If there were a king of Things Organized Neatly, Portland-based photographer Jim Golden would almost certainly be it. There are at least two PocketWizard radios amongst all that camera gear. Can you find them?
His meticulously-designed still life compositions can often take up to ten hours just to set up. We asked him about this mother-of-all-camera-collections image. Here’s what he had to say:
“It contains over 190 cameras, lenses and accessories and is a compilation of 20 people’s cameras collections from the Portland, Oregon area. It took roughly ten hours to layout and shoot.”
Photographer Brett Harkness recently shared with us images and diagrams from the book Light & Shoot / 50 Fashion Photos by Chris Gatcum. Here are his thoughts and details behind putting together the images from this shoot.
This image was shot for a clothing company called Love Miss Daisy, which focuses on 1950’s vintage clothing. Taken in the U.K. in July, I decided to end the day long shoot with something a little different. It was around 9pm, the light was fading fast and we were about to wrap up, but I wanted to finish with a bang! I had some smoke bombs with me I’d been looking to use for awhile, so I thought this was the time to give them a go!
Wrapping the model in vintage petticoats I set up the main strobe, an Elinchrom A head with Ranger RX Speed AS pack with a 135cm Octabox. I added a second strobe behind the model to light the fallen tree to the left of the frame and create a rim-lighting effect as it passed through the smoke and across the subject. This head was “naked” to get the most spread from the bulb and had it’s own Ranger pack, both heads on the A channel. It was starting to get dark, but to add further drama I decided to underexpose the scene to give full effect of the strobes.
We love discovering photographers creating great images with interesting use of off-camera flash. Chris Arace is a Detroit photographer who not only uses PocketWizard radio triggers to light his portaits, but his series ”We Are Vacancy” includes images of talent actually handholding speedlights. In his own words, here are his thoughts on his work.
An artistic rebellion of faith and spirit. Eager to create. Created to create. Rise against the onslaught of homogenization in culture, we shall. We Are Vacancy.
The above statement was crafted as part manifesto, part inspiration, and part dedication. It provides a tangible concept for me to visualize and create images for this series of shots. The idea was created while on location last year. I often am running at a fast pace on shoots in some diverse and amazing locations. It was not always possible to create personal, compelling imagery under the time crunch of a production schedule. We Are Vacancy allowed a portable, manageable, and very artistic way to satisfy my personal artistic needs.
The photography instructor behind KelbyTraining.com and host of KelbyTV.com, Scott Kelby is back with an end-of season review of his foray into NFL photography. Here at PocketWizard, it’s been a thing of beauty to watch his journey from remote camera newbie to seasoned pro, all during the course of one football season.
scottkelby.com
To catch the dramatic intro at a Falcons game, Scott used four cameras: “three mounted and one hand-held — when I fired my hand-held camera, with a PocketWizard [radio trigger] on top, it fired all the three other remotes, all capturing the same moment, but from different angles, perspectives and focal ranges.”
He used a mix of Plus® II’s and borrowed Plus® III’s to fire his cameras, but liked the Plus III’s so much after the game he ordered four of them for himself.
Read the full post to see images from the game as well as his setup. Also see his Q&A with his readers, where the remote cameras were a popular topic.
At a wedding in Newport Beach, California, a couple with a flair for the dramatic planned for their first dance to be under an outdoor rotunda, overlooking the landscape below. How to get the shot?
The team at Lin and Jirsa Photography tries a couple of different options, but end up hiding a speedlight behind one of the columns of the rotunda. Using a PocketWizard Plus® III allowed all of their second shooters to trigger the same speedlight from different locations, meaning they ended up with a variety of types of shots from the same, simple setup.
Check out the post on SLR Lounge for more info, including the final images and lighting diagram. See more of Lin and Jirsa’s photography on their site.
For the project, Jonathan captured candid portraits of people in their cars while waiting at red lights. He writes, “By highlighting the occupants and interiors of vehicles I bring normally private moments into the public space that surrounds the zone of an occupied vehicle. This is an effort to create portraits of an extensive and permeating culture that has a large group of members but often has little communication, interaction or bonds between individuals.” (Read the full statement.)
To get the images, Jonathan came up with a pretty interesting rig using two cars and a couple of friends. He had his camera mounted on a tripod in the back of his car, pointing out the rear view window. Sitting next to him, his friend manned the MacBook Pro the camera was tethered to. His girlfriend drove the second car, which had one gridded strobe pointing out the back side window. Once everyone was in position, he would use his PocketWizard Plus® II to trigger both the camera and the strobe simultaneously.
Joel Hawksley, a photographer for The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale, IL, spends a lot of time in the gym. He’s not working out; he’s setting up lights. Fortunately for shooters everywhere, he’s taken the time to show how he does it in an informative post on his blog.
Hawksley goes into serious detail, all in one page, and explains how he does everything to make high school gym athletes look like superstars. The gear he literally lays out in this blog post include the PocketWizard PowerMC2, the FlexTT5, and the AC3 ZoneController.
This blog post provides dozens of large photos, including many behind-the-scenes shots. Watch what Hawksley does to light up big places. You won’t be sorry.
Paul D’Andrea is an Indianapolis-based photographer whose work runs the gamut from portraits and events to fine art. He even helps run one of the few photography galleries in the city, M10 Studio and Gallery. Here, he gives us the details behind an outdoor portrait he made with a little help from HyperSync®.
When making a portrait I have to decide how to draw the viewer’s eye to the subject. I might do this with a simplified background, a composition that frames the subject, or it might be with a shallow depth of field or a difference in exposure (making the subject brighter than the backdrop).
For an outdoor portrait, using a shallow depth of field often precludes the use of studio lights and exposure in pulling the subject off the background. With a maximum sync speed of 1/250th of a second for the studio lights, I need to choose an aperture to match the ambient exposure, this might be f/11 or f/16 on a sunny day, which won’t provide a very shallow depth of field. Enter HyperSync, which allows me to have both a shallow depth of field and large light modifiers.
Cy Cyr is an Orlando based photographer who specializes in commercial and editorial portrait work. Golf Digest came to him when they wanted to create a humorous photo slideshow illustrating some all-too-familiar (for all you golfers out there) bad behavior on the course.
We tackled a list of 22 shot ideas generated by Golf Digest staff members and myself. The shoot lasted about ten hours, and my PocketWizard Plus® III radio triggers were there for everything. I was running Profoto Pro-7B’s with beauty dishes because of the portability, endurance, and consistency.
In the final part of Chris Crisman’s Heroes of Conservation series, Chris spends the day in northern Maine with John Serfazo, founder of the American Greenlands Restoration Inc.
John began his conservation efforts over ten years ago and has to date restored or reclaimed over 1000 acres of natural habitat.
Chris takes John’s portrait in a field of wild buckwheat in the late morning, using a gridded Octabank as his key light and the sun as backlight and fill light. He writes, “Adding a grid to a larger and broader source we were able to condense the light significantly, making it a bit more contrasty and shaping but still keeping the overall soft feel we try to achieve by using our octas. Since we we were working in fairly bright daylight, we ran approximately 1500 w/s out of our Dynalite power packs, synced wirelessly to the camera with our Pocketwizard Plus® III transmitters.”
