it was a bright sunny day..... and the empty rooms at Biju's place were washed with light..... late morning hours produced enough light to give our thinking a specific direction...... we started with available light.... we used the great big windows as softboxes.... and the light wrapped around the subject pretty nicely..... we also used ambient lights through windows to give some efects......
then we started to think crazy...... the first thing that came to our mind was to overpower the sun..... because the sun was too strong to think in any other direction..... high-speed sync (Auto FP in Nikon) was the result...... we used a single flash light with snoot to illuminate the subject's face, grossly underexposing the bright window in the back..... our idea was to make it look like a late afternoon shot......
setup......
next, we decided to use an empty white wall as the backdrop.... light was falling on the wall from one direction...... but it wasn't really strong..... we opened up a door on one side, which gave stronger light from the opposite direction.... but that light wasn't strong enough to really overpower light from the other direction.... so, we set up a flash with an umbrella beyond the door to give a soft, but natural-looking light on the subject...... I didn't really take any shots here, because I was adding some fill-light on the subject from below using a small reflector..... others took shots of this setting......
the next setting took place at Biju's second floor living quarters..... we had a nice setting in the cozy living room..... we subdued the light coming through the big window with a thick curtain, which allowed us to control light at our own will..... we setup a single flash on a stand and added a snoot..... somehow, light spilled from the snoot on the wall gave the setting a more interesting look...... so, we kept that same light setting.....
setup........
we then setup another flash a minimum power behind the couch to eliminate shadows created by the snoot.....
setup...........
the next setup was again a high-speed sync setup.... we tried to make some "kewl" portraits using a darkish setting..... we used two flashes at full power, one from below with snoot and the other from top behind as hair light...... the hair light, for some reason, didn't give expected support..... anyway, the outputs looked "kewl" enough for us......
setup.........
the next setup was for a high-key lighting...... the idea was to illuminate the background with a flash and to give nice even light from two sides on the subject using shoot-though umbrellas....... we used a higher vantage point to give more emphasis on the subject's eyes.....
setup.........
then we had the crazy idea about capturing motion...... we created action and setup two flashes, one with an umbrealla as the main light and the other as background light...... the outputs were interesting......
setup.........
the last setup was for a "kewl" group portrait...... the idea was to make all the flashes pop with the shutter..... somehow, it didn't go as smoothly as we had wanted.... but it was interesting for sure.......
The Koba Squad!!
can't wait for the next round.......:)
