Dom

Dom, originally uploaded by DrFireball.

Didn't expect to come back with something like this today. Went to visit a friend and am now deeply jealous of the real estate he has! Perfect for location shots. This was taken in a practically derelict house on his land.
Almost too many choices of where to shoot but this I am very pleased with.
Lit by my 1200 Ws Ranger head in a wide angle reflector about 15 feet from the leaded, grimy windows. Balanced with the ambient light and warmed with cloudy WB in camera. A touch of post processing in PS and voila!

Hope you all like

DrF

Lee

Lee, originally uploaded by DrFireball.

Very pleasant evening with a friend.

Lee came over and lent me some DVD's - the side of the box being perfect inspiration for this one (original shot was of Clint Eastwood).

Second set up - other one can be seen on my flickr stream below this. This was shot using a Damian McGillicuddy 19 inch beauty dish literally just off camera right. Set up against a lastolite black pop-up background but as I was shooting at f1.2 with 1/1250 shutter speed I am sure the black background was irrelevant.
I have been finding love once again for speedlites - having become a fan of the bigger elinchrom stuff - both ranger's and quadra's.
What you cannot do with those so well though is shoot with such control over the hypersync to allow apertures as wide as this.
Sure I have a ST4 PW that allows me to go beyond the max sync with the ranger but that thing has to be near max power - fine for outside when battling the sun but would have fried Lee's face.

All the attitude and pensiveness kindly provided by a wonderful chap I can happily refer to as friend and colleague.

All in all much better way of spending the evening than watching reruns on DVD!

Cheers

DrF

Graham

Graham, originally uploaded by DrFireball.

Taken in Wiltshire on a hill overlooking Lyneham. Graham is a very experienced mountain rescue leader - I have been keen to take his portrait for a while and this was the perfect evening as there was no wind. This allowed me to use a 19 inch beauty dish (McGillicuddy) on a tripod.
I triggered the single 580 flash with the PW flex stuff. Shot changing between Av and manual mode to see how easy it was to achieve what I was after. The flash sits quite far back on the bracket unfortunately and loses a lot of power in the dish. Not an issue as the sun goes down of course. Moved the dish in pretty close also to soften the light.
In the distance on the right of the picture you can see a temperature inversion in the valley.
As ususal I was very warm as I was constantly moving things around - of course Graham was getting colder and colder and at one point dissapeared off for a quick run!

Lovely evening though and a great chance to get a photo of a valued colleague.

Cheers

DrF

Not the way the evening was meant to end.......

Not the way the evening was meant to end......., originally uploaded by DrFireball.

Wow am I pleased with having finished the post production on this one!

Great shoot with Clare (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Clare-Neruda/233156630088846), Natalie and Sharon at the a boutique Hotel in Harrogate - used a truly plush suite and had a long day. The shoot was to create an editorial storyline based around a girl getting ready then increasingly bored/agitated waiting for her beau before finally coming to a sticky end. How this happened is up to you although there are a number of clues around the shot.

Lighting was with a 70cm beauty dish to light Clare on the bed with two quadras gridded to light selective areas - even a strobe hand held to light the bedside light. The composited shots were taken with a Damian McGillicuddy beauty dish hand held. The camera was locked down on a tripod to allow a lot of masking to be completed in photoshop. About 40 layers in PS in all. But hopefully you will agree that it was worth it.

Cheers

DrF