Photographer for an evening
I got to play photographer for an evening tonight. One of the classes at Duquesne needed quick portraits taken of students in a class. The class was on Photoshop, and the students would then retouch their own portraits as part of the class. My Dad normally does them, but this year I mentioned that I’d like to help and get a chance to try-out some of my new lighting gear. Dad agreed, and so tonight I got to play.
We set up with the background muslin hanging from the grid in the TV studio. I have two studio strobes, so one was used as key light with a shoot-through umbrella, and the other was set up as a hair/top light with a 1/3 CTO and a 20-degree grid. I had my SB900 strobe, too, which we put on a short stand and used as fill light from the opposite side of the main light.
Shortly before the students arrived, I took a few test exposures with my Dad. Thanks to Jenny, I have a great incident light meter with flash-triggering and a special cable so that the camera, meter, and flashes can all be connected at the same time. That meter helped to get the exposures nailed right away.
My only regret is that the SB900 flash is a little cooler than the studio strobes, so some of the portraits have a slight color cast on one side of their faces.
Overall, this was a great experience. I finally got to use the strobes in a setting bigger than our living room, and they worked great. I do want the third strobe and tall stand, though. I’ll get that eventually. It would have been nice for all of the light to match, but no biggie in this case.
After we were done, Jenny met us at Duquesne, and we went to dinner at Fatheads in the South Side. Yum. Then we came home and I got started processing the photos, just for fun. I didn’t have anyone sign releases or anything, so I’m not going to post them, but it was fun to play with them and get some more time in on the pen tablet.
Well, I guess it’s about time for bed now. I’m excited because I got to do things that I like, though, and that makes me happy.
