Mystery at The Nile

This past Sunday, Mystery and I finished our two location shoot for building her portfolio at Bakersfield's Nile Theater. Many photographers have shot there with some good results, however; my attempts were mediocre at best. This time I wanted to use the Nile's, often photographed, cobalt blue tile like a studio background. The difficulty in shooting the tile is the highly reflective surface, so controlling light spill is a challenge.

My previous attempts were done using Nikon CLS and Aperture Priority Mode. If I recall, I got pretty frustrated because the in-camera meter readings varied and the images were either too dark, or blown. I know Nikon CLS works for Joe McNally, so why not for me? Oh yeah, he's been shooting for decades and is sponsored by Nikon.

On this go round, I asked Mystery to wear a black dress, black heels, smokey eye shadow, either red or black lipstick, and really tease her hair out.  She arrived and looked completely different from our "Field" shoot.

For lighting, I decided to use my Alien Bee Ring Flash on this shoot since I haven't used it as a key light.  On a couple test shots, it was blowing out a fair portion of the blue tile, so I decided to treat it as a beauty dish and mounted it on my Combi-boom.

We started at about 6:45 PM, but as it got darker the flash power of the Ring Flash was too much and the ambient light was basically non-existent, so I switched to my 43" brolly and SABER STRIP.  We worked on some poses and by the end of the shoot we got my favorite image of the night.

The key light is an SB-600 mounted in a 43" brolly about 45 degrees camera left, at 1/16th power.  The rim light is from an SB-600 in my SABER STRIP about 105 degrees camera left, at 1/8th power.  The SABER STRIP reduces the flash power by almost a 1/2 stop, and I wanted it to be a little brighter than the key light, so that is why it is a full stop brighter than the key.  Make sense? 





What did I learn?

• Don't give up on the Ring Flash - A lot of pictures in the magazines use some form of Ring Flash, and it has a really nice look.  I think I need to try it on less reflective surfaces and come up with poses that focus on the head and shoulders.

Mystery and I have another shoot planned with a different look. I'm also planning to continue my White Sheets Sessions, I just need to find models with lots of tattoos.  So if you know of any, please send them my way.

As an aside, today is my youngest son's 17th Birthday.  When did he get older, wiser, taller, and more handsome. Love you Drew!!!