Fun with Flash and Friends - Cinematic Lighting

One of my friends was starting to put together idea for her project she needed to submit to film schools she was applying for, one of which (for USC) was to submit a series of six photos that told a story. There couldn't be any description of the plot or characters. The entire idea should be easy to understand by simply looking at the images submitted. I offered to help her with her concept of telling a story of...well I'll let you figure it out, since that was the point of the project. She wanted to not only not use words though, she wanted to not even have faces, so we brainstormed sort of a storyboard and shot as close to the waist down as we could. The other criteria of the project was that the images had to not be edited, couldn't even get the slightest brushing in Photoshop, so these images are straight out of camera. We used 5 Nikon speedlights to sculpt the light as much as we could in real life (and shot after dark to avoid having to fight the sun), which took a little while, but was totally worth it.

She got in by the way...

Motorcycle: Speedlite Style

One of my friends just bought a motorcycle and since I had a few hours of downtime, we decided to go out and take some cool night-time photos of it. We really want to do some motion shots on the highway, but didn't want to risk causing an accident during a weekend night (I already had my flashes attached to the car with Justin clamps and everything before I even thought about the problems we might cause!)...maybe later this week we'll get around to it. Anyway, I just wanted to share some of my favorites from tonight along with some setup shots so you can see where light was coming from (didn't think of taking setup shots until about halfway through the shoot). Enjoy!

Unfortunately all I had on me to take set-up shots with was my iPhone...not exactly the best quality at 10PM with little to no good light! As you can see, I was using three speedlites: two SB800 flashes and one SB900. Two were triggered using Pocketwizards and the other triggered by SU-4 mode on the SB800. All the flashes had different powers of CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gels and the camera was set on Tungsten white balance. This gives a nice gradient of different shades of normal to cool tones, which work well for glossy metal.

When taking pictures on shiny metal objects (like cars and bikes) make sure to place your flash where you won't get a direct reflection...except maybe on chrome accents

Fun with Smoke and Strobes

When I'm browsing the web the photos that always catch my eye are abstract images that you have to think about what YOU see in it. Although the subject matter itself may be very plain, what it represents or resembles jumps out at you immediately. It's sort of looking at an ink-blot test, everyone sees something different, based on their own imagination and experiences.

What I wanted to try is to take some abstract photos and then modify them slightly to guide your interpretation of what you're seeing. You might see something completely different than what I see in the images below, so please let me know what YOU see in the comments.

I had a blast taking these images and immediately seeing objects, figures, and entire scenes appear from abstract whisps of smoke (and no, it was not THAT kind of smoke!). These were all taken with two SB-800's and an SB-900 using large Joss Sticks (I know nothing about incense, but read online that these types produce the best type of smoke for photography purposes). Each flash had a set of flags/gobo's to keep the flash from hitting the background and other places where I didn't want it.

This was my first attempt at this kind of photography, but I'd like to think that some of these are at least half-decent results from a first go at smoke photography. Hope you enjoy!

Rip Tide

The Joker

Lady on the Water

Out of the Bottle

Eagle's Lunch

Flaming Escape