Not your classic Rembrandt lighting

This week I had a very fun evening session assisting Sofie on her salsa-school shoot. Who would have thought I’d ever set foot in a dance school …. Salsa is about rhythm, I knew the shot I wanted to make but I ran into a bit of a wall when I wanted to combine the ingredients Canon, PocketWizard Plus II, 580EXII and 2nd curtain flash. It just wasn’t possible, but the Nikon CLS system saved the day and claimed victory. I’m sure Sofie will be posting the results of that very soon, so do drop in at her blog.

So I happily played my role as assistant, helping out with the light setups and I got to work on my boom-arm skills!

But I wouldn’t be going home happy if I wouldn’t have been able to make a creative portrait of Tom.

Not your classic Rembrandt model

One in black&white but being the colorful person that Tom is I think color suits him best.

Set up
A couple of boring curtains where lit up by a red-gelled-580EX on the background, 1/32th power zoomed at 85mm. Red for salsa passion! I keep finding the amazement on the subjects face very pleasing if they say “wow, where did that red light come from?”. The main light was a vivitar 285HV at 1/16 fired into a silver brolly positioned close to 90° camera left of the subject. Moved in rather close and slightly higher than the subject. Even at 90° the parabolic shape of the umbrella makes the light wrap around the subject and it’s doesn’t look linear. On shot 3 & 4 I payed attention to the fact that a part of the (camera)right eye was visible but that is personal taste.

5D – 50mm – 1.4 – 1/200th – ISO100

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