Flash filled portraits and some Cajun fun

I've been shooting a ton for the college paper. However, I have been shooting so much that I can't seem to get myself enough time to sit at a computer and update this darn blog!

Well, the major thing that I had been planning on talking about on here was a portrait thing I shot with another photographer a week or two ago.

Not a simple shot when it comes to the number of flashes that we used.

What we had planned on for this shot was to use controlled flash to set up a moody portrait of the five seniors on our basketball team.

Well, four flashes, 2 pocketwizards, and 4 snoots later we got our image.

It's not really anything special mind you, but it definate stands out compared to some of the other things that have come about in situations like this. Some papers would stoop so low as to run 4 headshots from the roster.

So for the setup we originally figured we would just shoot 4 bare strobes without any sort of light control. This was quickly stopped in our heads as soon as we noticed the amount of spill from 4 SB800's. To make things more artsy and dramatic we threw on some very expensive snoots. By expensive I mean free from my lined paper notebook. Snoots aren't rocket science. They're simple and very easy to use.


What you see at the edges is the flashes, minus one out of frame, that lit the tiny space. Since we were using so much light power in such a dark space (college gym) the lights on the court had no affect on the photo. Funny since we usually try so hard to get light in the gym, now we're over lighting it!

Anyway, The snoots kept light from spilling onto the back seats, walls, front seats, and everything else. What's neat is the seats are all a nice maroon color and that added to the yellow of the players jersey's. This was perfect to ad our university colors to the shot.

Something else I covered that turned out awesome was something called "Night of Louisiana" on this campus. This is literally a rip roaring time of Cajun and Zydeco music. You do not find a more active crowd than at this event.

I'll cover more on this in a later post because I have yet to upload the images to my flickr page.

Next post will be about my visit to Michigan's capitol building to take pictures of our Governor giving the State of the State address. Trust me, not a image crazy event, but still something worth talking about.