I’ve been looking forward to sharing a few more images from the Filabusta shoot that I did a few weeks ago. Gotta tell you, it was a ton of fun!
What was most enjoyable? Well, to be honest there was a lot about doing that shoot that was fun, not one specific thing. The location was extremely cool, the band members were looking to do a casual / fun type of shoot, the natural lighting was super harsh with big huge shadows everywhere (and I liked it), and finally, I really felt good about what I did with the portable flash units. Overall, it made for a good end to the day for me!
Just a view of part of the scene
The location itself was very cool! Some type of abandoned structure on the outskirts of town. Past the bouldering area at Groom Creek, up a winding dirt road, and randomly off the road. If you don’t know what you’re looking for you’re likely to miss it. Glad I was following Kenny!
One of the features that jumped out at me was an abandoned couch with the words “Sleep on me” spray painted on it. Uh, yeah, thanks but I’ll pass. Who knows what exotic disorder you could get from utilizing that thing!
Can you believe I got them to sit on the Hanta ridden couch? Somebody get them antibacterial soap!
In total, we picked 7 different spots at the location to shoot in. Partly we were working around the sun, and partly just picking what we thought might be cool. Poses, concepts, etc, were all coming from the guys. Kenny really wanted to go with something casual and not your standard band images. So, I listened and then tried to help them get exactly what they wanted out of the time we had.
While listening I also kept shooting. As they’d talk about an idea I’d continue shooting away. That’s what led to a favorite image that won’t get used for anything but this blog post. It cracks me up. See, it’s Kenny explaining the “boulder shot” concept that you’ve seen here before. He’s telling the other guys that they should drop drawers and stand like they’re covering up with the boulders. I think the expressions from Mike and Lorin are priceless, and you can clearly see Kenny’s enthusiasm for the concept…….
So what we'll do is hold boulders like this......come on guys, it'll be great!
Overall, it was good fun. Below you’ll see a few more shots right out of the camera (no edits), and an explanation of my setup for one of the images. Would a do a shoot for Filabusta again? Yeah, in a second!
Lorin seems concerned
Just hanging out waiting on the photographer to get the speedlights right.....
Have you noticed Lorin is always in the middle? Yeah, I've noticed too.
For this particular shoot, given the really odd natural lighting (harsh) I decided that I’d stay away from aperture priority and deal with full manual. It’s not too difficult to do once you start gaining experience with the 580 & 430EX II’s. Combined with the ST-E2 you can really do a lot right from the camera. Just jump into the 5D Mark II’s menu, cruise over to external flash, and voila….you can control a good bit on the remote lights. Even better? You can control a good bit from the ST-E2. Does that mean I didn’t need an assistant? Nope, I needed one. “Move that light stand, tote that case, grab me some water……….”
Alas, no assistant on hand.
For the photo above I used the following set up. First, before we talk camera and strobes I’ll tell you about the sun. The sun was coming in from camera left. It was still casting hard shadows, and annoying me when I looked through the viewfinder. So, I placed one strobe camera left closer into the guys, and one camera right directly out of the frame. One flash was in group A, one in group B. Group B was camera right, and I powered that up higher than group A. The shot itself?
1/2000th f/5.6. Using the 24-70mm f/2.8 L series lens, and shooting at 43mm. Group B’s flash was pushing 8:1 over group A’s flash. There ya have it.
So, there you go. A few more images, mostly straight out of the camera except the first two. Had to have a little post processing in the post, right? It was fun, and I think I want to do more of this type of stuff to keep working on what I can bring across in the final image. Who would have thought I’d need to start hanging out over at Strobist!