Still alive and snapping...

I know I say it every blog – but bloody hell time files when… you have lots to do!

This week’s blog post sees me back at the beach – but this time I was photographing a local clothing designers outfits for children; and she also imports jewellery.

Some of you may have seen the Facebook photo I posted showing the set-up for the kids shots. It involved a single speedlight shooting thru my new softbox that I had not had the opportunity to use. I initially had my Nikon SB-900 set up in the softbox, but it would not trigger using Nikons brilliant i-TTL wireless trigging. Hmmm I thought; and a few other things. Ok, so I turned off i-TTL, set the D700 and SB-900 to manual, grabbed a couple of my Bowens Pulsar radio triggers and tried again. Still nothing. I started to sweat! This is not good; and the clients were not all that impressed judging by the looks on their faces as I kept running back and forth to my camera bag getting this thing and that in an effort to fix the situation.

Then it clicked – pun intended. It seems that the speedlight mount on the softbox was shorting the hot shoe contacts on the SB-900, meaning that the flash was refusing to trigger due to conflicting information it thought it was receiving through the hot shoe. So, I switched out the SB-900 for my Nikon SB-800 and everything started to work.

It’s funny – I have heard and read a thousand times that you should never try out new things when the pressure is on and you have to get the goods. I guess I was just a little lazy. I had tried out the softbox prior to the shoot, but only for about 5 minutes the day before at home, and in hindsight I must have been using the SB-800 because everything worked perfectly.

So anyway, back to the shoot. For the children’s shots the sun was out and the glare from the white sand meant the flash only had to deal with the shadows around their eyes caused by the overhead sun. I ended up positioning the soft box only about 1.5 meters away from the subject and used it in manual mode, setting the power to full whack; 1/1 output to cope with the bright conditions. And it worked pretty well.

As it turned out, the model in the images attached to this blog post (who’s name I forget – sorry!) was quite late and we had already gone over the allotted time for the shoot. The great thing about this was however that the sunlight was quickly fading and the clouds started rolling in. So I put away the Pulsar triggers, got my SB-900 back onto the D700 and turned i-TTL back on also. The clouds were rolling in fast and we only had about 15 minutes of usable sunlight left so I had to move quickly but I have to say I am pretty happy with the shots. I love the way that the soft box has controlled the spill from the flash. It is evident on the models face that she is being lit by the flash but there is no shadows being cast by the flash on the sand behind the chair.

I managed to finish the shoot, thank the client, pack up and hike back to the car, load the car and get in. And then it poured with rain. A lot of rain! That pretty good timing I think!

Catch you all soon. Take care.