Battery Powered Strobes On Location

Traveling around the country can be a lot of fun. But, the challenges of carrying loads of heavy, studio flash units can verge on the ridiculous!

For the past few days we've been on location, with our traveling print display, in San Francisco at a major sport, vacation, and travel show at a place called The Cow Palace, of all things. Between manning the booth and getting up early to do some nature shooting, the last thing I want to deal with is a bunch of unweildy power packs, and all the cables and extension cords that are involved. But, part of what I'm responsible for here is to take some publicity shots for the show management to use to promote future shows in Long Beach and San Diego.

Since the typical visitor to this show is a fun loving, outdoorsman who more than likely enjoys an occasional beer. It only makes sense that any entertainers hired to amuse these fellows should be attractive, and of the opposite sex. And that's exactly what we have here....and it's my job to document said talent, and provide show management with publicity photos.

So, a couple times a day, there's a stage show....complete with live music, a talented commentator....and of course the afore-mentioned talented young ladies....being cheered on by the chauvanistic crowd. Sounds kinda primal and cliche....but, hey, it works, and everyone has a great time.

Well, after shooting a couple of the shows with a hand-held camera and an on-camera flash...I felt I needed to kick it up a notch on the quality scale, and try some posed shots with multiple lights. This was done primarily as a personal challenge, and an attempt to try out some new gear that hadn't been used, yet.

So, we arranged a time to do the session immediately after one of the shows. And, I couldn't wait to try out the new 6 foot diameter Westcott umbrella, which was being lit up with a very small flash unit powered only by 4 AA batteries. This would serve as the main light....and we'd be using a Westcott pop-up reflector as the fill. The second, small flash unit attached to a mini light stand was covered with a blue celophane gel....this was coming in from behind the subjects, and was serving as a hair light to help separate them from the dark background. And, finally the third flash unit was set directly on the ground and was aimed upward to throw some light on the background. All 3 of these flashes were being triggered by a radio signal coming from a transmitter, mounted to the hot-shoe of my camera......and, if this only works...man! Quite a lofty attempt with only a total of 12 AA batteries... to light up a group of 4.....and using a shoot- thru umbrella, no less! I flash back to how this would be attempted in the studio; with our 750 watt second packs....and probably a 4000 watt second bounce head off the ceiling. This seems almost like a joke......but, with the ever-improving quality of the higher ISO's on digital cameras....and the use of a fairly wide aperture, we had a fighting chance. And, afterall, I'll be keeping the subjects in REAL close to the light source to minimize fall-off, and to take advantage of the almost magical quality of a huge light source, in close, to light up a face....it's certainly one of my favorite techniques.

These were all shot at f/4 at 1/60th ....so, the depth of field is very shallow...but, not a problem here. The final images were color corrected in Photoshop, and a vignette was added to darken the edges, and draw the viewer's attention to the main subject.