How I Lit It #3 - Wavorly

This is one of my favorite sections of the blog.  I should start doing more of these how "How I Lit It" segments.  I like being able to show the technique in action.  

This image is from a shoot I did last year with the band Wavorly.  They've been categorized (and not by me) as a Christian rock band and there most recent record Conquering the Fear of Flight was released on Flicker records.  They hale from Tupelo, MS and have accents as thick as Mississippi mud.  They were really cool to work with, super laid back and would've tried just about anything.  You can't ask more from a subject.

I chose to show this image because it has a little more complexity to it than the last post I did on lighting, How I Lit It #2 - From Indian Lakes.  That post had no complexity at all, it was just window light.  This one, on the other hand, has two strobes and a couple other light sources.

So when approaching a shot like this, the first thing I do is nail down an exposure of the things that you can't change.  For this image, I couldn't do anything about the intensity of either the headlights or the interior lights behind the guys.  So I found an exposure that balanced both of those light sources well enough that they weren't fully blown out.  I wanted them to maintain some sort of detail.

The next thing I did was put a small strobe on a light stand and place it just outside of the drivers door.  I used a Nikon SB-28DX with a LumiQuest UltraSoft bounce for this light.  It looked OK initially but there just wasn't quite enough to it.

I thought it would be cool to have a light coming through the rear of the car, like headlights behind it.  So I set up a Nikon SB-24, zoomed to 85mm, bare and pointed right at the back window from above and left in the image.  I really like the way it highlighted the particles on the window and gave a rim light to the two in the back seat.

If I could go back there are a couple of other things that I would tighten up, but all in all I think it was a pretty successful image.  Thanks for checking back with me!