This quick and easy setup allows photographer to show up to an event or venue and quickly and easily capture great portraits without hauling carts of gear around.
First a quick a quick look at what we're working with:
For this shoot, we’re using the lobby of a restaurant with large windows. Using the windows as a background, we can easily create a nice background and use the incoming Sun as a backlight to create an inviting glow to the image. Overexposing for the background is a fine line to balance on, too much overexposure and it’s blown out and distracting, not enough and it becomes a bland background that takes away from the subjects.
After we’ve found the exposure for the background, I need to color correct for the ambient light coming in, which is extremely warm. Moving over to a tungsten setting will cool down all those warm beams of light streaming through the window.
Next, we’re going to introduce two lights on at 45 degree angles on either side of our subjects, this way we have even light coverage. To assist in softening these lights I’ve attached two FlashBender 2 XL Pro Lighting System to the flashes and added the diffusion panels to contain and diffuse the light over the surface. Tip: if you want to add more dimension to their faces, change the power output of one side of the other to simply fill in shadows created by the more powerful flash.
Rewinding a little bit, we’re going to need to match the flash color (a little cooler than daylight) to the white balance we’ve chosen, tungsten. By using the Rogue Flash Gels: Color Correction Kit, we’ll use the two included full CTO gels to warm that flash light, matching the ambient with the flash.
Just that easily and quickly, we’ve turned a typical restaurant lobby into an area to photograph a couple or individuals!
Final Image:
