Dealing with problems while staying open to opportunities

So here's the scenario...you're doing a portfolio shoot for a model. You get lucky with a lovely sunny day and have organised a good time for the shoot so the light is spot on. You've chosen some pretty decent locations to take the shots, and you're getting on well with the model. One of those good vibe shoots.

It's a relatively fast moving shoot, and you don't have an assistant available to help you, so the lighting is simple - single light stand, 550EX and a shoot-thru brolly. This gives you the option of hard light with the brolly out the way, or softer light through the brolly, and still remains easily portable. The model has brought along a voice activated light-stand, although she mistakenly thinks he's her boyfriend. In this case, he is coming in useful as voice activated ballast to keep the brolly from acting like a sail and blowing the light stand over.

Here's an idea of the setup (taken during a previous shoot)...



It's a pretty reliable setup. Canon 550EX providing the grunt, fired by a pocket wizard. The two are connected via a hotshoe adapter which screws on to the light stand. Gives me freedom to shoot from pretty much anywhere, at any angle, without any misfires (speaking too soon...).

In my hand I have my 40D, pocket wizard on top, 70-200 lens on the front. Also got a 15-30 lens for shots such as the top one and a 580EX as backup if my 550EX dies. It's easier to swap a flash on the hotshoe than change batteries, if you want to keep the flow going.

So, back to the scenario, everything is working fine. You're shooting away, with no problems beyond the re-charge rate of the 550EX being slow with 1/1 power firing every shot. It's a bright day, and one 550EX is being maxed out. You decide to opt for a shot in out of the sun a touch, so pick up the light stand and walk with it.

Give the model some direction about where to stand, then fire a shot off. She's a silhouette against the background. First thought is batteries on the 550EX have given up. A quick check of the back shows the rear is showing ready to fire, and I do a quick test pop to see it definately is. I get a reassuring pop and decent re-charge sound. Pocket wizard batteries? Hit the test button and it shows a correct triggering via the red LED. Must be cables? Check them and everything is connected fine! Um...

So you've got a problem, you've done all the diagnostics you can right on a shoot, and it's coming up short. What do you do?

What would you have done in this situation, with the kit available? Have a think, and then scroll down to see what I did...



OK, here's what I did...

I had a relaxed laugh, and made a quick joke about my equipment in the least nervous sounding way possible. It shows I've not lost my cool, and I'm not worried...still keeping up the relationship with the model. It also shows confidence in myself as a photographer by making jokes when my equipment is failing, rather than breaking down and crying. And thirdly, it's giving me time to think "oh crap, what do I do now? *quiver*"

I had the obvious option of forgetting flash and shooting ambient only. I actually did take a couple of shots with ambient light to give me some thinking time. It kept everyone around me relaxed about the situation.

If you remember from above though, I also had a backup flash in the form of a 580EX, to use if the 550EX died on me. I therefore had a basic master/slave optical setup available to me. I could therefore stick the 580EX on in place of the pocket wizard and fire my 550EX. A perfectly adequate solution, but now I was losing my backup flash if the 550EX ran out of juice.

So I whipped the 550EX off the light stand and replaced it with the 580EX, and used the 550EX as master to control the 580EX in slave mode. Why? Well, I knew the 580EX had full batteries which would give the most shooting time with these heavy full power shots. Meanwhile, the 550EX which had already been worked quite hard, could take a relative retirement just firing triggering flashes. Apart from having to think about line-of-sight issues with optical triggering, I was back to full steam ahead.

So what was the down time on the shoot? About 30-40 secs spread either side about 1-2 mins shooting. I took about 10-15 secs when I had the problem trying to diagnose it. I then dismissed the setup as a no-go, and continued with the shoot opting for ambient light only shots. Having formed a plan, I then returned to the light stand, swapping the on-camera pocket wizard for my 550EX, and putting the 580EX on the light stand, slipping it in to slave mode as I tightened it on. I then slipped my 550EX into master mode, and disabled it from firing anything other than triggering flashes.

It's important to have backup options on a shoot. Many photographers use any old flash because they have radio triggers to fire them in manual mode, but if this happened to them, they'd be stuck with ambient only. It's important to have a second relatively bomb-proof way of working, and ideally one which doesn't require equipment which is only use as backup equipment, or else you'll end up carrying around so much more stuff.

One other thing that occurred to me on this shoot was trying to stay open to other ways of working. As I mentioned, it was a beautiful day, with great light. It's easy to get into the trap of only lighting shots, so it's good to stay open to the possibility of ambient light shots.

In the case of the following shot, I was working with flash off to the right of these steps, and I happened to notice some light reflected off a nearby glass building was giving a lovely line of light up the steps. I asked the model to move so she was sitting right in the light, and grabbed off a few shots, before moving back to the other setup. Ended up being one of the nicer shots, and with nothing but what nature provided. Remember to stay open to opportunities!



I'll let you out of your suspense...

The wire had obviously been pulled or shaken a bit too much on the hotshoe adapter, and one of the soldered connections had become lose. An easy fix afterwards at home with a multimeter and soldering iron, but far from obvious and easily fixed while doing a shoot!

Wordle-ing along

Came across another blog which had used this tool, and thought it was kinda cool. Looks at the frequency pattern of words on the site. That's the first however many posts anyhow. Quite unsurprisingly "Lighting" is the biggest and most common. There are some other interesting and less expected ones though! :)

Product Photo: Arran Malt Whisky

The shot above was done with a relatively straight-forward three light setup. As a starting point for this shot, I stuck a honeycomb on a 550EX flash (equivalent to the Canon 580EX II) and used it to get a good strong light on the label of the product. This is always important when you're shooting a bottle such as this.

I then wanted to show off the whisky itself, so I needed to shine some light through the bottle. The only alternative would be a light background, but that wouldn't have gone with the mood I wanted. I placed another 550EX flash (equivalent to the Canon 580EX II) with a CTO behind the bottle and did a test shot.



As you can see, it's a little on the hot side. Not only that, but light is spilling round the side of bottle. I therefore put on a mask which acts a little like a snoot, preventing too much spill. I also notched down the power a touch.



Nearly there, I had to notch down the power on the rear light another notch, to keep the highlight under control.



It's gone very contrasty and dull now, so putting a mini softbox with a CTO gel in above gives some fill, as well as stopping the top of the bottle from disappearing into the background.



The last step is some atmosphere in a can - Magican Smoke Spray - it's like a mini smoke machine in handy sprayable form. Great stuff!



Here's some setup images

Interesting Book: The Photographer's Guide to the Studio

I recently came across an interesting lighting book in my local second hand book shop. It's written by Roger Hicks and Frances Schultz and is called The Photographer's Guide to the Studio.

It's basically a complete guide to studio lighting, for animate and inanimate objects. The works!

There's two main sections, I guess it'd best be described as. The first contains five chapters:

1. Why Studio? - a short chapter looking at why you might want to do studio work, both for amateurs and professionals.

2. A Studio of your own - describing all the important things you need to know if you're contemplating setting up a studio of your own.

3. Your camera in the studio - where cameras, lenses and camera requirements are discussed. This section shows the book's age, with no mention of digital cameras. However, the information is often still useful and at least of interest.

4. Studio Lighting - a chapter looking at different types of lighting (tungsten vs. flash etc.), available modifiers, and other equipment in the studio.

5. Accessories, backgrounds and props - looking at other stuff in the studio which is less directly related to the lights, such as backgrounds, posing stools/tables/etc., props and so on.

Moving on to the second section, which in my opinion is the most interesting section. It is titled Getting the shot you want, and is exactly what it says. It divides into sub-sections which are each about four or so pages long, covering all sorts of studio photographs you might want to do, and giving advice and examples.

The sections are:

- Male adult portraits
- Female adult portraits
- Nudes
- Couples, friends and groups
- Subject supports
- Children and young people
- Fantasy and fashion
- Close-up and copying
- Still life
- Flowers
- Jewellery
- Pack and product shots
- Glass
- Food
- How-to and step-by-step
- 'Exploded' pictures

Most of those are obvious. The last two might be a bit confusing without explanation though. How-to and step-by-step is looking at studio photography for how-to books which shows each step in a process. This is looking at lighting which works well for a number of different shots for a consistent look, without having issues of moving lights between each shot because things have changed. Similarly, the 'Exploded' pictures section is looking at making studio photographs which demonstrate how products go together. Think of a pen - the top clicker section, the spring, the ink cartridge and the bottom section which screws to the top - all exploded out for a photograph. Well, this gives you hints and tips for doing it.

Last of all, there's an interesting little Appendix entitled "Deconstructing lighting" which looks at figuring out the lighting in photographs based on shadows, highlights, catchlights etc.

Given that the book was published in 2002, it does show its age a bit. The photographs aren't all that modern looking, and camera related information is entirely film oriented. However, if you can get past that, there's some really good information about the one thing that hasn't changed in 6 years - light!

If you're looking for a one-stop shop for studio lighting that will give you a guide whatever studio shot you're putting your lens towards, you could do a lot worse than this book.

Spring Clamps

I've had a couple of questions regarding the Spring Clamps which I use to hold up flashes when I'm not using lighting stands. I also notice that some of the searches which lead people to my blog relate to these clamps, so I figured an entry might be of use to people.

First of all, the clamps which I use are sold by Maplin in the UK. You can find them here:

Maplin Large Photography Clamp

They're not as solid as proper clamps which screw tight, but they're much quicker and generally solid enough for most jobs. They have a rubber grip which is shaped so that they fit well on circular tubing, and the rubber stops them spinning too easily. With a 550EX (equivalent to Canon 580EX II) flash on though, don't expect them to hold themselves from spinning! The rubber also goes over the tip of the clamp which means they get a good grip on the edge of a table and such like.

One of the downsides of this clamp is that the flash is pretty big relative to it, so the flash can't sit properly vertically on the clamp. The ball head could be a little bit further from the clamp which would help with this, but it's a problem you can usually just about get around by some creative twisting and turning.

So what are the other options?

The first is to buy a cheap clamp, get a bolt and nut and make up your own with a bit of DIY. If you have a mini ball head from somewhere, you could even make it pretty professional looking.

At the other end of the scale is the clamp made by manfrotto. It's a little dearer, but it does have some nice touches. Major advantage that I can see, from looking at pictures of it, is that it has the ball head right up one of the arms of the clamp, meaning it's easier to make the flashgun clear the clamp when putting it at steep angles. The downside is that it doesn't actually appear to have quite as good a grip as the maplin ones, which have wider jaws and a better rubber grip. On a flat surface though, such as the edge of a table, the Manfrotto MN275 Mini Spring Clamp might grip a little touch better.

I believe that the Manfrotto clamp is also sold as a version with a hotshoe (or a coldshoe really) which is known as the Bogen (or Manfrotto) Justin Spring Clamp.