Travelling Light: Single Strobe Sessions

Khristian

Khristian was busy working in the lab when we ambushed politely asked to shoot him. He insisted that he properly wear his PPE (personal protective equipment), which was the safe thing to do (especially if our chair happens to be reading this). I wanted to capture the moment that he combined the contents of both test tubes, so I asked him to pour slowly. However, I was about 3 shots in when he said he was running out of solution to pour, so he poured the contents of the full tube back into the empty one (which was unsafe).

I hope it was well worth the risk of causing a minor lab accident for the sake of making this picture.

This image is one of my favorites from that day, the lighting details of which can be found after the jump.

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In nearly all of my pictures, I try to capture most of how I pre-visualized the final image would look like in camera. If I can light it to increase tonal contrast, I will. If I can add colors through the use of gels, I will. If I can shape the light with a bunch of black straws and a piece of cardboard, I will. I shoot in RAW almost always, so I would like to do as little in post as possible, so I won’t get stuck in front of the computer doing PP work all day.

Well, here are the lighting bullet points:

• I had the flash at 1/4th power, since I was shooting at f/5.6. I wanted to preserve the green of the trees that can be seen through the window because they could easily just blow out and lose detail.
• I was still working with the gridded flash, which allowed me to highlight certain parts of the image and control the spill of light at the same time.
• I nicely asked my VAB 1979 (see model specifications here) to hold the flash high up on camera left at an angle that prevented any distracting reflections on the glass (of the test tubes) and the plastic (of the safety goggles) from being captured. Also, I asked her to glance the light off the subject’s face, so it would give a less harsh, feathered look.

Pretty Patty graces this blog next.

More to come…