STE P BY STE P

Build up a picture

1 Banish background shadows Neil got Courtney to sit on the right-hand side of the sofa, but then pulled it out about five feet from the wall as he knew that the key light, positioned camera-right, would otherwise cast an unwanted shadow slap-bang in the middle of the frame. 3 Set up the key light Neil put an SB-5000 in the Joe McNally Ezybox and placed it camera-right at a 45 degree angle pointing towards Courtney. This was used as the ‘key’ light (the main light source and the brightest of all three lights) set to TTL mode so the camera automatically set its power. 5 Set up your gobo Jason aimed a third Speedlight (set at 1/16 power) at the wall and placed the gobo he’d made earlier over the front. You could just tape it here and walk away, but to fine tune the shape of the logo Jason tilted it slightly so the N didn’t spread along the wall too far. 2 Set the aperture Neil knew that he wanted his aperture to be at f/8 because, at 35mm, it keeps Courtney nice and sharp. Shutter speed was set at 1/200 sec to sync with the lights and it was fast enough to occlude the tungsten lights in the room. ISO200 kept noise to a minimum. 4 Add a fill light After taking a test shot Neil noticed that Courtney’s legs were falling into shadow. So he placed another SB-5000 camera-left aiming across her legs and the sofa to give dimensionality to her shape. He placed this on manual at 1/16 power from the flash control menu on the D5. 6 Pose your subject After the lights were positioned and balanced, and the settings were dialled in to the D5, all Neil had to do was get Courtney to try a variety of poses. This is the fun part – you get to play with body shapes and eye contact. If you have props now’s the time to use them.