One light setup: sb 28dx modified with a photek softliter and triggered with Cybersyncs. Ideally I wanted a two light setup.. and I do have about 3 – 4 lights in total however no means to Trigger em as yet (some csrb’s are required).

I Positioned the lights mostly camera left and high so i could both use it as a hair light / keylight. Worked pretty well. the rest was like clock work. For the image i threw up I moved the light to camera right as it gave me more detail on the little black dress from that side. A few adjustments had to be made in terms of shutter speed and iso as the sun was in and out behind clouds affecting the exposure here and there. we were done in about 2 or 3 hours. It was fun The photos came out great. They were published on monday 23, 2010 in the Flair center spread.

The pro’s in the situation was its a small wedding, And i can soooo do this

The cons were, Its in montego bay and i live in kingston and do not own a car, Its on a a saturday and I had the photojournalist day job thingy to do, I dont own a car.

With the help of a good friend @stewpert who travels between kingston and montego bay regularly I was able to call in a fav for a mobay run for the day, I’ld handle food and gas for him. dude agreed and everything was ready. My backup for the wedding was already booked @9970000 of IMGwire. We left kingston at approximately 7am and were in montego bay by about 11 or 12pm.

Got to the location which was beautiful may I add, and scouted for locations to shoot the formals and so on. The wedding was set to begin at 3pm but you know how these things are, left the shoe, left the ring omg my hair etc.. we were about 2 hrs delayed. during that time we nailed some decent preparation images and detail shots. Once the actual ceremony was underway the rest was history, Formals were done in under 30 minutes as it was a small group and I ensured i moved quick before people started getting restless. Here is my favourite image from the bride and groom formals.

We went off camera for the formals, kept it smiple though 1 light above and directional, very soft lightsource and the rest was history, think i went as high as 1/2 power at one point the recycle times were bearable though so it all worked out. didn’t even need a lightstand, had @9970000 hand holding the light and that worked out perfectly.

I think i left montego bay about 9pm that night.. after grabbing a wendy’s double to stuff my face as I was unable to eat anything substantial all day Wendy’s… yuuuumm . Oh for the rest of the images please follow through to the gallery

With that out the way, lets get into the meat of the matter. The assignment was an all day event started at about 10:00 am and ended at approximately 6:00 pm. I will state the obvious I was shooting models, show casing swimwear by various designers at the moment the only one I can remember is Minka (love her work).

Equipment
I have not yet recieved my Softligher and Cybersync Triggers so I’m still on shoot through smith victor umbrella’s and poverty wizards.

Nikon D2h
sb-28-dx

and Keisha who had to deal with the heavy lightstand (to give me the positiong I required for my Lights, Without her non of those photos would be possible)

The Shoot

There were 4 Beautiful models and A whole lotta swimwear. keeping focused on this shoot was not an issue ( I jest it never is). The ladies knew what to do and needed little Artistic Direction So the shoot flowed very well so to speak.

I’ve posted my favored photo as a preview of what the output is like. Here I had the light overhead from left pushing light down on the subject. was at about 1/2 power distance doesn’t really count it was as close as it could be without being in the frame I love this shot the most because it reminds me of scorpion / subzero or reptile (i’m sure you recognize that pose if your gamer / geek of any kind)

Model: Debbie-Ann Willams
Makeup: Latoya Grindley
Photography: Gladstone Taylor

Here’s a link to all the photos published on the Jamaica-Gleaner.com

Ok now that i’ve finished that rant that you definitely didn’t need to red forgot to mention that I’ll speak about the assignment. This was for the Flair Magazine’s Main feature and was just to be some images of Dexter during his interview and a main shot for the cover. I could have easily just stuck that sb-28 on the d2h and bounce off the ceiling or wall behind me or kinda feathered but I brought a lightstand a shoot through umbrella and my Poverty wizards n in minutes I had better looking images than I would have ever gotten with on axis light. The cover image I was especially happy about, For this I had to re-arrange the store a bit to get space and the spot I was allowed to move stuff from was perfect as it had his store sign “spokes” on the wall, so i got a kinda environmental portrait of him sporting one of his jackets. quick portrait took like 5 minutes and everyone was happy here’s the image used for the front page hope you like it the image was published in the July 19, 2010 Issue of the Flair Magazine

See you next assignment

Here I had the light camera left, about 2 feet away, at 1/4 power iso was about f6.3 and shutter at 80 or 100. An industrial sized fan was use to get the wind effect with the subjects hair. She loved it, They loved it, They’re happy and I’m happy that they’re happy. Me personally I’m never satisfied with my work I always see something that could be done better will do it on my next assignment of this nature though.

Lighting

• Sb 28dx as Key-light shot through translucent umbrella Camera Left above subject about 3 – 4 feet away at about 1/4 flash power
• sb 400 as fill, shot into a reflective umbrella Camera right on subject height about 3.5 maybe 4 feet away at about 1/8th flash power

The session took about 30 minutes give or take  5 minutes. Client was happy with her images and all’s well that ends well .

My next entry should have something to do with Caribbean Fashion Week 2010.

• The plan was to shoot tethered, was unable to do so because eos utility wouldn’t allow remote shooting with the 30d (turns out it was a windows 7 thing, so i had to update eos utility, didn’t do it in time for the shoot though so i shot hand held saving images to card only)
• Usb cable wasn’t long enough
• could have used some more space
• It was soooo hot, we had 3 fans in the studio space as a result which took up space

Make up:
Done by Nickel Rhoden Haynes (twitter: @vampnixen)

Lighting:
I worked with a two light setup triggered via poverty wizards key light shot through a white shoot through brolly, kicker light was shot into a reflective brolly both hoisted on smith victor stands.

Conclusion:

1. Overall a fun shoot
2. Client was comfortable
3. Showed in the photos
4. She loves what she’s seen so far
5. Everybody’s happy

Need backup for a wedding tomorrow.

I was free so I figured though I like to be aware of an event way before it happens I accepted.

Before moving on ild like to just say: Ensure you get all your details together before wedding day. The timing for this wedding was kinda behind but it went great. If there wasn’t a delay in the first place everything wouldbe perfect in terms of the duration of event sequences. The formals for this wedding tought me something. I will definitely need a backup and not necesarily for shooting but for lighting. To really get creative with the off axis lighting whaats required is a V.A.B (voice activated boom that is someone to work my lights in terms of distance and position. And putting it in close n tight where the light stand alone will not get the light. Today I played the role of the V.A.B (images looked great btw). My last wedding was the first I employed off camera lighting, this time it was taken a step farther by @9970000 and I will definitely be employing this at my next wedding along with some other ideas I’ve got stewing. Just a small shot to show but not reveal anything as it isn’t my client nor images to display

This gave me an idea of seating arrangements. Lighting arrangements and where may be in accessible or where ild want to be to get my required images. Based on the lighting conditions it was clear that I needed my glass to be f2/8 or faster. So I took the 50mm F1.8 and 28 – 75mm f2/8 which severd quit well. The camera bodies used for this assignment was the eos 30d and IMGwires eos 1D MKIII.

The images from the event came out pretty good. as a preview, in the image to the left we have the sportswoman of 2009 Bridget Foster, The rest of the images are available in my portfolio for viewing go check em out.