Portraits: Drummer DJ Swanson

Don’t be fooled by DJ’s name – he’s a drummer through and through. You may recall DJ Swanson from the shoot with his band Interplause late last year.

For this set of solo portraits, we decided to try something a bit different, and shot DJ with one of his Yamaha drum kits. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to test out the new Pocketwizard ControlTL units (FlexTT5 and MiniTT1) for Nikon. How’d these new flash triggers do? Hit the full set to find out.

Photographer’s Notes:

Cameras Used:

• Nikon D3

Lenses Used:

• Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8

Lighting Equipment Used:

• Nikon SB-900 (3x)
• Nikon SB-600 (2x)
• Manfrotto 9′ Quick Stack lighstands
• Nikon SD-9 battery pack (2x)
• Pocketwizard MiniTT1 for Nikon
• Pocketwizard FlexTT5 for Nikon (5x)
• Lastolite Ezybox Softbox

For me, this shoot was all about the new Pocketwizard FlexTT5 and MiniTT1 units. If you haven’t already, you can check out my review of these new Pocketwizard ControlTL units for Nikon over at FlashRAW.

For the most part, I used a mix of four remote speedlights for this set, all attached to the Pocketwizard FlexTT5 units – two Nikon SB-900s and two Nikon SB-600s.

On my Nikon D3, I used the Pocketwizard MiniTT1 and the Nikon SB-900 speedlight as the commander unit. The beauty about the Pocketwizard ControlTL system is being able to control CLS groups exactly as you can with your Nikon speedlights but now with the reliability of radio transmission. No more line-of-sight issues or having to worry about bouncing the IR signal to get the lights to fire.

The key lights in this set are two Nikon SB-900 speedlights fired in a cross-lighting configuration, firing perpendicular to the camera axis.

The fill light here is provided by a small, 15″ Lastolite Ezybox Softbox, through which I fired a Nikon SB-900.

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About the author: Todd Owyoung is an internationally published music photographer specializing in concert photography and band portraits. He also grills a mean steak.

Contact Todd for image licensing and assignments wherever the rock show lives. You can also get in touch with Todd via Twitter.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 13th, 2011 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Portrait Photography and tagged with band photographer, band portrait, band promo, dj swanson, music photographer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.