Attree Images

Last Sunday afternoon turned into an impromptu outdoor wireless flash workshop for myself and a few other photographer friends. Joining me was Adam Finch, Tony Holden, Brian McKinnon and our lovely models for the afternoon were Megan, Lauren and Crisly. We decided to meet in Spring Hill where the girls got there makeup done by the very capable Annie-Claire.

From there we wandered down the streets of Spring Hill until we found a suitable location to set up a couple of Nikon speedlights on some stands and try out a few lighting techniques using the Nikon CLS (Creative Lighting System). Using a Nikon SU800 Wireless Flash Trigger mounted on my D3 I was able to control my remote SB900 and SB800 Speedlights.

The next few shots were done by underexposing the background by around 2 stops and using an SB800 with a Honl Grid attached as the main light aimed at Lauren's face. The SB900 was positioned at camera left and slightly behind Lauren to give a little highlight down the right side of her body. The flash was zoomed to 200mm to control the spill of the light and make sure it was concentrated in the right spot. 

I also played with some warm gels on the flashes and changed my camera white balance to tungsten. This gives the ambient light a very cool, blue look while the orange gels on the flash keep lauren looking warm. 

This next image of Crisly was achieved with just the one SB800 with Honl Grid attached to give a narrow spread of light and give a spotlight effect. This was further enhanced in post with Lightroom with a vignette and desaturation. 

We then moved a bit further down the street where I had another go at using a tungsten white balance and an orange gel on the flash. For this image of Megan I used an SB900 with a Lastolite Ezybox Hot Shoe positioned directly above the camera position. I then had Adam holding an SB800 which was bounced into a Lastolite Trifip reflector with the gold material attached. The Triflip was positioned directly in front of Megan but down low just out of frame.