February 22, 2009 – Taking a moment from bringing the crushing, melodic metalcore to their adoring fans, I met up with the OC’s own Bleeding Through for a quick portrait shoot.
I’d seen Bleeding Through in 2007 when the band opened up for HIM. While the band’s harder sound seemed like a bit of a disconnect to the “love metal” that followed, it was great to see Bleeding through win over the crowd by the end of their set, even whipping the pit up by their finale.
Despite the sunny weather, it was a brisk 33º F outside during the shoot, but the band was nothing but great to work with despite the cool temperatures. With the lights set up, we got to work and knocked it out.
Shooting Notes:
This was the first shoot I’d done outside in full, bright sunlight – weaker, Winter sunlight, but full sunlight nonetheless.
To work with this situation, I decided to cut as much of the ambient light as possible while adding flash to create some a little pop with the subjects. Given the 1/250 flash sync on the D3 and the bright ambient, this mean stopping well down, cranking on the flash power, and using multiple units.
I used four SB-600s as the remotes for this shoot, triggered by an SB-900 on-camera with the D3. I ganged up two of the SB-600s and positioned them camera right as the key light. The sun was high camera left, providing fill in this instance that’s basically a cross-lighting setup.
The remaining two SB-600s were used as back/rim lights at roughly 45º off-axis from the camera behind the subjects.
I think it’s worth noting that all the small flashes were shot bare, without umbrellas or reflectors to soften the light. While I normally always shoot with umbrellas, I needed every ounce of power from the flashes, so we went commando with it, as it were.
End Notes:
Big thanks to the five-strong gang of Bleeding Through: Brandan, Jona, Ryan, Dere, and Marta were all great, gracious subjects.
Also, a big hug out to Ryan and Pepe for setting everything up so quickly and being flexible.
Finally, thanks to Dave Mullis for assisting with this shoot.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Music Photography and tagged with 2009, band, Brandan Schieppati, Brian Leppke, Derek Youngsma, images, Jona Weinhofen, Marta Peterson, photo, photography, portrait, promo, Ryan Wombacher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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New blog post: Portrait shoot with Bleeding Through. 4 SB-600s, 1 SB-900, and a D3 later: http://is.gd/lvlx
Hey Todd, good stuff. I recommend to you the lumiquest softbox 3 if you’re in close with someone in mid day light. It can allow you to under expose ambient and still get some power out of the speedlight.
Either that or you can just bring your umbrella up right near your flash head and shoot through.
Hi Matt, thanks for the comment. All the flashes were at 1/1, so I needed as much power as I could get in these shots! With future bright daylight shoots, I’ll have to experiment with getting the flashes in quite close to see if that can work. Thanks for all the suggestions.
To be honest, I don’t think these ones are good, they’re okay but no winners. The background is plain, simple and unanttractive as the light is, just the flashs on “nuke them all out” mode. I’m missing shadows at all, there is no plasticity in those shots.
I also would have recommended to underexpose the ambient and would have used fewer lights to really direct the light spill and not just spread the light everywhere. At last, #6 works best for me.
Thanks for the criticism, Andreas. The ambient light was dialed down as much as possible. What does plasticity mean to you in your portraits?
I was actually thinking the background looked sufficiently under to help the subjects pop. Anything more than 1/2 stop or so more than this and it’d look a bit meh. It’s not the most interesting background though, however it is a change from what a metal band is usually photographed against.
Hi Craig,
Great to hear form you. Thanks for your thoughts here. I do appreciate the criticism, it keeps me honest!
There were some other grungy backdrops that were options, but I’d used many of them before, as this was shot at the venue where the band was later performing. Regardless, good things to think about for next time, thanks again.
Todd,
these are very good composition.
As for the lighting, I really do not object to it at all. It has a fine even quality..Yes, the background isn’t the greatest.. I don’t know what your feelings are about photoshop manipulation, but you could easily take these shots into photoshop and give them a lil extra zing…. blur out the background, add in some saturation for more intense flesh tones… but over all very nice!
Hey Janet,
Thanks for the feedback on this, I was hoping you’d weigh in here. Generally I’m not too keen on heavy manipulation, but thanks for the suggestions. The even look of the background is one thing I think some are reacting against here, as we’re basically looking at flat daylight there.
These were shot on-location outside of a venue the band was playing later that evening. I’m going to make it my goal to shoot in this same spot for a future band at some point, at a later time in the day, just to see if we can play with some things here. Thanks again for the feedback.
Todd,
later in the day would give your warmer light, and nice elongated shadows.
I honestly think just popping in some saturation (for warming the tones) would really transform the look.
Over all you have a great subject to work with.. the images already have strong content, and good focus… I do a lot of location work and honestly… in the day of digital… Photoshop is a location photographer’s best friend.
That way when you are not working with perfect light, or a perfect background, you can use the tools of Photoshop.. don’t shy away from it… the one thing I have truly learned over the years is Photoshop cannot save a badly composed photograph… but it can take a photograph (like the ones above) which have a strong base content , and truly make them sing :o)
If you wouldn’t mind Todd, I would love to pull a couple of your shots off your site, do a few minor photoshop adjustments, and zing them back to you in email… just to give you a good idea of what you could do with them… (but nor do I want to step on your toes! I completely understand how protective one can be of their work and I completely respect that)
Hey Janet,
Thanks for the extended feedback. I’d have loved to shoot later in the day (this shoot was about 2:00pm), but schedules being what they were, it was not possible this time around. Next time, though – this was an unusually early shoot!
Feel free to have a go at the images and send them back to me. Heck, maybe this could be a fun post processing “contest” in the future.
Todd,
incoming pics to your inbox… cannot wait to hear your thoughts.
Good call with the ambient and interesting use of flashes. I like the group photo with that awesome wide lens you have :) Using the bares flashes was good for the harsh sidelighting, which I like. That last one is certainly the coolest.
Hey Chris, thanks for your thoughts on this set. You know, that wide shot is just at 24mm – no 14-24mm in this set.
Hi Todd
My first thought when looking at the photos is that since you were using the Nikon CLS system it may have been worth burning through a mess of batteries and using High FP Sync (and it’s associated faster shutter speeds) to bring down the ambient considerably.
I love seeing what other people are doing with lighting. Thanks for putting these up!
Clint
Hey Clint, thanks for the suggestion. High speed sync is really something I need to experiment with. Another “next time” addition. Thanks for the comment, I appreciate it.
[...] a supplementary post to the recent Bleeding Through portraits, I thought it might be interesting to share an example of the specific role flash played in the [...]
music photograpgy…bleeding through http://bit.ly/cV73Hf