Copy Me Lighting Thread 7

Michael Sewell

Michael Sewell

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Michael A. Sewell
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Basically posted to refresh the "Follow me lighting technique" thread, as I believe it's a valuable resource :)

If anyone followed me via Twitter, you'll know I had a rather hectic weekend, with a wedding in Wigan on Friday and a wedding in Perth on Saturday.

ok, what do we have here? Seeing as sunsets tend to be in short supply in the UK, I try and make the most of any sunset that coincides with an event I'm photographing, and Saturday's wedding was one such event.
How was it done? Fairly simple OCF rules and basics. I underexposed the sunset to enrich the colours by setting the Nikon D3 ISO to an equivalence of 100 and using a shutter speed of 1/250th (tiny amount of curtain shadow starting to show along the bottom of the frame, but not enough to worry about).
Using my all time favourite lens, the Nikkor 24-70 G f2.8 at an aperture of f4.5, I was effectively underexposing the scene by around two stops. This of course also underexposes the bride and groom by the same value. To combat this, I had an SB-900 camera right at head height and just out of frame, along with a Metz 54 MZ-3 camera left just out of frame. Both strobes were at 1/2 power to compensate for the underexposure dialled in-camera.
Both strobes were gel'd with full window green and the D3's white balance was set to fluorescent. This has the effect of emphasising the sunset colours and giving that lovely magenta hue along cloud lines etc.
One thing I found when post processing, the D3's fluorescent setting is for a cool white fluo, and does not match the window green gel exactly. It's not out by much, but enough to give a very slight green tint to the dress in shadows. This was rectified by setting the white point to the grooms collar which I knew was white, whereas the dress was an ivory colour. The added bonus was the deepening of the sunset colours when the white balance was set correctly.
Before anyone asks about the radio triggers, they are Yongnuo RF-602 and they can be bought from [user]Flash In The Pan[/user]
Taken at Murrayshall House Hotel in Perth, Scotland. A superb venue for weddings of any size, but especially smaller, more intimate weddings.

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Nice, I really like shots like this - flawless composition and technique.
 
Stu, if I were to be brutally honest, the composition would have been better if I had reduced the camera height and therefore lowered the horizon a little. Rather than have it cut mid frame.
But there you go.
Hindsight is great, but worth bog-all :thinking:
 
Hi Michael, could you explain why two flashes were needed when they were both quite close to the camera? I could understand if you had a whole keylight and fill light setup but it sounds like your flashes were both quite close to the camera and so i was confused why you had two. Hope it's not too dumb a question.
 
Hi [user]dubcat[/user]
Nah, not a dumb question at all.
ok, why two flashes? Well, for a start, using two flashes means you can have both flashes at half the required output a single flash would need to be at, therefore reducing by half the recycle time on each flash. That is certainly something to be considered when shooting portraits, as you often need to fire on impulse to catch "the moment" as it were. Also, the light changes very quickly during the latter stages of a sunset.
The lights weren't actually that close to me. One strobe was around 5 feet away to my left, and the other was around 6 or 7 feet away to my right.
Having the two flashes so far apart meant they would "fill" each other's shadows, giving a more wrapped effect.
Does that answer your question? Anything else, just ask ;)
 
Ah ok - got it. Did you use softbox or umbrella to soften the light?
 
No, no softboxes or umbrellas as they would have cut down the light output quite severely. Stofens were used on both strobes, mostly to hold the gels in place, but also to spread the light evenly. As the subjects were a fair distance away, softening the light isn't quite as important, and you can get away with this technique.
 
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