Ano de Los Muertos

In my 2012 year-end post, I outlined my goals for 2013, so after talking with Jenna we set-up a shoot for January 1 and I would at least knock out some dramatic lighting and a themed shoot all in one.

Jenna has been wanting to do a Dia de Los Muertos shoot and I finally agreed.  I asked one of my favorite Make-up Artists, Clara to participate, and although it was New Year's Day, she was more than willing to do the laborious make-up and hair for our shoot.

Back in December I was photographing the guests at my Company's Holiday Dinner and broke an Einstein Flash tube, so for this shoot I had to use three different lights, which means three different color temps.  Einstein for key, Alien Bee 1600 for Rim and SB-900 for background and fill depending on set-up.  Then while getting my gear set-up, I couldn;t find my Flex TT1 transmitter, so I had to use a Flex TT5 to trigger the Einstein and set both the Alien Bee and SB-900 as Optical slaves.

For modifiers, I used a Beauty Dish with a Diffusion Sock and a grid, sometimes.  For the Rim, I used a gridded strip box with no diffusion and on the SB-900 I used HONL Gels (Red and Pink), or bare and bounced off the garage door.  I used my Storm Gray Seamless paper, which works great for shooting gel'ed flashes at since the color has nice falloff.

What Did I Learn?

Well the shoot went really well, all the lights and modifiers worked as expected.  No malfunctions during the shoot.  Hopefully this shoot will be indicative of a majority of my shoots, however; I wouldn't learn anything if everything went as planned every time.  I already have two shoots lined up for the first weekend of January.  YIKES!!!

Thanks Clara and Jenna for taking time on your New Year's day to create some really cool images!!!