USE PRO SETUPS

Aaron Taylor (aarontaylorphoto.com) provides a guide to mastering wireless flash

1 KEY LIGHT POSITION

For soft light and beautiful shadows, i use a big modifier (a 48-inch octobox) placed close to my subject. in this case, my model will be two feet away from the octobox. The bottom edge of the light is always at or slightly above the model’s chin.

2 HAIR LIGHT POSITION

I add a hair light to separate my model from the background and to add interest. The hair light can also be positioned to help fill shadows created by the key light. My hair light is a one-foot by three-foot strip box above and slightly behind my model.

3 BACKGROUND LIGHT

I use a bare speedlight and coloured gels to create an interesting background. Gels allow me to play with colour theory and deviate from the standard white, grey or black. i want my background speedlight far enough away from my key light so the colour stays saturated.

4 LIGHT SETTINGS

I triggered all lights wirelessly, and everything is set to channel 2 so my lights aren’t triggered by others set to channel 1. My key light is a 600W strobe set to 1/64 power. My hair light is a speedlight set to 1/64 power. My background light is a speedlight set to 1/16 power.

5 GROUPS AND ‘SLAVE’ MODE

I use Groups to control each part of the photo. Group A is my key light, Group B is my background light. since my hair light is a different brand, it is set to slave mode, meaning it will be triggered by the first flash rather than my wireless trigger.

6 WORK EACH LIGHT IN TURN

Ensure that each light is doing what you envision. start with your key light and get its position and power just right. Then add your hair light and compare to the key light-only image. Then add the background light, adjusting the power and height to get the saturation and look you desire.