Made in Atlanta

Today, Will and I went for a special shooting with lots of surprises we had to deal with. We had planned to shoot outside, however it was so cold and windy, so that it was virtually impossible to work outside. The wind would have blown away our lights immediately and my fingers were already frozen after 5 minutes being outside.

Luckily, while walking to the location that we originally planned for, we found a pretty amazing, abandoned indoor location. Protected from wind and pretty urban/industrial, it was clear that we would be settling for it. Unfortunately, we were not well equipped for indoor work and thus had to improvise with the result that one of the speedlites fell from 3 feet on the ground – survived but is battle-hardened now with a nasty scratch.

Here is the basic setup we used. We changed it a bit as we were shooting along – see EXIF data.

Camera: Sony NEX 6
Exposure: f/2.8, 1/160, ISO 400
Lens: Sony 50mm f/1.8
Flash 1: Canon Speedlite 430 ex ii @ 1/8th power into umbrella camera right
Flash 2: Yongnuo Speedlite YN 560  @ 1/16th power bare as rim light behind model left
Reflector for fill camera left
Triggered by a set of pocket wizards

As you can see, the setup was quite simple. We shot open enough to get a good amount of ambient light which helped a lot.

In reality, the setup then looked like this…

…as you can see, we did not even have a second light stand… Anyways, given all the circumstances… it worked out okay. We also made a backstage video which needs some serious editing. I will post it once its done – so stay tuned.