BTS from the Ray Johnston Photo Shoot!

Here's a brief behind the scenes video
from the Ray Johnston photo shoot from a couple of weeks ago.

Storage Tips!

lighting gear
Originally uploaded by d double u

This is a photo of the gear I used for the Ray Johnston photo shoot.
In the messenger bag I have two camera bodies (5D and 20D) , three lenses (50mm 1.8, 17-40mmL, 70-200mm f4L), a 580 EXII flash and a Ray Flash adapter.
In the two bigger boxes I have two Norman LH2500 heads and two Genesis 200 heads, plus all necessary cabling. In the small box, I have two Vivitar 285 flashes, wireless triggers (two Radiopopper transmitters, four receivers) and all cabling and correction gels.
My top secret weapon of storage is the golf bag ($19 at a thrift store) that holds four light stands, plus Quantum batteries for the Viv 285s, my light meter and about a half-dozen umbrellas of various sizes.

Packed like this, I was able to load everything in my car in two trips.

Ray Johnston Band Photo Shoot

I recently did a shoot for the Ray Johnston Band as Ray was in need of some new promo photos. With no real direction from the label management as to what look we were going for, I decided to keep things simple. We set up on the stage at Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas, and did some outside shots about a block away from there.
For the stage shots, I used the setup seen to the left. One Norman LH2500 head shooting into a 5 foot umbrella/softbox at 400w/s. The two rim lights are Genesis 200 strobes, set to 48 on the power level, which put them a little less than one stop below the main light and using the stock reflectors.
The umbrella/softbox gives a nice big light source and you really can't go too far wrong with it. The shot below is an example of this setup.


For the outside shots, I went with my trusty Vivitar 285s. The main light was one 285 at full power with the head zoomed to Tele. From across the alley where we were shooting, this perfectly lit the group of six with the ambient exposed one stop under. Another snooted 285 was aimed to hightlight certain spots in the frame.
The wide shot below shows the area being hit by the flashes.


And here's one of the shots.


I don't often get to shoot more than a couple of people at a time, but this shoot went really well, especially considering I had five different locations to set up using almost all of the lighting gear that I own and that I was setting up and tearing down by myself. The guys were very easy to work with and I hope to see the photos being used soon!

Photo of the Day

sprinkler
Originally uploaded by d double u

I haven't been doing photo of the day for the past few days as the same photos keep popping up. Then, this one got a number of hits. It's a photo of a lawn sprinkler at my parent's house in Plano.
I had just bought a 1937 Rolleicord on eBay and this is from the first test roll.
Those Rolleis are great cameras!