Here are some of the shots from shoot two of three I had on that busy day a while ago. This time with Brendan was was up for a bit of craic and helping my get some shots for my portfolio. The other two shoots being the skateboarders and Gill. The shoot was a quick 30 minutes all in during lunch. It was a great day for it, the sun was shining and every one was in good form.
There was not much of a brief for the shots so we went with the flow. I decided utilise the weather and timed of year and the trees in full green foliage in a Dublin city park. There were a few various shots that ranged from the serious…ish headshots , some casual ones and fun shots etc.
We only had about 30 minutes from start to finish, including set up. So we didnt hang about. I had to head to Portmarnock beach later to shoot Gill.
For the Strobist out there, the set up was basic enough and pretty much my standard:
1x Nikon SB600 speedlight, shoot through umbrella on a light stand. The light had a 1/4 CTO gel to balance it for the sunlight.WB was set to sunlight also. Shutter was 1/125 @ F3.5 and ISO 200.
I shoot in manual most of the time, so I set the aperture first to my desired value. This being determined by the required depth of field and the sharpness of the lens. The sharpness of my lens varies a bit across the various aperture values at various focus distances. Anyways… so what ever the camera was telling me to set the shutter to get a correct exposure on the background, I under exposed it by a stop or 1 1/3 stops. I then used the flash to bring up the light on the subject to a suitable level. Once I had the power on the flash right then I adjusted the position of the light a bit to get it just right.
Bearing in mind that this was all going on within a few minutes so it was a bit rushed. The sunlight on the screen also makes it a bit harder to see what you are really getting. A bit more time and some more lights would mean more power to over come the sunlight and underexpose the background even more… That is for next time. This was a nice quick exercise in strobist work though.