Here are a couple of fun winter portraits of the wonderful Val.

The idea behind these portraits was to get a really blurry background while using a single strobe in a bright snowy landscape. There a couple of problems to address when shooting in that situation:

1.) Noon on a clear day is about the worst time of day to shoot. The light is harsh, contrasty and the shadows are unflattering. The solution was to use lighting to fill in the shadows.

2.) With all of the snow on the ground and the intensity of the sun, it was extremely bright. This meant that even at minimal ISO, I was going to have to use either fast shutter speeds or a small aperture. The problem is that most SLRs will not sync much faster than 1/250th of a second with a non-TTL strobe. This meant a small aperture, leading to my next problem…

3.) To achieve a shallow depth of field, one needs to use a large, bright aperture, which, in that light, required a shutter speed faster than 1/250th.

A possible solution would be to use TTL flash (speedlight) capable of syncing faster than 1/250th. However, a speedlight wouldn’t be nearly powerful enough to combat the bright sun and snow, therefore I was forced to use a more powerful, non-TTL strobe (1100w/s Elinchrom Ranger AS).

Wanting a shallow depth of field, the final solution was to use a telephoto lens at a very close distance with a heavy neutral density filter to darken things up. The neutral density filter cut enough light to achieve a larger aperture and combing that, the close focusing distance and the telephoto lens, I was able to open up my aperture and get a blurry background.

The sun was positioned behind Val to provide a nice hair/kicker. I used a 39” octobank placed to camera right in front of and above her, aimed down. The snow on the ground provided a nice under fill.

A few more…

Specs:

Nikon D3, 80-200mm 2.8 @ 200mm and minimum focusing distance(headshots only). ND-8 filter so I could shoot at a larger aperture. The background is not fake. 1/200th @ f/7.1 (it was really bright)

Elinchrom Ranger RX with 39" Rotalux Octobank to camera right, snow and sun for fill and kicker.

Here are a few single light portraits of my buddy Mike. For the shot above, the strobe was completely bare (no reflector or modifier at all), placed to camera right and slightly behind the subject. There is a large, off white wall directly behind the camera which provided a bit of fill. 

Another from the same alley…

Specs: Nikon D3, 35-70mm 2.8. 1/125th at F/13, ISO 200. I stopped down so much to get some nice diffraction spikes from the sun. WB was set to overcast for a bit more warmth. I decided to leave the lens flare to add to the “bright” feel. For the main light, I used an Elinchrom Ranger AS with an A head shooting at full power through a varistar brolly box to camera left. The wind can be thanked for newly dented umbrella in the setup shot

Specs: Nikon D3, 17-35mm 2.8. 1/200th at F/9, ISO 200. For the main light, I used an Elinchrom Ranger AS with an A head shooting through a varistar brolly box to camera right. I also used a couple of gridded Q-flashes (one to light the foreground slightly and one out side of the frame to camera left as a rim). 

These were trigger by Elinchrom skyports. Both photos are 99% processed in Lightroom with minimal Photoshop. See setup shots for more details.

Looking back, I wish that the car was turning to the right so I could see the wheel better, but I’m still experimenting with the car stuff. Thanks to Mike Sweeney (ETN studios) for gripping, Fielding Cathcart for providing the Zeus and Vagabond setup and Bobby M. and her husband for the sweet ride! 

For more details, photos and setup shots, keep reading…

Details:

The shot above was created using a homemade car rig (see setup shots). The car is lit with a single, bare White lightning Zeus, to provide some fill and eliminate reflections. That exposure is combined with the “rolling” exposure for the final image.

Nikon D3, Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8. Camera remotely fired using radio triggers

Above is a shot of a friend’s "new" 2007 Audi A4 S-line. I had originally planned on doing some rolling shots with the “rig” but it was far too windy, so I settled for a posed frame.

Details:

Nikon D3, Nikon 80-200mm 2.8 lens, White Lightning Zeus + vagabond (Thanks Fielding)

• There are multiple exposures involved:
• One ambient shot at f/4 for the blurry background and foreground as well as proper exposure of the ground
• One Exposure with the side of the car lit
• An exposure with the front of the car lit
• One for the front rim and quarter panel

All flash lit exposures were shot at 1/250th at f/16 to bring down the ambient as much as possible

A few more bonus shots…..

And some setup shots….

If anyone out there wants some photos of their exotic/sports/classic/unique/nice car, shoot me an email!

The shoot was a little disorganized: we showed up in the dark, the batteries were dead on our spotlight, I had never been to the spot before and Paul had only climbed there once. On top of that, it was ridiculously windy and the stands blew over a few times. But it was fun and we’ll hopefully do it again, perhaps earlier than 1am next time.

Details:

The image was captured using a Nikon D3 and a 17-35mm 2.8 lens. Two strobes with red gels were used  to freeze the climber (sort of) and an LED flashlight (also red gelled) was also used to paint in the rock and background. In post-processing, the speedlights were removed and the light painted frames were combined with the strobed frame. There’s a tiny bit of motion blur from his leg moving, but it was necessary to pull in the starry background. The final exposure was 8 seconds, at f/4 and ISO 1000 (to pull in the stars). The strobes were set to rear sync.

By the way, just after this shot, the rock broke and since someone had moved the crash pad out of the shot, Paul hit pretty hard, but still landed on his feet.

Here are the results from a weekend shoot that will hopefully lead to bigger things. Thanks to Jon Loder, Kevin Clifford and Fielding Cathcart. Creative art director and props: Donnie Meyers Studio, New York.

Specs: 9X Nikon Sb-800s triggered by pocketwizards and an audio trigger. Nikon D3 + 105mm 2.8 Micro Nikkor, ISO 400, f/14. Flash duration is calculated at roughly 1/41000 sec.

Some behind the scenes shots:

I’ve never shot the Reno Air Races which is pretty much ridiculous for a Reno based photographer who loves aviation. So when a buddy said he could get me pit access at night, I jumped on the idea. By the time I got out of work and reached the airport, the sun had already gone down. In the evening, the aircraft are bathed in ugly glow of the bright sodium vapor lights, making it very difficult to get any decent photos. As a result, I improvised with my own lighting.

Just as I unpacked my gear, the Military Police showed up and told me I wasn’t supposed to be near the military aircraft, but they decided to give me a few minutes to grab a shot. I scrambled to set up my lights, stands, gels and tripod. Considering I literally had 5 minutes to set this one up, I think it turned out pretty well. There is just a hint of blue in the sky that really stands out when the photo is viewed on black (click on the photo to view on black).

Thanks to my buddy Cliff for the pit access (and keeping conversation with the MPs) while I ran around like a photographer on speed adjusting and position lights.

Lighting Specs: 5x bare Nikon Speedlights (4 with CTOs and one under with a heavy red gel).  Basically, the CTO speedlights are positioned in an X pattern shooting at 1/2 power at 24mm. All triggered by Skyports.

Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, F15 Eagle

The lighting was provided using my expertly constructed double flashed grid setup. I gaffers taped the hell out of carefully adjoined two Nikon SB800s together and precisely installed (velcro and a prayer) a honl 1/8” grid to the front. This allowed the enough light to operate at 1/64 power for action freezing flash duration. 

Final Specs: Nikon D300, 80-200mm 2.8 @ f/8, ISO 200, bulb.

Lighting: 2x sb800s gridded behind and lower than glass,  2x more sb800s, one on either side though large softboxes. All lights triggered by Skyports. 

The pen has a special LED that is night vision friendly, is built using super tough metal and writes in freezing environments.

Photo Details: For the photo on the left, I used black string to hang the pen above a sheet of glass (RIP right after this shot). The lighting is 2x 600w/s strobes on each side of the pen shooting through very large soft-boxes and an sb800 with a round snoot for the background light. The shot was difficult because the pen was constantly spinning and I had to time the rotation perfectly. The pen’s green light was no match for the brightness of the strobes, therefore I took a second exposure with the light on and combined the two. (Nikon D300, 80-200mm 2.8, 1/250 @ F/16, ISO 200)

Photo Details (above): For this photo, I set the camera’s white balance to incandescent (making my strobe light blue). I then added some extra blue filtration to my main strobe for a much colder look. The photo has 3 strobes and one gold reflector: Main light is blue gelled 600w/s strobe with softbox to camera left. 1x CTO gelled (for neutral light) snooted sb800 to illuminate the pen and pad. 1x CTO gelled + “gobo’d” sb-800 for the map and pad on the bottom right. And finally, a gold reflector, just outside the frame to the top left for the warmish colored light. (Nikon D300, 17-55mm 2.8 lens, 1/250 @ f/5.0, ISO 200).

Notice the high tech snoot and gobo/snoot thing. The setup shot doesn’t show the main strobe. Below are a couple more.  

The final two photos were created to demonstrate the angle, shape and intensity of the beam.