Flash-Fill Portraiture

Right before the weekend at the Minneapolis Arboretum, I conducted a workshop near the Canadian border in a small town called Ely. Famous for being at the entryway to the Boundary Water Canoe Area. It's the last bit of civilization for those heading north into the backcountry.
And, in the fall, we had the place to ourselves.....great scenery, leaves changing color, and even some early morning fog on the lakes to make things perfect!

The photos below show some of the before-and-after examples of portrait lighting, using battery powered soft boxes, very late in the day. The subjects had their backs to the sunset.....so, without the help of the flash units, all we'd get is a silhouette.

These 2 photos show Dan and Linda Borders, on the deck of a Yurt........yes, I said yurt, right at sunset.


These next 2 pictures show our lighting set-up, and Chuck and Marty Wick, who actually live in Ely, and are the proud Yurt-owners.

Here, you can see where the lights were placed for the overall lighting pattern....
Pretty standard for a studio set-up. Off to the right is the main light....slightly above the subjects. And, behind them, to the left is the light that's serving a couple purposes: hair-light and, also as a side-separation light, so they don't blend into the darker background.

We shot a couple minutes of video to show how the session went.............click on the middle of the screen below to watch the demo...



On the video clip, you can't see the second light...it was just too far to the left to be captured by the video camera. The power set on the Metz flash units was done manually, for exact repeatable results. The main light was at 1/4 th power, and the back light was set at 1/8th. At these low power settings, recycle times are instantaneous.