Clamshell setup

Like Duffman would say "oh ya!" ;-)

hmmm… Mr. Brix would ask me from time to time during the workshop if I learned anything…..
I’ll get back to that later…

Early Saturday morning I woke up after a restless night… This was the first time in a long time where I weren’t able to sleep due to sheer excitement over, well anything…

Night before my wedding? slept like a baby tucked away in its mothers arms..
Night before my first and only National game for the Danish National Football Team? snored like a dinosaur…

Night before a one day workshop in flash photography? woke up 3 times, last time at 6am because I had to get up to switch batteries in the charger…


The workshop was set at a warehouse/office building. Nine people were attending the workshop, an assortment of old and young, male and female but everyone of us with a passion for photography…

I’ll admit that the first couple of hours were “flash 101″ and at least for me that was old news. We learned about which parameters controlled which aspect of flash photography…

Aperture and shutterspeed, our two old friends, came in to play once again.

The plan for the rest of the day was to walk us through several different setups that are considered the basics in one flash photography, and next of to show us what you could do with two flashes.

First of we worked with TTL cords lighting the models outside in the snow, still in manual and working on how to aim the flash directly at the model (which isn’t as easy at it seems), and how distance from the subject is one of the parameters that effect the output of the flash.

(not terrible proud of the below shot, but I thought I’d show you guys what we were doing in the freezing cold.)

EXIF: ISO 100 - f/3.5 - 1/800

Afterwards we went inside and split up in to three teams. Each group set up the classic 45/45 setup with a California Sunbounce as a reflector, with a model standing by, in our case Natalie.

Brix asked us not to shoot these portraits vertically, to avoid them looking to much like the classic school pictures you see all the time but rather do them horizontal and try to tell a story with the added width of the frame.

I just loved Natalie’s eyes so I couldn’t resist doing a closeup of her while trying to get the flowers in the background in the shot as well:

EXIF: ISO 200 - f/9.0 - 1/40

Next up was the clamshell setup. Again we made use of the Sunbounce reflector.

The Clamshell puts the umbrella more or less right in front of the model which gives the model more contrast and makes scars, wrinkles and every other blemish stand out.
The Sunbouncer sits underneath mounted to a small stand with a superclamp.

It’s worth to mention that before every setup Mr. Brix showed us, he would make us say out loud what he was doing, and what we were supposed to do when it got to be our turn.

First of, take a photo without flash and adjust the ambient light with the shutterspeed. Next turn on the flash and fine tune the light from the flash with the aperture.
Want more light, up the size of the hole, less light, close it down a bit.

Right, enough with the lesson, back to the review…

The clamshell looks the best on people with less than perfect skin, so shooting Natalie with skin definitely not in that category, made for an interesting photo…

I finally ended up trying to recreate something out of a magazine, leaving space on the right for text. Afterwards I softened her skin in Lightroom, and increased the overall exposure by one stop.

EXIF: ISO 200 - f/4.0 - 1/40

After this we were asked to work on a specific assignment.

We were asked to create an office shot of a person working at a desk.

I had an idea of emulating something Yuri Arcurs would do, something like this.

The image is setup more or less the same as the 45/45 setup, flash camera left but with out the Sunbouncer, as the ambient light gave us enough light on the right side.
(notice how the high ISO setting doesn’t show, I just love flash photography :-) ..)

EXIF: ISO 800 - f/5.6 - 1/80

Finally experimenting with two or more flashes I came up with these two shots of Ziad and Natalie.

Before hand Brix had shown us a cross lighting setup, a simple setup creating a rim light around the back of the model. Not just wanting to copy him, I came up with the shots below.

I placed two Cactus KF36 flashes, the same as the old Vivitar 285 flashes, on the floor shooting through the cage in an upward angle approximately 30 degrees, and a single 430 EX II on a  lightstand 45 degrees down bubble (a little submarine lingo for ya’) straight on through an umbrella.

Each flash triggered with a Cactus V4 trigger.

EXIF: ISO 800 - f/5.0 - 1/125

EXIF: ISO 800 - f/9.0 - 1/125

with a couple of hours to go, Mr. Brix wanted to try and show us how much light we could actually kill using what we had learned about flash photography.

http://vimeo.com/9449986

You can see his post about the specific shot in the video here.

_________________________________________________________________________

So did I learn anything from this shoot? At first I thought this would be a cake walk, a waste of my money frankly, but I soon learned that I still have a lot to learn when it comes to photography, directing models none the least, and I also learned why it’s not everyone who does this for a living, it’s not as easy as it looks…

Still managed to get a few good shots though.

Check out the gallery with all the shots from this shoot here.

Related posts:

  1. W.T.F.? – a studie in gels
  2. On-location portrait lighting workshop
  3. Portraits with one flash (warning: model not that good looking!…)
  4. Great Photographers: Rian Flynn
  5. High Speed Sync – what’s up with that?