In July, I caught up with the Cancer Bats while they were on tour with As I Lay Dying and Underoath for The Cool Tour 2010. For these shots, I used a simple two-light set against a simple backdrop for a slightly moody shot with a little graphic pop.
Photographer’s Notes:
When doing tour portraits like this, locations are always going to be a little tricky, as you generally have to work with a location that’s nearby to the venue.
While I normally try to avoid shooting straight into a wall, I found this nice red garage door at a warehouse a few minutes from the venue. My approach for this look was more like that of a studio shoot with some true grit thrown in.
First frame to last, I shot with the Cancer Bats for about 8 minutes. Super simple setup on this one – beauty dish above the guys and a light behind them washing over the wall.
Here’s a shot of that two-light setup – just ignore that 46-inch Photek Softlite II behind my assistant Corey, it wasn’t used for these two final shots.
Camera Gear Used:
Lighting Gear Used:
The exposure for these images was 1/250 at ISO 200 and f/11. Even just using small flashes like the SB-900, they give plenty of power when working in open shade like we were for this shoot to pretty much kill ambient light if you want.
If you’re wondering about the background, it was just lit by one Nikon SB-900 with the flash head zoomed to 200mm. The zoom, together with the position of the flash relatively close to the red door and the falloff of the flash, creates the “vignette” look you see on the background.
A snap of my assistant Allyssa standing in while testing the look of the background lighting.
As for the light on the band, that’s all DIY Beauty Dish, held up and over the band from camera left. Lights triggered via IR – Nikon’s CLS.
End Notes:
Big thanks to Cancer Bats for being awesome Canadian dudes, especially after the shoot had to be rescheduled after their performance. They were dead tired when we shots this.
Another special thanks to my assistants Allyssa and Corey for helping throughout the long day of portraits.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 28th, 2010 at 7:21 am and is filed under Portrait Photography and tagged with cancer bats, cool tour, Jaye Schwarzer, Liam Cormier, Mike Peters, photos, pics, portrait, Portrait Photography, promo, Scott Middleton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Brilliant man. I agree, walls should be left alone unless it has a nice texture or something that pops out.
Making a vignette off the SB is a good call. Makes it that much better than a straight wall shot.
Hey Jim, thanks for the comment. Agreed about walls – unless there’s a compelling texture, walls are often just a dead end visually.
Straight flash would have had some fall-off, but not as dramatic as I would have liked. As it happened, 200mm zoomed created just the right spread.
Portraits: Cancer Bats http://bit.ly/aP6BLl
You are a clever, clever man, great idea with the 900…
I’ve used the zooming trick with single portraits before, but not a group. Same effect, though.
Those speed lights sure pack a lot of power
Hey Melly, thanks for the comment. As long as there isn’t bright sunlight to contend with, speedlights pack plenty of power.
It’s only when you’re trying to kill the sun or use big modifiers when you really need to step it up.
And since these lights are well under 100ws, it really puts things in perspective when people say how “underpowered” the Elinchrom Rangers are at 400ws.
Just stumbled upon your site, and I’m loving the work you do! With the full body shots for this band it looks like you cloned out the background light stand. That correct? In this shot the stand looks to big to hide behind the guys (the manhole cover is also gone) the way they’re positioned. Is that a normal process on your shoots where you use back lighting?
Hey Todd,
First off thanks for this tutorial.
I tried it out myself to great success. Well, until the cops came along and moved us on for ‘loitering’…
Anyway, coming from Ireland, I am not graced with the great weather you seem to have. While it rains a LOT, my bigger issue is the wind! Your SB-900 looks very steady on that mount, though. Can I ask what kind of connection it is? I’m afraid I’ll lose another SB flash to being, literally, blown (away) to bits.
Is there anything I can do to make my light stands more sturdy too, while we’re on the issue?
Cheers,
A big fan,
Sean