Taken for the Strobist Lighting102 “Work That CTO” assignment.

To get this shot, I used two Canon 580 EX flash guns (one a 580 EX II, one a 580 EX, which my friend and work colleage Drew Stearne kindly lent me for the evening). As you can see in the image on the left, the key light was placed camera left, facing in at about a 30-45 degree angle to the subject. I used a snoot which I knocked together out of an old mobile phone box, with the CTO gel gaffa taped over the front (see image on the right). I also used a white umbrella to diffuse the light. To mount the whole thing I setup my Manfrotto tripod and gaffa taped the base of the flash to the tripod head. Ordinarily I’d use masking tape to do the job (gaffa tape leaves nasty, sticky marks on your kit!), but I’d run out and gaffa was all that was to hand.

The second 580 EX was placed on a stool to the right of the camera, slightly behind the subject (image below). I was using it as an edge highlighter, and left CTO off, to give a nice blue tinge to the right edge of James’ face and body. Unfortunately I didn’t have it dialed in quite right and the highlight isn’t as strong as I’d like, but nevermind.

Once I had the kit in place, I exposed for the sky and then dialed the flash heads in until I was happy with the balance. Both flash heads were triggered using the Canon ST-E2 wireless trigger.

For post, I used Lightroom to crop to 2.39:1 aspect ratio, and then did a little selective dodging and burning to boost contrast here and there, but not by much. What you see is pretty much how it came off the camera, which is such a rare occurance for me that I’m really happy with how it all came out

See the rest of the entries for this assignment on the flickr group.

Join the discussion on this assignment here.

• June 5th, 2008
• People, Photography, Technique
• 2 comments
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