Back to Benson!

Benson is a great area inside the middle of Omaha. It has lots of nice textures, is closer to my home than Downtown and the parking is much, much easier! Yesterday Chris and I went back to Benson with Anna, who was with us on our first Benson shoot. Anna brought along two of her friends, Nicole and Jessie. All three girls were fantastic models.

We started off the night doing some ambient light shots under an overhang. Chris is working on his technical knowledge so I instructed him on how to begin planning a shot that will be lit with strobes. He started by taking some photographs of Anna in the ambient light. He had to manage his exposure manually while paying attention to the varying amounts of sunlight as the clouds passed between him and the sun. Once he saw how the ambient light looked we started adding strobes.

We added one strobe to light the model from the front with a shoot through umbrella. Then, we added an additional strobe for rim light. Chris hasn’t yet posted any pictures of Anna from this portion of the night.

We next brought Nicole in and varied the lighting. For Nicole we used a hard light on her to send a shadow on to the wall and another light with an umbrella to light her face.

While we were shooting Nicole a gentleman came out of a garage on the alley and asked us if we’d be interested in shooting the girls with an old Corvette! So, we finished up with Nicole outside and I went in to see what the car and location would look like. The location itself wasn’t very interesting. It had horrible fluorescent lighting, a poor backdrop, and other cars in the shot.

I asked if it would be possible to move the Vette but he said no. Chris still wanted to shoot with the Vette so we brought our gear and the girls inside. Starting out, Chris wanted to position one girl on each side of the car and shoot from the front. There wasn’t much room so he grabbed my wide angle lens while I setup a few reflective umbrellas to give us some even lighting for both girls. We weren’t going for anything too stylized, just decent lighting.

After a little while Chris grabbed the umbrellas and stuck them behind the car and positioned the girls right behind the car to create a shot similar to my hair flipping shot from the previous Benson shoot. I pulled a monopod out of my camera bag and stuck a strobe and Cybersync on it to provide rim light behind the model’s head. After a few shots I went over to Chris to look on the back of his camera and saw that there was a fluorescent light still on above the front store windows and it looked like a comedic arrow hat going right through the model’s head!

I went up front and uplugged that light while thinking about what could be changed with the main lighting. The dual reflective umbrellas weren’t creating the kind of light that I would have liked to see on the girls. Chris had been shooting with his EF 70-200 F2.8 lens from outside the showroom. I noticed that the wall behind him and the girls was painted white and had several large doors that were also painted white. I told him to hold on a second while I changed up the lighting. I removed the reflective umbrellas and closed the doors so that Chris would have a very small slit to shoot through. I then placed the strobes bare and fired against the white wall and doors to act like large fill cards to light the girls. This lighting was much more even and looked a lot better.

I yelled to Chris a couple times from the front of the car that I’d like a turn to shoot this setup but he apparently didn’t hear me and by 8pm the owner of the shop was getting a bit restless so we packed it up and headed back outside. So, unfortunately I don’t have any photos from the first 2 hours of the shoot!

After leaving the garage the girls were getting hungry. Nicole was done modeling and just wanted to eat but Anna and Jessie were loving it and wanted to keep shooting. Chris said I could shoot the rest of the night.

Outside there was a wall of ivy with some red painted doors. About twelve feet in front of that was an old wooden electrical pole. I had in my head what I wanted my shot to look like and began setting it up. I started out with a single bare flash pointed at the ivy and the red doors. I took a few test shots of just the background to get the light positioned exactly how I wanted it.

Then, I setup another bare flash to camera right and behind the pole to rim out the model and the pole. I pulled out my Speedlight Pro Kit and stuck it on a boom with a strobe and asked Chris to hold it while I put Anna in position. I chose Anna for this shot because I thought her gray dress with yellow accent would look good against the green and red. I took a few test shots and had Chris move the rim light back and around Anna’s position to keep the light from hitting any of her face. I couldn’t get the rim light in the position I wanted to have no light on Anna’s face from it so I decided to have Anna look to camera left while I shot so that the rim wouldn’t reach her face. That worked out perfectly. I started Anna out with her forearm against the pole and she worked it to give me many different choices for our final image. From start to finish, including setup and pre-visualization, this setup took 20 minutes.

Next, I wanted to shoot over by some large ferns growing on the side of the building. This is something you normally don’t see in Omaha, especially in the middle of the city! I looked at the girls to see what they were each wearing and decided Jessie outfit would best fit the look I wanted for this image. There were some large broken branches laying on the ground where I wanted to shoot her so I dragged those away but kept one clean looking log that I thought would make a nice posing tool. I setup one bare rim light behind and to camera left so that it would light the foliage while providing minor rim on Jessie. I had Chris boom the Speedlight Pro Kit over Jessie’s head and posed her with one leg on the log. I laid on the ground with my wide angle lens and snapped some pictures while Jessie moved through some poses and gave me some variation. She did a fantastic job tonight, especially considering it was her first time modeling. From start to finish, including setup and pre-visualization, this setup took less than 10 minutes.

Earlier in the day we had horribly overcast skies and it was threatening to rain. In traditional Nebraska fashion, the weatherman were wrong and we got nothing. This shot was inspired by a similar shot done by Don Giannatti. This was a very simple setup with only the Speedlight Pro Kit boomed overhead.

After Jessie and I were done Anna pointed out an old brick wall in the alley that I had noticed on a previous trip here location scouting. It was getting late, already a quarter to 9 so I decided to make this last shot with a very simple one-light setup. I had Chris grab a 43″ shoot through umbrella and boom it over Anna and roughly on axis with the camera. I posed Anna with her back leaning against the wall and her hips positioned further away than what would be natural. I like unnatural posing! It brings something to the image that you normally don’t see.

Next, Anna said she wanted to do a pose with her chest facing the wall. She turned around against the wall and assumed a perfect pose. By this time our light was almost gone and I was having a very tough time focusing. I tried to grab focus a few times on her shoulder against her hair because of the higher contrast. But, back at the computer I found that my favorite image from this sequence was out -of-focus! Knowing that Anna really liked this pose I didn’t want to disappoint her so I decided I’d do what I could to make it a good image. After several rounds of high-pass filtering and sharpening I turned it into an image with a soft-focus look that looked planned rather than a mistake!

All in all, I had a fantastic time shooting yesterday! Anna and Jessie both are anxious to shoot again as well!