Hello Everyone,
I hope that everyone has been having a productive week. This week tech post will focus on outdoor portrait photography using minimal gear.
Image Concept:
The idea was to a sexy, provocative scene with the subject in swimwear outdoors in the wilderness using the minimalist gear approach.
Subject:
Alexis Madison
Location:
Sweet Water Creek State Park, Lithia Springs Ga.
What’s in the bag:
Nikon D300
Nikon 50mm f1.8
Nikon sb-800 gelled with ¼ CTO
Lumiquest Softbox III
X-Rite Colorchecker
Camera Settings:
Image captured in RAW
ISO 320
F5 @ 1/250 sec
PP: NX2, LR3, CS5,
Flash Manual ¼ power
On-camera flash: TTL -1.7
Technique (What did I do and why did I do it?):
Its two fold. First, I wanted to try out a piece of gear I’ve had for a couple years, but never really used; The Lumiquest Softbox III. It’s a small 8” x 9” softbox that fits onto your speedlight. The idea was to go out and shoot without a stand. Just me, my camera, and the Lumiquest III attached to my sb-800 in my left hand. The flash would be triggered by Nikon’s CLS system using the on camera flash. Second, the original concept was to shoot my subject in a bathing suit in the small rapids of the lake. Well, since I was doing this lone ranger style, I really had no desire to try to manage a stand in the water to hold my lights. However, I did want the option of using a flash if I so choose.
The inspiration for this technique came from reading David Hobby’s Strobist Blog. Click here to read the blog post.
As you see by the pictures, Alexis is not in the water. As it turned out, we ended up only having about a 30 minutes window to shoot. With so little time, there wasn’t any way to get from the parking lot down to the water, shoot, and then get back to the cars. So we improvised. We walked down the trail about 50 yards, found a decent spot, and started shooting. Yes, I was feeling a little pressure because I was attempting a new technique in a very compressed time period. I started out setting the flash to straight TTL. However, the images were coming out underexposed and a little too unpredictable for my taste. So, I changed to manual, kept taking test shots until I got what I wanted. The whole time my brain’s internal clock is ticking. I guess I need to go and reread my post from last week, “Be Cool“
Conclusion
Overall, I was pleased with this setup. It is very mobile portable. We were able to move quickly from spot to spot without any issues. The Lumiquest did a decent job covering ¾ length shots. I’ll have to try this again, when I can take more time and really run it through its paces. But for now, I plan on keeping it in my bag for location shoots.
