DINFOS Pt. 3 - Thinking Inside the Box

For the final DINFOS post we have flexibility artist Shelly Guy, who was brave enough to venture down into the bowels of the DINFOS photo studio for a series of photos shot by Joe McNally, the 2008 Advanced Lighting Team and myself.

As you probably know by now, I generally don't care much for shooting in a studio. Which is why we decided to do a quick change-up on our environment and stuff Shelly in a nearby locker.

But that's no problem -- Shelly can get in there easily. It's getting the light way back in there that can be a bit of a challenge...
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So, here's the deal. We do not have a lot of time to shoot in the studio, as the building closes at 9:00 p.m. So Joe and I decided to bounce Shelly back and forth between photographers, with one person setting up with the other one shot.

Shelly was a total trouper, and put up with this sort of thing way better than she should have. (Hey, she has to be flexible. She's a contortionist.)

While Joe was shooting down at the other end of the studio, I was looking for a neat place in which to pose Shelly. How can you turn down a half-sized locker?

Next step is how to light it. I need to get the light all the way to the back. But the last thing I want to do is just blast a bunch of light right in from straight on -- there would be no depth or shape to the photo. You need to light from of axis for shape.

But I have to get in there some way, so I tried to have it both ways on my lighting direction. I decided to light it with an umbrella from camera left, and fill with a ring flash.

By varying my lighting ratio between the two SB-800's (we were totally nuking the ambient away) I could decide exactly how bright the back of the locker (and the parts of Shelly that were in shadow) would be.

My other problem would be that the umbrella needed to be close to provide a nice wrap light. But that would mean that it would reflect off of the locker door on the left and create a big, distracting, umbrella-shaped hot spot.

Problem two was easy to solve. We stuck the black cover on the camera left half of the umbrella. This gobo'd the umbrella from reflecting in the door (save a nice, thin sliver) and still let it light Shelly nice and close.

With the gobo, there is a nice, vertical highlight that defines the texture of the locker door. If the gobo was gone, there would be a big, honker of a circular highlight there.


So, specular reflection solved, we now needed to push some light into the locker.

The Ray Flash ring flash adapter fit the bill perfectly, allowing light that was exactly on axis. This meant that we could not only push as much (or little) light as we wanted back there, but also create a specular highlight in the back of the locker to further brighten that area.

The only thing left to decide is the ratio, really. And this is easy enough, in manual power, without needing a $300 flashmeter.

But first, we needed a stand-in. Fortunately the room contained a mannequin. (Mascot? Late-night companion? Honestly, I don't wanna know...) So naturally, we tried to shove him in there. But the dummy wouldn't fit, so we were S.O.L.

Then I hear, "I can get in there," coming from A.L.T. member Luke Pinneo. (Yeah, right, dude, I thought.) But sure enough, he crammed himself in. No, it was not as elegant as later when Shelly did it, but still...


So Luke wedges himself into the locker. (All the while, McNally is shooting glamour photos of Shelly, who has no idea what we have in mind for her...)

I start without the Ray Flash -- just a shoe-mount flash set at 1/64th and aimed up at the ceiling to trip the other flash optically. I bring the umbrella'd SB-800 in from camera left, set on 1/8 power. It's set on slave mode, so the shoe flash will fire it.

A couple of quick pop-n-chimps and we have dialed in the aperture that looks best for the main light. Just doing it by eyeball and histogram on the back screen. Nothing fancy.

Now it is time for the fill light. I slip on the Ray Flash adapter and start out with the flash dialed down to 1/32 power. It's real close to where we want to be, and a couple of quick power adjustments has us ready to go. Again, just turning the volume up or down until it looks best.

Normally, you could also use a flash in an umbrella right behind your camera as on-axis fill. But a light that big would have given you reflection problems on the other door.

I am finding I am going to the ring as fill pretty often these days, and I really like the result. I have a shot like Peter Yang's "Fallon" portrait, with some ring in there, and it looks sweet.

To be honest, I am not a very big fan of ring list as a main light. I think the photos all look the same. But as fill, it can add a neat layer to many different kinds of key lighting.

So we got Shelly through our portion of the shoot quickly, and back to Joe well before we were to be kicked out. Which left a couple of us a few minutes with nothing to do in the DINFOS studio.

If anyone happens to ask you how this DINFOS studio mascot ended up naked from the waist down and left in a very compromising position at a computer work station, we don't know anything about that.

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Related:

:: Shelly Guy, Flexibility Artist ::
:: Ray Flash ring flash adapter ::
:: SB-800 Slave Mode How-To ::
:: McNally's Pix ::

DINFOS Rocks.

Man, am I whupped. I just got back from teaching the back half of a week-long intensive lighting seminar at the Defense Information School (DINFOS) at Fort Meade in Maryland.

Here's the deal. Photographers are chosen by portfolio from among the U.S. military shooters all over the world. They are sent to a one-week workshop, courtesy Uncle Sam, at DINFOS where they fan out and shoot assignments of just about every nature.

They are learning and competing - a great combo. The cool prizes (Nikon cameras, strobes, Lowepro bags, etc.,) are second only to the bragging rights for the winners. It's almost worth heading down to the army recruiter to sign up, just for a chance to get in.

Almost.

In addition to the photojournalism groups, there is one group of five shooters chosen to be on the Advanced Lighting Team. That lucky group is normally taught by none other than Joe McNally for a whole week, where he works with them in an intensive, small-class environment.

Well, Joe M. couldn't make it this year, so the duty was split between myself and a former Patuxent Publishing coworker of mine, Joe Eddins of the Washington Times. He got them first and then handed them over to me. Joe had them for Mon-Weds, then I got them for Thursday and Friday. The presentations and dinner were on Saturday.

My guys had been out all night pretty late the night before, so we mercifully kept them in the dark A/C all day on Thursday and overloaded their brains for about 9 hours. Besides, Friday was coming.

When Friday arrived, we were pretty much screwed a little behind the eight ball. We needed to do a full photo presentation on Saturday, and all of the stuff that they shot with Eddins had already been shown to the main group.

So we turned in a 17-hour day on Friday. We started shooting at 10:00am, finished at 9:30pm and then edited and produced the QuickTime show until 3:00am. These guys totally rocked, and I could not be more proud of them.

I'll be putting a YouTube version up in a few days. But I have to swap the music out first.

Suffice to say that when you are choosing music for a next-day show at 2:00am the night before, copyright and DRM are just fleeting little theoretical thoughts that are not on your top ten list of worries...

Matt H., Matt L., Andy, Jason and Sean, if you are reading this, there will also be some "On Assignments" popping up over the next few weeks featuring your photos and the techniques behind them.

And you mere civilians will definitely want to check out their stuff as it pops up. We did six shoots in a day and they all yielded strong photos. Lots of setup shots, too.

Sorry if I have seemed a little nonexistent on the website this week.

I am sitting at the BWI Airport waiting to catch a plane to Florida for a week, where I'll be looking to get my first good night's sleep in quite a while and then hit the Q&A post for Lighting 102. The first real classwork will be up shortly after that.

We'll then settle into a (roughly) weekly schedule for the L102 tutorials, discussions and assignments after that.

Oh, and on behalf of my Advanced Lighting Team (The "Serial Flashers") at the DINFOS photo workshops, I would like to offer our sincere thanks (to those of you who are U.S. taxpayers) for picking up the tab.

DINFOS: Pt. 1

Last week I was helping out at DINFOS, (Defense Information School) where they were holding the Worldwide Military Photography Workshop. Joe McNally has been involved in it for quite a while. (I am a fnugy, with this being only my second year.)

I'll defer to his description of the event and it various characters. He also posted several shots from the week and a rogues' gallery of many of the teachers, so I won't dupe that.

What I'll be doing over the next coupla weeks is to throw up a few photos, with OA-style walk-throughs, lighting diagrams and/or setup shots. Mine are all pretty simple setups, using just one or two speedlights.

Joe, of course, did most of his with 472 Nikon SB-800s, running his SU-800 CLS controller through one of the signal amplifiers at the nearby NSA (also known as "No Such Agency") for a little boost. That guy has some serious contacts.

This week's picture and walk-through, after the jump.
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The first photo is from a day in which we went out into the woods with some of the folks from Combat Camera , who graciously agreed were ordered to show up in full gear.

Hanging out in the woods near the firing range and obstacle course were the members of this year's Advanced Lighting Team. Being on the ALT means you spend a week learning about small-flash, location lighting from industry leaders like Joe McNally, and posers like me. Week-long class size: Six people.

It's really a fantastic deal, all the more so when you realize there is no tuition involved. On behalf of Ray, Bobby, Matt, Larry, Trav and Luke, I would like to offer a hearty "thank you" to those readers who are also US taxpayers from the 2008 ALT. (That's them lighting themselves at the top of the post, in a hastily produced group shot in the hallway outside of our classroom.)

As everybody was unpacking gear and talking about how to best handle the ugly, splotchy, midday sun-through-woods light we had, I threw a couple of SB-800s onto stands. I set them on 1/4 power and turned on their built-in slaves, which is a pretty standard preset for me when working against bright sunlight.

Within a few minutes, the Combat Camera folks were getting their camo paint applied, and most of us were making photos of that. Basically, think Strobist meetup, with Joe and I joining in, and a bunch of cool subjects in the woods.

Most of the ALT members worked mobile, using a single, hand-held SB-800 in CLS wireless TTL mode. So I just stuck my stands behind them, and eyeballed the subjects from the flash positions. That shows me what the flashes will see -- and light. I wanted profile lighting from front and back, but a little behind the subjects to make interesting shadows. in the foreground.


So, here's a diagram of the setup. In direct mode at ASA 200, my SB's are gonna give me plenty of aperture to work with at a ~6-foot light-to-subject range. You can expect about f/16, depending on the zoom setting of the flash. If you are not familiar with what your flashes will do in a situation like this, you may want to look at the posts on guide number and/or making a cheat sheet.

So, the light coming through the trees is of the ugly, early afternoon variety. But that's good, as it will be at a high enough angle to not screw me up when I am lighting their faces. To help matters more, I shoot from the direction that will keep the sunlight in a high-backlight mode. If it pops out, it's just another rim light to me. If not, that's fine, too.

For sync, I am going straight optical and manual -- using the SB's built-in slaves. I point the receiver windows of the flashes toward each other, and point a show-mount flash (low, manual power) towards whichever flash is closest. The other flash will see it and fire every time, easy.

As far as camera settings, the actual aperture and shutter settings are variable in a situation like this, depending on the ambient and the flash distance. And to be honest, I neither remember them now, nor considered them very important then. More important is the thought process -- it is more repeatable for a wider variety of situations.

Let's say for the sake of argument that the flash is giving me f/16 at that distance. That's a constant at ISO 200. If I need more, I will need to power up the flash, or move it forward towards the subject. And vice versa if I need less. I like being at 1/4 power, as it give me nice, fast recycles and the ability to double-tap. (See? That military stuff is wearing off on me already.)

So, at f/16, I am going to have an easy time with my shutter in open shade. Good thing, because that is the next step. I plug f/16 into my camera and chimp a couple frames until I find a nice, slightly underexposed ambient level. Maybe a stop down, maybe a little more. The shadows are way below that, which gives me good dark areas to light against. For the sake of argument that we are now at 1/160th of a sec.

The shutter speed and aperture are not what is important. The amount that we are underexposing the ambient is what is important, as that is what will determine the depth of the shadows. I used the back, camera right strobe (not visible on my foreground subject) to make sure I could separate any subject from my ambient background on both sides. This allows me to drop those shadows further if I want.


In-Camera Tweaking

Now that we have the settings in the ballpark, start shooting. Take a frame or two and quickly chimp for any final adjustments.

• Flash too bright or dark? Vary the aperture to fix it. Then adjust the shutter in the opposite direction to bring the background back to where you were.

• Background too bright or dark? Adjust that with the shutter speed.

• Entire photo too bright or dark? Adjust it all at once with the aperture.

This might sound a little daunting if you have not tried it. But trust me, it is quick and easy once you have a little experience. And most of you can probably run through you aperture and shutter settings without taking your eye off the viewfinder. Not so, those CLS buttons. For me, at least.

BTW, for those of you who are into TTL/CLS, Joe just posted a new training video at Kelby Training. It is quite good (I actually watched it twice) and more on the advanced side than the first two classes he put up. And make sure you catch his post on the DINFOS stuff, to see what was done in the woods with five Combat Camera subjects, a mess of SB's and only ten minutes to do the photo.

Next up from DINFOS will l be going mobile -- shooting flash blur on the run (okay, fast walk) using a moving VAL.
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Related Reading:

:: McNally's Post ::
:: SB-800 - Built-In Slave mode ::
:: 55th Combat Camera Company ::
:: Guide Number, Your Free Flashmeter ::
:: Make a Cheat Sheet for your Flash ::
:: Kelby Training: Joe McNally ::

DINFOS Pt. 2: Flash in the Pan

Peer pressure can a dangerous thing.

Normally, I am a manual flash kind of guy. But you hang out long enough with McNally and a bunch of CLS'ing DINFOS shooters, you start to feel the itch to experiment a little...

So, here we were earlier this month in the woods learning all this lighting stuff from McNally. All of the DINFOS folks are firing away like Joe with their lights on full CLS auto, and I am sticking with my manual techniques.

The time seemed as good as any to experiment, so I grabbed one of the Combat Camera folks who was dressed for he occasion, and asked if I could do a shot while moving through the woods.

CLS takes a lot of the head-scratching out of this kind of shot and really makes it pretty easy. All you really need to remember is to choose your shutter speed based on the amount of pan you want while walking through the woods.

For this look, I chose 1/15th of a second simply because it looked best on the chimp screen after a few quick test shots. Set at ISO 200, that shutter speed gave me an aperture of f/16 for saturated color in the woods.

I set the on-camera flash (an SB-800) to act as a Master, and pointed it towards the remote flash. That flash would be moving along with Robert, my subject, as it was being held by a voice-activated light stand named Matt.

The flash's exposure worked fine on straight TTL, but it would also have been very easy to do on manual. You just choose a flash-to-subject distance, and dial in a power setting that gives you f/16 at ISO 200. As long as you do not vary that distance too much, you'll be fine.


The trick to positioning is to move that flash around a little past a straight profile shot -- slightly rim-lit. Looks a lot better that way. I have exaggerated the diagram a bit to make the point.

Everything moves together -- subject, photographer and light. You just follow along and shoot, with the strobe helping to add both light and a sharp anchor to your pan. I chose this one because a tree trunk was behind his head which made him pop even more. You do not even have to look through the camera with a wide-angle lens. Just zone focus, and aim from the hip. That way, you can keep yourself form running into a tree.

Here is a setup shot -- basically a one-light studio on wheels:


The cool thing this is is just how quick and easy it was to set up. We did just one trip down and one trip back. Just 30 yards or so each way. Soup to nuts, it was about two minutes -- and we had several good shots to choose from.


Honestly, it's so much easier than it might look at first that it is almost criminal. This is a technique I have been tumbling around in my mind for quite a while now. As you can see at left, there's no reason your VAL would have to actually hold a flash, either.

This way their concentration could lay elsewhere. Like not running into a tree.


You could even work up a two-light setup for road bikers or runners, too. If you were shooting manual, you'd just want to keep those distances relatively constant.

Using the added light helps to shape and define your subject in a moving situation. And as you can see, it will also make the critical parts of your pan shot are tack sharp.

Just remember your flash balancing basics: Shooting into the brightest part of the ambient helps to avoid ghosting, and gives the most control over your range of ambient-to-flash ratios.

BTS: Jonathan Snyder's So-Cool-It-Must-Be-Fake Night Portrait

When this photo popped up on Gizmodo last week, several of the site's readers could not quite process how the image could have been made. I tweeted at the time that I hoped the guy who shot it was one of our old DINFOS lighting students.

As it turns out, Strobist reader and USAF SSgt. Jonathan Snyder attended the "one extra" Flash Bus day McNally and I did for the Defense Information School in 2011 at Fort Meade in Maryland.

Milphogs are taught to improvise in the field as a matter of course. And turns out, this image was made with neither a tripod nor a speedlight… Read more »

Lighting 102: Umbrella Specular Portrait

So, did you catch the post yesterday when we talked about the umbrella-background-reflection thing? I hope so, because that is your assignment this week.

This one is sort of a cross between an exercise and an assignment, as it requires a specific technique. You'll be doing a photo of a person, using one soft light source (shoot-through or reflective umbrella, soft box, scrim, whatever) and angling it so it becomes a specular highlight in a darkish, semi-reflective background.

I gave you some ideas on where to find such a backdrop in the previous post (see link above) but be creative. And speaking of being creative, try to look beyond the mere technique and make a real photo of someone. Add some personal style, catch a nice moment -- do something to make this a photo, rather than just a lighting technique.

This photo, shot by DINFOS workshop student Jason Robertson, uses the dark headboard of a bed for the dark backdrop. And he caught a nice moment, too.

That last part is very important. Light is not enough. In fact, you might want to take a moment to read this post on the topic.

As for light positioning, Jason used a pretty scary-looking human boom for holding the umbrella.

This is a fun, easy, one-light technique that yields a very polished-looking photo if done right. Give it a whirl and see what you can come up with.

Your tags will be:

Strobist
Lighting102
Assignment
Umbrella
Specular

Add "final" as a tag to your best shot, and "setup" if you are including a pull-back shot for the benefit of other readers. Those setup pix are much appreciated, BTW.

You can see all turned in photos here, and just the final edits here.

The assignment is due at the end of the day on August 26th.

Discussion for the assignment is here


NEXT: Umbrella Specular Discussion.

Lighting 102: Unit 1.1 - Position (Angle)

Summary: Lighting angle reveals form in a three-dimensional object. To see how light from a particular angle will affect your subject, view the subject from the position of the light.
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We live in a world of off-axis light. The sun does not stay right behind us. Our lighting fixtures at home illuminate us from above and other various angles. And we are constantly exposed to imagery - both still and moving - that makes use of very sophisticated off-camera lighting techniques.

Yet so many photographers, when they take the time to compose and illuminate their photos, settle for the bland, flat, on-axis (i.e., on-camera) light. Because that is the path of least resistance.

The biggest failing of on-camera flash is that the light, which comes from a point very near to the camera's optical axis, does not have the ability to reveal the three-dimensional quality of the subject.

Granted, most flashes can be tilted to bounce the light off of walls or ceilings while still attached to the camera. But those are very limited choices out of a wide variety of lighting angles available to the off-camera lighting designer.

For the purposes of this discussion we'll think in terms of only hard, bare light from a typical electronic flash. (No worries, we'll be softening it up soon.) But the idea at this point is not to create flattering light for a subject, but to explore the way off-axis light reveals and defines an object.

The first thing that you have to consider when visualizing (or pre-visualizing) the effects of off-axis light is to remember that there are two points of view in play. The first is that of your camera, which defines what you will be able to see in the photograph. But just as important is the second, which is the point of view of your primary light source.

What your light can see will define what is lit in your photo. If your light cannot see it, it will not be directly lit.

The ability to visualize the difference between these two points of view is the key to understanding how changing your light position will alter the way your subject appears.


Look, You Already Know This Stuff.

As we start this process, it is important to begin to merge the way you think about continuous light and the way you think about flash. I really cannot overstate the importance of learning to think of strobe the same way you think of continuous light.

Why? Because you are already a seasoned pro at dealing with continuous light. You experience it and react to it all of the time. You see a shadow and instinctively know where the light came from. You know by the edges of the shadow whether the light was hard or soft.

If you can learn to think about flash as a very bright, continuous light source, you will be able to make use of all of your experience with light that you have been subconsciously building for your entire life. Thinking of a flash as a very bright continuous light source is not so easy for some people. But it will get you past the math-anxiety-type fears you may have about learning how to light.

Heck, even a little mouse munching on lunch in a field knows it had better haul butt when it is suddenly darkened by a shadow. It very well could be an approaching hawk. And the mouse likely knows which way to run when the shadow appears if it has a situational awareness of the lighting environment it is in.

Here is simple exercise that will improve your light visualization skills. Stand in front of a mirror, holding a (lit) table lamp in one hand. Move the light around so that it falls on your face from a series of angles and observe the results.

Yeah, you might feel (and look) a little goofy doing this. Oh, and you might want to have a good response ready for when your significant other pops in and gives you one off those "What the...?" looks, too. But I can vouch for the fact that it works very efficiently to train your eye to light.


Reverse Engineer Photos to Sharpen Your Perception of Light

Let's see what we can tell about the light in this photo just from studying the shadow:



1. Well, right off of the bat we know that the light is coming from camera right, because the shadow goes to camera left. (Don't get cocky. The mouse could have figured that out.)
2. We know the light is hard because the shadow edge is hard. (We're not there yet, but you know that info all the same.)
3. We know the light is slightly higher than the subject because the shadow goes slightly down.
4. We know the light is fairly close to side light (i.e., close to the wall) because of the length of the shadow.

(Note that there is a very dim secondary shadow at camera right. This is coming from the ambient light, which is not totally overpowered.)

It's just a dumb, quick little exercise. But the more you make it a habit to look at photos with an eye toward analyzing the light, the easier it becomes to create any effect you are looking for with your own light.

Here's a little home experiment to try without even making a photo. Position a household lamp so that it illuminates an object. Look at the object from the position of the lamp. See what the lamp sees. Now move away from the lamp and study the changes in your subject as the lamp reveals the object in relief while you move your point of reference further away from the axis of the light source.

Compare the lit portion of the object (as you move away from the lamp) with what you were able to see of the object from the position of the lamp. That's the first step to pre-visualizing light.

Do this kind of exercise enough, and you'll be able to know exactly how a subject will look when lit from any direction before you ever position your light. Better yet, when you pre-visualize a photo you'll know at what angle to position your light to get the effect that you want.

There are actually two variables to consider when deciding where to position a light. The first is at what angle to light your object. The second is at what distance to light your subject. Each variable offers a different form of control for a photographer to exploit.


Let's Try it with Some Live Ammo

For the first little shooting exercise, we'll be dealing only with angular position of the light. This experiment is going to be so simple that many of you will not even want to do it. But I really hope that you do.


Take a person or object (in my case, Combat Camera photog Jason Robertson, from the DINFOS workshop earlier this month) and shoot it/him/her with the light very near the camera axis. You can even stick the flash directly fired on camera for the first shot. You should have a wall behind the subject (with a few feet of separation between the two) as a reference for any shadows.

As for exposure, try this method as a way to start to learn to light without a flash meter. Shoot in a normally lit, indoor room. Set your ASA on 200 and your camera at your normal max synch speed. For most of you, this will be somewhere between 1/125th and 1/500th. Set your aperture on f/5.6.

Start with your flash on manual at, say, 1/16th power, about five feet away from your subject. (If you keep the flash-to-subject distance the same as you change the angle, your exposure will not change.)

Now do a test shot. You subject will likely be a little too light or too dark. Adjust the aperture on your lens until the exposure looks right. If this seems clunky, understand that working this way will soon turn your brain into a built-in flash meter. With a little experience, your first tries will get closer and closer and exposure adjustments will be more and more minor.

Back to the exercise.

After adjusting for a good exposure for your on-camera light, move the flash around the subject and shoot it from a variety of lighting angles. For the example above, I just put up a straight-on and a 45-degree lit shot. But you'll want to play with it more than that. Experiment with some hard angles, in addition to the normal stuff. Look at the different ways in which your light reveals the subject. Again, keeping the distance constant will help keep your exposure constant, too.

Try a shot with the light at about 45 degrees to one side. Have your subject look directly into the camera. (Or have your inanimate object continue to be inanimate.) Now, keeping the subject looking in the same direction, walk over to your light and shoot the subject from the perspective of the light.

Compare the two photos, noting what you see from the position of the light with what portion of the subject was lit in the straight-on photo when the light was hitting it at a 45-degree angle. This may seem like rote, boring stuff. But the goal is to learn to light in a more intuitive manner. And observing your subject from the position of your light source is a great first step in that direction.

There is no need to stick these in the Strobist Flickr pool, but you are welcome to do so if you want. The important thing is to start actually doing this stuff and to learn to use the tagging process. Then we can easily tag, group and view the more challenging assignments later.

When uploading this exercise to Flickr, your photos should have the following tags:

• strobist
• lighting102 (note that there are no embedded spaces)
• position
• angle

If you do that, everyone will be able to easily find them with by clicking here. We'll be talking about this exercise next Monday (June 25th) and moving on to discussion of Unit 1.2 - Position (Distance).
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Questions, answers, etc: Please use the discussion-specific Flickr thread for further discussion.

Related Archive Pages:

L101 See the Flash
L101 Be the Flash
Hard Light
L101 Reverse Engineering Light

Bloggers/Vloggers: If you are blogging your exercises/assignments online, or posting videos about the process, you can include your efforts in the Technorati Trackbacks by linking to the permalink of this post.

NEXT: Lighting 102, 1.2 - Position | Distance

On Assignment: Parking Lot Ambush

This photo, which was previously posted on Monday and shot during the DINFOS Advanced Lighting Team workshop last Friday, got a lot of interest up on the Flickr comment threads. So I thought I would do a little tutorial on exactly how it was done.

If you are looking for a setup shot, you already have it. The photo is the setup shot. We used everyone's flash, synchronized to produce a photo that looks random but was in fact very choreographed.

We used six flashes for the shot - 3 SB-26's and 3-SB-800s. They were mounted on voice-activate light stands, also known as photographers. There are several tricks to pulling this off. But once you have a roadmap, it is quite easy.

First, you have to make the flashes think they are not connected to the cameras. We did that by sliding pieces of paper between the flash and the hot shoe. (After that point the shooters are essentially light stands.)

Second, you have to sync the flashes together and to the main shooter's camera. We did that by using Pocket Wizards on the SB-800's and using those in turn to fire the SB-26's in slave mode. You could do it with fewer flashes -- even one could look cool. But we had six at our disposal. So what the heck, baby.

Third, you have to position the flashes to create the light you want. It appears fairly random. But if you look carefully, we have two back lights, two side lights, a front camera left main light (coming from up high - the "Hail Mary" camera, for a good lighting angle) and a front camera right fill. Kinda hard to miss, come to think of it.

My camera, ironically, had no flash on it -- only a Pocket Wizard. IMO, the total effect almost looks a little Jill Greenberg-ish, but without the soft lights or ring flash.

The exposure was based on the sky. I wanted to underexpose it a couple of stops. So we shot with a D70s (using the electronic shutter sync hack) at 1/1500th at f/8 at ASA 200, if I remember correctly.

The flashes, in close and zoomed to 85mm, were set on 1/8 or 1/16th, depending on their distance to the subject. So recycle time was not an issue. I could have pretty much motored away.

Always remember: Short distance = power and speed.

I had never tried this technique before, and our only prep was a couple of shots up in the hotel room. We like to be thorough, so we put in a good minute or so of research and testing.

Really, this was just a run-and-gun thing, with very little prep time and not much shooting time, either. It was shot at 1:00pm on a 96-degree day in really crappy light. We had much to do, and we were getting hungry.

Once we were downstairs in the parking lot, I popped a couple of frames to make sure that all of the lights would synch. They did -- every time. No worries, mate.

Also, I wanted to make sure that the flashes would all sync at the high shutter speed. As you can see, we were batting 1.000, even though we were working way above the ambient light.

I have to say that I absolutely love this new (for me) technique. And I would probably use the crap out of it, given the opportunity. But since I do not have six shooters following me around every day, it won't end up happening very often.

That said, I will probably be experimenting with overpowering daylight with a bunch of hard lights wrapped around the subject more often, too.

Here is what struck me from the process.

• It was far easier to choreograph (and pull off on a technical basis) than I expected. If you try it, be sure to stick your results up in the Flickr pool.

• In the end, it was darn-near impossible to get a bad looking shot. They were almost all keepers. Which actually sucked at 2:00am when we were editing this stuff. It was not easy to narrow the pix down.

But as problems go, I'll take that one every time.

As you read this, the missus and I will be at Walt Disney World with a 6- and an 8-year-old in tow.

Lord, give us strength. And please send that 3:00pm thunderstorm to thin out the amateurs in the crowd.