Capturing your Setup Shots

After looking at many of the millions of Flickr photostreams that make use of off camera flash, I've decided to start including some captures of the setups I used for pictures displayed on this blog. I'm starting to see the benefit of doing so. It gives you a much better idea of where the light is actually going. This is something that's hard to predict when you're tightly focused on your subject. These setup captures act like mental notes of what worked and what didn't in a lighting setup at the time you were doing it. I've added a second umbrella since my last post. I was happy with the results, but I still have a lot to learn. Practice! Practice! Practice!

Quick Studio Style lighting

I had an idea for a little off camera lighting project. The entire setup took only 15 minutes. I borrowed a guitar from my son and decided to shoot against a bright background (my dining room) for some contrasting colors. Here are a couple of the pictures. I especially liked the contrast between the bright guitar and the darker orange wall and so I also did a few captures in black and white.

The setup: Guitar was suspended from an overhead shelf using a bungee. I used 3 strobes, one mounted on camera, but pointed away from the subject it was the trigger for the other flashes. I used Vivitar 285HV with optical trigger and pointed into a shoot-thru umbrella at camera right and an SB800 in SU4(Slave mode)was positioned under the guitar and pointed upward.