PDA

View Full Version : Jump!



jerryph
01-12-2009, 01:05 AM
I've posted this one before, but since it is now more appropriately in a studio section...

What happens when you have a photography studio and several photographers at your beck and call... some with a few very special talents like perhaps an adept Tai-Kwon Do practitioner? Well take a picture of a flying photographer, of course! This concept was thought up by one of my colleagues, but I guided, designed, implemented it and completed the concept in photoshop myself.

Get that one special photographer to give you one excellent 5-foot high jump side kick (took 5 tries before he got it *just* like I wanted... lol), a difficult feat to do on it's own, but now hold a $2000 Nikon D300 at the same time and that adds to the difficulty!

The Process and Lighting info:
The jumping kick was done with 3 lights... 2 umbrella mounted Nikon SB-600 speedlights at 45 degrees camera left and right. A 3rd Nikon SB-800 speedlight mounted camera right and beside the subject. This 3rd flash was snooted so that it gave a very hard directional beam on the subject's arm and throwing a hard shadow across the subject's face (yes, this was very specifically planned and desired).

The shot of the photographer's all lined up used only ambient light from the window on camera left and the strobes set atop the photographer's cameras, and were set to the same channel and group so that I could control their power output from my camera and when I took the picture, all of their speedlights would all flash at the same time I took the picture of the empty backdrop.

Finally, simply combine the 2 layers, align, touch up... and voila, a really fun picture to do in your studio that is original, fun and unique!

skeuos
01-12-2009, 01:28 AM
Jerry,
I especially appreciate all the info about the setup on this shot. Not sure what you mean by "snooted" - could you clarify?

thanks!
steve

jerryph
01-12-2009, 02:30 AM
Not sure what you mean by "snooted" - could you clarify?

Sure! Basically, all it is, is a rectangular piece of carboard that slips over the end of your battery powered flash.

You can buy them for about $40US or you could do what I did... and that was to make it yourself from an empty cereal box, scissors, a little roll of tape and a black marker to "black off" the first 6 inches of where the light exits (blacking off reduces the light bouncing and further narrows the beam of light slightly).

The longer the length of the snoot, the more focused and narrower the beam of light is.

I made myself 2 snoots of different lengths... 8 inches and about 15 inches.If you play your cards right, you can place the end of 1 into the opening of #2 together and make one longer 21 inch one (yes I know 8+15 is 23, but you stick them in about 2 inches deep so they hold well... lol) and I made them in about the time it took to watch 2 commercials on TV.

Basically they look like this:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3792/2480/1600/%20snoot.jpg

skeuos
01-12-2009, 01:38 PM
Thanks Jerry! Now to go finish some cereal . . .

steve

jerryph
01-12-2009, 01:49 PM
Haha! Good luck with your snoot! :D
(I bet when you started photography you never thought someone would tell you THAT, huh?)

laura
01-12-2009, 03:07 PM
Great idea Jerry. Thanks for the set-up info. I see so many great studio/portrait shots and have no idea how to achieve the same (or similar) results. Thanks. Looking forward to some more.