First professional shoot - some broad advice required.

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Hello all,

I've recently been approached to photograph a fully modeled clothing range for a parkour / skate clothing brand.

As it's my first time shooting fashion and as a bit of a favour, I'm just wondering if anyone can provide me with some pretty broad advice, with regards to specific equipment besides camera, remote flash and a wide aperture lens. The location is to be in daylight at a semi derelict stately home and derelict hospital (both with permission and payment pending)

I'm just wondering whether I'll need reflective discs, any other lighting...

I know it's a bit of a wooly question, just thought I'd ask for a bit of wide ranging advice... :shrug:
 
j, what have you got available? I tend to stick the hockey bag with everything (flashes, triggers, lightstands, multi-way brollies, etc) in the back of the car. I have a plan in advance of how I want to light, but it pays to remain flexible and respond to the way the shoot. goes

Do you know what you want the finished result to look like?
 
If you want to shoot with wide apertures in daylight you're going to need to think carefully about the limitations of your flash sync speed. If it is properly bright (sunlight) and you can't use high speed sync, which off camera you may not be able to depending on how you trigger the flash, you're going to need to have some ND filters on hand to get your shutter speed down to sensible figures. Even if you have the option of HSS the power of the flash drops by about 1 stop as soon as you cross that threshold, and the power drops around another stop for every doubling of the shutter speed from that point forward.

As an example, Sunny 16 says you need 1/100 at f/16 and 100 ISO for a "correct" exposure of sunlit scene in "average" scenery (snow, white sand and water are so reflective that you'll need to lower the exposure further). At your sync speed, which I assume to be 1/250, you could open up to f/10, but any wider than that and you may start to overexpose the scene. A 1 stop ND will allow f/7.1. 2 stops will allow f/5. 3 stops will allow f/3.5. That's a starter at least, but if you want a moody background and a wide aperture you may need even more filtration. Of course, if it's not bright sunshine then the challenge diminishes, but you won't know what you'll be dealing with till the day.

Naturally sticking an ND8 on the front of your lens is going to have a big impact on flash range, so I hope you have enough flash power to get the results you want. If you will be using lighting modifiers then that's a further drain on flash power. If you are going with bare heads and you have overcast conditions then you should have a much easier time of it. The "Confessions....." series on YouTube may give you some ideas....

Episode 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqMI72jsXRQ
 
Alastair / Salt, thanks for that, good to see you on another forum :)

Tim, thanks so much for the comprehensive reply. It's time to start gathering and experimenting with ranges, flashes and different lighting before the actual shoot...

Karl - thanks for the offer but I have a 2nd tog already on board.
 
Have you been to the location to have a scout? Come up with some ideas and know what you want to do before the day. I think having a plan is the most important thing.

Are you going to be using strobes or speedlights? In terms of equipment, a CP filter, and a sandbag might be useful.
 
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