs on your blog. Duh. That explains why you're not seeing any of the results here
- Some people look pretty good with hard light, others, not so much
- The gobos came in very handy for keeping the light off of the low-key background. In fact, tonight I'm going to make a second bicycle inner tube velcro strap for my other flash so that I can mount gobos on both flashes at the same time.
- Because I didn't have my light stand or umbrella with me, I made a diffusion panel out of 4 large paper towels taped together in a square pattern. This would have been brilliant but I didn't have time to test it or the presence of mind to ask one of the photographees to hold it for me. Next time, put the photographees to work when they're not in the present image
- Rechargeable AA batteries for your flash are critical. One set in one of my flashes ran out during the test shots. I had two spare sets. The first spare set had apparently been charged several weeks earlier and were as dead as door nails. This increased my heart rate dramatically. Fortunately, the second spare set were good. Maybe my next set should be those fancy Eneloop batteries that claim to not lose their charge so quickly.
- One subject of the female persuasion wore a white sweater. She was sensitive about her weight and the white sweater with horizontal stripes which did not flatter her in the photos we shot. In the end we agreed to do a make-up shot tomorrow where she could wear a darker color top. Not much I could have done to prepare for that one but when I do have the luxury of a little advance notice, I will inform my clients to avoid particularly light colors (unless they are very trim).
Great experience in the end. The colleague that arranged this all was pleased with the results. Next time I'll ask for permission to post them so you can see.
That was the impromptu shoot.
When I arrived home, I was delighted to see that I had received a small package from Hong Kong: A new wireless flash trigger kit. This fancy little set of devices set me back a mere $37 US Dollars and allows me to fire my flashes without having them connected to my camera with a cable. Up until now, I've used my coiled hot shoe cable to sync at least one of my flashes which meant that I could never have that one light more than about 3 feet from the camera. Now they can be tens of feet from my camera and without a cable! This opens up some pretty cool possibilities which I hope to demonstrate over the next few weeks.
And here is a shot of this deft little kit:
The contraption on the left is the remote part to which you connect your flash and the module on the right sits in the hot shoe of your camera. They use radio signals to talk to one another. Simple, inexpensive, and effective.
It still allows me to sync at up to 1/500th of a second which is useful for cases where I want to darken the appearance of the ambient light while using the flash to illuminate my main subject. It hasn't misfired in the playing that I've done this evening but we'll put that to more of a test in the coming weeks.
Stand by for more strobist fun! Yes, I am aware of and fully disclose my geek-like tendencies so you need not leave comments highlighting all that. But feel free to leave as many comments as you like praising my efforts, commenting on my MacGyver-like abilities for creating paper-towel diffusion panels, and other clever insights.
YOU ARE SO CLEVER!!!! Have you spoken to CJ3 about tech purchases from HK? I'll let me enlighten you.
Posted by: emptynest | March 05, 2009 at 05:20 AM
LOVE the MacGyver-ing of the paper towels! I just made a huge purchase and now have, among other things, an external flash! So i can finally start benefitting from all your great info!
Posted by: r-dean | March 10, 2009 at 11:26 PM