Good challenging photoshoot today. I was asked to photograph the board of directors of Tourism Calgary. The photoshoot had been postponed several times because of the directors busy and changing schedules so it was no surprise that I was asked to photograph this group in the middle of the day. A location was chosen with a good view of Downtown on top of a new building. The wind was gusting but the sky was clear so no chance of rain. Because the sky was clear the sun was beating down on the scene. I had to balance a background and foreground and light them well. I can't obviously light downtown but I can control the light level I choose to show the background. My first test shot of downdown read 160 of a second at f 10. It was too bright for my liking so I added a polarizer filter to darken the scene 2 stops and cut the glare from the leaves on the trees and the glass from the windows downtown. This let me keep my shutter below 1/250th so that I could use a Travelite (Bowens) 300ws monolight to fill in the dark Rembrandt shadows caused by the harsh directional sun. In a group photo, deep shadows become very distracting so I try to keep all faces as evenly lit as possible. I set my travelight up 2 metres (six feet) in front of where I was to position the group with a regular reflector (no diffusion) and tried some test shots. I was pretty close to balancing the exposure right away. When the group arrived I was ready! As with most group shots it was over in less than ten minutes but the half hour I spent getting ready was well worth it.
http://public.fotki.com/djjsm/don/2009-portfolio/don0022-jpg.html
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
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