Back Alley

After my marginal model shoot in Vegas, I really needed to get out and shoot "On Location" again. Fortunately a tatt'ed make-up artist (MUA) responded to my inquiry about being part of my "Tatt'ed Sheets" session, but to make her comfortable I suggested that we do a "test" shoot just to see if she felt comfortable working with me. We discussed the wardrobe and met downtown. After looking around for wet pavement(it rained earlier in the day), I chose the alley behind Stars Theater. The alley is narrow enough with sufficient light and a gritty feel.

I brought my three speed lights, brolly, SABER STRIP and my traveling suitcase. First I wanted to re-create car headlights to give the alley an added sense of place, so both SB-600s were set down the way on Nano stands about 2.5' high and even with each other.  No modifiers and no Pocket Wizards, just Nikon CLS to trigger the speed lights. The brolly was set-up Camera Left with an SB-900 and a full cut CTO gel. I figured I would set the White Balance to Incandescent so the available light would be "cool" and evoke a cold winter's night.


After a few shots, I then photographed Heidi up against a wall and gel'ed the SB-600s with purple gels and set the power to 1/32.  The lower the power, the better the color from the gels show.  However, they were still too white, so I added a second set of gels and the color was satisfactory.  Again I used the brolly as key.

For the last image I used the available light from three fluorescent lights in the alleyway.  I had Heidi walk towards me until the I felt the light was close to create a butterfly pattern.  I had to up my ISO to 3200 and shoot at f/1.4.  If you look at the shadows, you can see the noise.

So What Did I Learn?

• Nikon CLS has it's benefits - I mentioned it before that Manual control provides consistent control of your lights, but since it was dark and the available light wasn't changing, CLS worked perfectly.  I use Manual Mode on controlling the lights and not TTL.
• Buy some hair bands - I had to rig the second set of gels onto the speed lights by using clips, hair bands are cheap and light.

In the end, Heidi and I worked well together, so hopefully our next shoot will be a breeze.