Hello fellows…
today, the setup tutorial is going to be a bit more complicated than normal :-)… but the result is worth the thinking :-). Ok, whats the image?

- click to enlarge -

I have to state that the photo was not completly our own work. The digital work was done by CALVIN HOLLYWOOD, a german photoshop professional. Having read the titel of this post, you have clearly already gotten the point. We did needed a lot of flash power for that image and we used every single flash we could find, still not having enough strobes :-)…

There were 11! flashes used for this image and the total scene was photographed at one time. So no composing work at all. Because 11 strobes are a lot of light sources, we have to explain the whole setting step-by-step. It is best if you just open the final image in a new browser window and constantly check the information given with your image. This way, you can follow the explanations easily.

First of all, lets have a look at a photo showing the whole scene and finding the flashes! They have been marked with red circles because of the small size of the image. The small on-camera fashes are sometimes hidden behind the couch or some tables. So don’t be puzzled if you see a red marker without seeing the flash on the image! We did use about 4 small on-camera-flashes (SB-800, SB-28 and 580EX) to be able to set strobes in hidden places. Small light sources, completly free placeable but still strong enough to expose a f16.

Ok, let’s go through it very carefully.

1. YELLOW = MAIN LIGHTS – Two 135cm softboxes at 1100Ws.
2. PINK = HIGHLIGHT – One 135cm Striplight at 500Ws without diffusion layers, big enough to also light the background.
3. RED = HIGHLIGHT – One Maxi Light Reflector at about 500Ws. Very strong mirrored light source. Fired through the plants.
4. BLUE = SHADOW-KILLER – One snoot at about 400Ws to eliminate the lack of lighting on the faces of the persons sitting on the couch.

Those flashes were the basic flash setup. The following strobes gave the aditional little “edgyness”…

1. CYAN = MORE HIGHLIGHTS ON THE DARK UNIFORM OF THE POLICEMAN.
2. GREEN = HIGHLIGHTS ON THE PLANTS TO FORM A BARRIER AND TO NARROW THE SCENE. A BIG STRIPLIGHT LYING ON THE FLOOR.
3. ORANGE = MORE HIGHLIGHTS ON THE PERSONS SITTING ON THE COACH
4. MAGENTA = HIGHLIGHTS ON THE POLICEMEN AND THE BODYGUARD OF THE CRIMEBOSS.
5. YELLOWGREEN = LIGHTING ON THE BACKGROUND TO GET MORE DETAIL.

Camera settings were:  f14, 1/160s, ISO100, 18mm on 35mm canon digital camera 5D, 17-40mm.

Now take a look at the images down below. You see the single flashes and the areas to be lit by those flashes.

And to really let you look behind the scenes, we also want to show you another photo without any retouching. It’s the cropped RAW file with some levels! You see, we tried to switch positions of the “actors”, tried out different outfits and moods… A lot of times it is about trying things out, optimizing your work.

There are two important things when taking photos like those.

• Arranging lightsources: Most important is, that you know the final look of your image. For the “Dave-Hill“-Style you do need a lot of highlights, minimal darks and still a good contrast. Very often, the elimination of darks is achieved with a additional ring flash. But it is enough to have a soft lightsource close to the camera. Have a look how many flashes in this photo were just highlighting the edges of the sc
• Arranging actors and elements in the final photo: We can’t help you with that topic. Do as you want to…

You see, the photo already got this artificial lighting but it has not the cool comic style. It is still to clean and to realistic. From this point, it was up to CALVIN HOLLYWOOD!

For the whole shoot, we took about 7-8 hours. Lighting and setting up the location was about 3 hours of work. Bevor that, there was not one photo taken. But try to make those hard “cuts” during your shoots. After the setup was finished, we used every single cell in our brains for CREATIVITY. Lighting was done and no thought was wasted… We can promise you better results when you try to split your photoshoot in two. Concentrate on lighting and after that, totally contrentrate on your photography. Very often, even when your lighting is not the good, you can make the best photos looking for the style and the personality of your model. But thats another topic…

Here you go with some detailed shots out of the resulting photo. Some close-ups for that you can see what the digital retouching made.

And finally we end with some other impressions of the photoshoot. We do love MAKING-OF and BEHIND THE SCENES shots. :-) Big thanks also go the NACHTRESIDENZ, the finest club in Düsseldorf for the help with the location!

… and finally finally we also want to show you a small but cool video about the shoot. No real “photo-how-to” but still very fun to watch. Look out for the gorgeous man with the vibe in his blood… DANCE BABY… DANCE!!!

SETUP TUTORIALS AS, BXRI, Canon, Elinchrom, fashion, flash, fortgeschrittene, lighting, on location, photo, photography, Photoshooting, PHOTOSHOP, SETUP, SETUP TUTORIALS, shooting, strobes, Technique, TUTORIAL, TUTORIALS