Subject Driven Lighting

This photograph was taken on my recent trip to Wyoming shooting pipeline work around the Green River & Rock Springs area. Work crews cut out early on the pipeline, anywhere around 4 or 5 PM. During the summer months, this leaves plenty of good light with no workers to photograph.

Before a particular trenching crew took off for the day, I asked to have a backhoe positioned close to the string of pipe. The operator of the backhoe showed us how to turn on the lights on the rig if we wanted them on. Of course we want them on, can we also take it out for a spin?

I order to light this photograph, I placed a Nikon SB-800 in the cab of the backhoe using a Justin Clamp. I placed the strobe above the visor with the diffusion dome attached, and I fired the strobe with a PocketWizard. You can see that the strobe in the cab not only lights the interior, it also provide some nice light on Erik. I positioned the cab door open in order to allow the light to reach Erik on the ground.

Here is the first shot in this series. You will notice as I did, how lifeless the outside front of the backhoe looks without light on it. In order to put more interest in the photo, I positioned a second strobe on the outside of the backhoe to light the front of the cab.

The second strobe, another Nikon SB-800 attached to a Justin Clamp was positioned on the backside of the bucket in order to provide light to the outside of the backhoe. This strobe was also fired via PocketWizard. The diffusion dome was removed and the wide angle plastic extender was placed over the lens of the strobe.

Subject driven lighting is a believable light, one that does not draw attention to the photographers hand. I'm not going for that "Hey, look at my light" style of photography, it's more about "creating light" that's believable.

Justin Clamp To The Rescue

Working on that pipeline job last week provided some tough shooting in mid day sunlight. The welding crew work under a blue canopy along side a tracker which carried the juice to run the welders. This was our first day on site and the welding crew was shut down after just a few minutes of shooting. The welding crew was working without a supervisor on site and because of that, they had to stop working.

Apparently, their where a few welders being trained and the on site supervisor was conducting the training. Who knows, I managed to get a few shots before the work ended.

You can see from the photo below, I have clamped a Nikon SB-800 using a Justin Clamp to the overhead canopy. I was firing this strobe using the CLS method.

By fastening the strobe to the canopy, my flash to subject distance remains the same as the crew move down the pipeline. This set up provided consistent flash exposures shot to shot, it also allowed me the opportunity to concentrate on composition instead of worrying about changing flash exposure.

VA Workshop, Battle Creek, MI

Today was our first day of a 3 day "Small Strobes, Big Results" workshop at the VA Hospital in Battle Creek, MI We have a total of 8 workshop participants from various VA hospitals in the surrounding region. The majority of the attendees have been using "on camera" flash as their primary light source.

This has been an exciting day of discovery for the participants of the workshop! With the first demo of a "location portrait" shot with off camera flash, we had them hooked. I'm sure you remember, the first time you saw the results of "quality" flash from a hot shoe speed light.

After a full morning of discussing the principles of light and how to control and modify the quality of light from our small strobes, we headed out on location to shoot. Our first subject was a nurse from down the hall who volunteered to be photographed.

In this photo, we bounced one SB-800 off the wall at camera right. I shot this using my 85 mm f/1.4 lens, shot at 1/250 of a second @ f/2.5, ISO 200. The walls of the hallway where off white and it provide a wonderful situation for a bounce technique. Not only does the bounce wall provide a great surface to do so, the return wall provides a wonder fill on the shadow side of the face.

After the photo above, we headed downstairs to a long hallway which connects several of the building together on the VA hospital campus. We photographed Angela, one of our workshop attendees in the hallway using the windows as a design element. The first exposure (below), was shot to illustrate to the workshop the existing light we had to work with. The second photo shows the use of bounced light off the wall at camera left. Bouncing the strobe on the left wall, reinforces the feeling that the light might be coming from another window like those on the left side of the hallway.

After shooting in the long hallway, we headed to a theater they have on campus. Here we photographed two other participants of the workshop demonstrating the use of shoot through umbrellas and snooted light sources.

This photo was shot using a shoot through 42 inch double folding Wescott umbrella, 85 mm f/1.4 lens, 1/4 second @ f/1.4, ISO 200. The choice of an f stop of 1.4 should be obvious, I wanted to drop the background into a soft out of focus area drawing the viewer eye to the subject. The shutter was dragged to a 1/4 of a second in order to record the ambient light striking the back blue wall.

In the photo above, we used daylight coming through a doorway at the top of the stairs to light the stairwell and a snooted SB-800 to light our subject. 1/20 second @ f/3.2, 50 mm lens. I'm looking forward to tomorrows discoveries at the VA.

Small Strobes, Big Results Michigan

Well I'm off to Michigan to teach two Small Strobes, Big Results workshops.  Starting Wednesday I'll be teaching a 3 day intensive lighting workshop for the VA hospital in Battle Creek, MI.  On Saturday the 6th, I'll be in Ferndale, MI (just north of Detroit) teaching a one day SSBR workshop.  I'm looking forward to both workshop and meeting each of you attending!

I just got back this past Saturday shooting pipeline work in Wyoming, you can see some of the work produced on the previous post.  I wanted to add some additional shots we did on the last day on the project.

Look for more posts during the week. DT

I'm Here to Say, I Must Be Going

Groucho Marx once used that phrase in one of their movies and it has always stuck with me.  Those words really ring true for me this week, I just got home last night from Oklahoma and I now find myself in another hotel room in Rock Springs, Wyoming this evening.

Erik and I drove up to Wyoming early this morning to shoot the construction of a natural gas liquids pipeline near Rock Springs and Green River, WY.  We have previously shot for this client when the pipeline was further east near Rawlins, WY.

This assignment is is particularly difficult for the following reasons.  First, crews working on the pipeline do not arrive until well after the sun has risen.  I can shoot sunrise without people in the shot, however I would prefer to shoot at sunrise with more activity taking place.  Second, the pipeline runs in a East/West direction, your either looking into the sun or you have the sun at your back.  When the sun is at your back, the light is so flat and unattractive coming from straight behind you.  The last problem is that the crews working the pipeline are finished at about 4 or 5 PM.  Durning the summer months here, the sun does not set until 8 PM.

I'll have a full day tomorrow shooting all the activity alone the pipeline.  Last time I was shooting this project we had some nice clouds in the sky, which helps fills to top portion of the frame of an image.

Another Image From Tonight

I was shooting at a small gas processing plant near Coalgate, OK this evening.  I had Erik climb up some of the super structure around the plant to pose for a photo.  We used one SB-800 fired with a PocketWizard at a distance of about 400 feet.  Erik placed the strobe on a Justin Clamp and clamped it on the railing just out of the frame, camera left.

For shots like this, we use walkie talkies to communicate with one another, which allows me to position him in the photo where I need him to complete a well composed photo.  We've shot a lot of video on this assignment and I will be posting it sometime in the future.

We'll be shooting helicopter aerials tomorrow of the plant we where photographing at this evening as well as a Frac job near Ardmore, OK.   I'll be headed back to Denver late tomorrow and out again on another assignment.

For those of you attending the Small Strobes, Big Results workshop in Detroit on September 6th,  I'll be sending out a quick questionnaire prior to the workshop...  I'm looking forward to the workshop and meeting all of you.  DT