It was the last farmers market of the season in Uptown Westerville and although I’d visited the market every Wednesday afternoon I wasn’t pleased with most of the portraits, or attempted portraits, I’d taken during the three hours it was open for business.

This day I tossed my Lastolite EzyBox in the trunk of the car hoping to find a worthy subject.

As is the tradition at the final market, kids in costumes were awarded Trick-or-Treat candies from vendors, some of whom decorated their booths in Halloween dressings or themselves in costumes indicative of their product.

Such was the cheese maker who dressed in a cow costume to offer candies and cookies to her younger customers.

The crowds are usually much smaller at the end of the season, attendance dropping quickly after the last of the fresh corn and then to a trickle when the final freshly picked apples are gone.

That made it a little easier to pull the bovine out of her booth for a quick photo session.

Shot with the 14-24mm lens to include the market, minus half the vendors who stop coming at the end of the season.

Lit with an Nikon SB-800 shot through the Lastolite EzyBox with camera and strobe set to Nikon Creative Lighting System settings.

Underexposed the background by 2/3rd of a stop. Strobe set to normal output.

The EzyBox is mounted on an extension handle so it is about 40 inches over my head and slightly to the left so the light comes from slightly above .

The higher angle makes the light at her feet and slightly behind her less than it would have been at a lower angle. Less light makes the shadows disappear into the background. The softbox light slightly wrapped around her so the shadows are less pronounced than a straight strobe or a what an umbrella would have provided.

Great thing about the EzyBox is how simple it is to setup and teardown. It fits into a small pouch, even with the extension handle.

I have used it at the end of the small monopod used as a strobe extension but it wasn’t in the car as I thought.

The one thing that made this shoot more enjoyable was the enthusiasm of our subject. I’d shot her a little earlier with my iPhone for a different portrait so she was eager to see what was next in my shooting portfolio.

My grandson Owen congratulated me last night for my photo of one of his favorite plants, the Venus Fly Trap.

He also took the time to make sure I understood how the small bristles on the interior of the plant signal the intrusion of a possible meal and how the longer spikes on the edges of the two leaf sections interlock like finges on his hand to hold the meal tight as it excretes acids to dissolve the prey.

He didn’t once ask me about the lighting. Love my grandson, but, please, ask me about the lighting.

The plant was on a shelf at a local nursery where I have relatively free roaming privileges at any time. The store is preparing for spring sales and the staff is constantly adding new plants and displays.

The Venus Fly Trap plants are very young with each trap about 1/2-inch long. I decided to use my Canon G11 with its easy-to-use closeup capabilities. All I needed was a dark background and enough light to make a nice frame.

I moved the plant to a wooden shelving unit which will later hold ceramic and clay pots. The light, softened by the rainy weather and the translucent plastic sheets covering the roof of the greenhouse, wasn’t bright enough to shoot without an additional light source, or two.

I’m not a lazy person but didn’t want to travel to my car to retrieve a set of remote strobes to add light.

I used the next best thing. The lights are always with me, always charges, always ready to illuminate the way or to be used as a light source.

At the rear of my baseball cap is a Petzl Tikka LED head lamp. It’s been removed from its original strap and laced onto the leather adjusting strap. I’ve used a variety of headlamps and have settled on the Petzls because they are sturdy and used AAA batteries instead of the expensive button batteries. My choice is rechargeable AAA batteries.

At my waist, on my belt is a Pelican M1 LED Flashlight. It uses a single CR123 battery. I use rechargables to save the cost of buying these expensive batteries. The flashlight’s holster has a pouch for a replacement battery. When the rechargeables reach depletion, the light goes out without warning. Normal alkaline of lithium batteries begin to lose power and the light gets weaker. Not with rechargeables.

I placed the stronger Petzl headlamp on the shelf at camera right to rim light the spikes and to shine through the translucent leaf section. The Pelican light was handheld just below and to the left of the plant for rim light on the spikes and to spray fill light on the right hand leaf section.

Both lights were moved slightly for composition and to properly light the each leaf.

The Canon G11 was set to aperture priority, macro autofocus with the focus point moved slightly to left of center, ISO400. The exposure was set one stop under to compensate for the dark background.

The resulting image, although not perfect, shows how small flashlights can provide sufficient lighting to create dynamic photos.

Eds note:

Another photo taken with the Pelican Flashlight is at iPhrog and from my iPhone.

EXIF info for top photo.

First, the client bought me dinner so we could talk about our relationship and discuss his needs for the photo shoot to follow. It was my second free meal of the day with the first being fried catfish and green beans with sweet tea. The evening meal was chicken parmigiana with cheese ravioli and red sauce.

The assignment to follow the last meal was to shoot a set of photos of mixed martial artists for banners to be displayed at the entrance to the event venue and some advertising information before the event in several weeks.

The shoot was set for one of the fighter’s local training gyms where I’d planned to build a small studio with strong rim lighting, a softbox fill light above the camera and a directional light across the background and a spotted hair light to create depth.

The background would be a found location in the gym perhaps lockers, chain fencing for the ring or a wall with graffiti or rough paint.

My plans fell apart within several minutes after my arrival. The gym was packed with fighters training, sparring and occupying almost every square foot of the training space. There was little, if any space to build even a studio, even with my SB800s and lightweight stands.

Another problem I encountered, and somewhat anticipated, the fighters were there to train and wanted little to do with sitting for a protracted shooting session as I worked them into position and attitude for good photography. Most had been photographed before but not by a pro shooter who wanted more of their time than quickly standing with a fighting pose for a quick frame or two of on-camera flash.

As luck would have it, two of the walls in the front training room were lined with red cushioning pads similar to the pads beneath the basket of a middle school gym where I’d photographed a team. I’d used the slightly reflective background before and knew what results I’d get by throwing a strobe on it.

I wasn’t going to be able to set up light stands on the padded floor. I didn’t have a lot of time and the space was occupied with about 12 fighters running through exercises and practicing submission techniques. Their motions took them through the spaces where light stand would have stood. I had to change my plans from four or five lights to one.

Although I’d planned to use a small softbox for the front light in my previous lighting plan, I’d brought along a Lumodi Beauty Dish to substitute if my internal muse disliked the softer light.

The softbox light would have been good for front lighting with strong rim light striking the sides of the fighter’s heads defining their shape and separating them from the background. Using a softbox as a single light source might have worked on some models but not fighters with a days growth of beard, sweat, and attitude.

The Lumodi Beauty Dish, a recent purchase and used just enough to be comfortable with its use, was the perfect choice.

Its light was stronger than the softbox but not as contrasty as a bare strobe. I wanted to create contrast on facial features with a directional light. the beauty dish was a good choice I also had access to a small ring light but sometime think it is overused. The beauty dish was a good choice for this situation.

I used a human light stand to position the beauty dish directly over my head almost as if it was a tall strobe attached to the camera. The fighter’s were places as close to the background as possible so light falloff from the strobe would be minimum.

I used Nikon Creative Lighting System to determine the exposure because I was constantly changing my position to the subject for to shoot a full length to a tighter head shot. The light, attached to a HLS, was always being moved closer or further from the subject. Shooting ion manual with a single f-stop and constant strobe output would have slowed the process. I would have to stop between each setup and adjust either my f-stop or the output of the strobe to compensate for its changed position.

The beauty dish created just enough directional lighting to highlight each fighter’s facial features and a shadow that was soft enough to keep some detail to help create depth.

The camera was set to manual exposure, 1/320th, f5.6, RAW.

I worked through 7 fighters in 14 minutes with individual poses and several poses facing another fighter.

Post processing included multiple layers of RAW image smart object processing and masking, increased clarity with the Topaz 4 Photoshop plug-in, and High Pass filter for sharpening with masking so it only applied to certain portions of the fighter’s face.

The second photo I shot for the editorial assignment mentioned two days ago was of an engineer demonstrating how a portion of the temperature sensor systems were manufactured. It was a perfect complementary image to the closeup of tweezers grasping on of the minuscule temperature sensors.

The lighting is similar. One light, an SB800, is placed at right slightly behind the apparatus. This strobe will rim light it and put a strong light on the engineer’s face. A second SB800 at far left and slightly behind the engineer make a hair light to separate him from the background and to cross light the apparatus.

The third light, a Vivitar 283, was set 180 degrees of the angle of the strobe at right creating a slight cross light where they struck the same object. The strobe at right was just a little higher.

Posing the engineer so only one eye peeked around the apparatus created an unusual composition that balanced out the size and shape of the numbered rotor he’s attaching wires to. The symmetry of his hands frames the horizontal edges of the photo keeping your eye at the center.

I failed to flag the strobe at right so more light than I wanted fell on the background at top right.

This was one of two photos I could set up and light within the short period of time I had between arriving and the lunch plans of the office. Not unusual for a news photo assignment time.

Back in the day, almost two years ago, when newspapers and wire services assigned freelance photographers to shoot photos to accompany business stories, I often searched out photogenic subjects to best illustrate manufacturing, warehousing, shipping, and business-to-business and retail sales.

The reality of most manufacturing facilities is that they don’t look anything like what the imagination can conjure up from the company’s name and product description.

One such local company told me it was the coldest place in Ohio, building near-zero degree temperature measuring devices for other manufacturing companies. I eagerly jumped at the chance to photograph their facility for an assigned story on the economy and a federal report on manufacturing.

Sounded like a great place for a set of photos. It was, but it wasn’t what I thought it might be.

The refrigeration units, although the completed unit was sizeable, centered around an extremely small device that could barely be seen pinched between the tongs of tweezers. Although interesting, not uniquely photogenic. The sensor is 16/1000th of an inch wide. What made the photo possible was a tray of 900 of these devices soon to be installed in units.

I used two Nikon SB800 strobes and a Vivitar 283 to light the scene as one of the engineers held a sensor in tweezers.

One SB800 light was placed about three feet away at 45 degrees to my right and 45 degrees above my head pointed directly at the tray of 900 sensors.

A second SB800 light was placed at the same height about 135 degrees from my left at 45 degrees down angle. It’s angle was slightly altered to make sure its light fell between the engineer’s fingers and the blue container to create shadows from a different angle than the first light.

The third light, the Vivitar 283, was placed just to the left of and slightly above my head.

The camera, a D2X with a 60mm f2.8 macro lens,  was set to manual exposure because all my light sources were from strobes and gave complete control of lighting ratios and eliminated any ambient light. Idialed in f16 to give me a greater depth of field for the array of sensors and tweezers. The strobes were fired with Pocket Wizards, not Nikon CLS. The camera was a Nikon D2X which doesn’t have a built-in strobe for command mode.

I’m sorry that I didn’t write down the exact setting for each strobe. I know that would have been very helpful. However, the light to my right was set about 1/2 stop less than the light to the far left. The left light gave me backlight for her hand and the rows of sensors. I made sure her hand’s shadow from the second strobe partially fell across the sensors creating a variety of light directions across them. The 283 was dialed down to provide a low level fill light from the front.

The greatest difficulty of the day was getting my focus point to be on the sensor in the tweezers and make sure its position was against the gray area between the rows of other sensors. It took about 15 shots before I was comfortable with the light setup and sensor positioning, then another 10 for insurance and a few different angles, none of which were successful.

I shot this and one other lighting setup in about 30 minutes in order to meet an early afternoon deadline and before the engineers left for lunch.

The third photo studio at the Arnold Sports Festival was built on the Small Strobe – Big Results philosophy of our primary speaker at the weekend, David Tejada.

David’s built a business around using small, inexpensive strobes instead of AC-powered monolights or studio strobes to light his commercial, editorial and portrait clients. His expertise is the reason we invited him to demonstrate his techniques at the first Arnold Sports Photo Workshop.

ASF photographer Jay LaPrete’s setup was as simple as two Canon 430EX strobes, one Canon 580EX strobe, a few colored gels, two stands, a diffuser dome and a black background.

The two 480EX strobes with red gels were placed on light stands behind the subject approximately five feet away at 45-degree angles. Both were set to 1/8th power.

The 580EX strobe with the diffuser dome was attached to the camera hot-shoe and set to 1/4th power.

All the strobes were fired with the Canon infra-red transmitter built into the 580EX.

Little light fell on the background. The intensity was so low that it did not affect the background density.

This lighting setup is far more severe in the lighting dynamic than the other two setups. With deep shadows and bright highlights, the contrast level did not lend itself well for shooting most of our subjects. A few, such as this martial artist dressed in red, were perfect for the stronger lighting technique.

The gels were changed for a few subjects whose coloring and emotional impact would be better shown with the different color although the result is less effective than the red gels.

We also set up a smaller Strobist-style arrangement with Nikon SB800s and shoot-through umbrellas although they were use infrequently. The larger studio arrangement, discussed earlier, was used for the majority of the shoots with this setup more for specific subjects and experimentation.

Brent needed a quick photo for a newspaper article about a local boy, him, who’d advanced to great things. Now the Director of Communications for the Arnold Sports Festival, Brent’s hometown newspaper’s article about his ascendancy to greatness needed a photo to complete the layout.

Choosing the spot for the shoot was easy. The office conference room is lined with framed posters marking the more than 30 years of fitness, bodybuilding and weightlifting events it has run. Most of the posters along one wall include photos of Arnold, the namesake for Brent’s employer.

Lighting the portrait was not difficult but did require one modified light source.

The main light was an SB800 bounced into a silver umbrella. The light was placed to my right just above Brent’s eye level. I wanted the stronger light coming from a silver reflector instead of a softer light through or into a silk reflector. The stronger light source gave his face more contrast for a more masculine look.

The second light, another SB800, was at camera left, about 12 feet away. it was aimed at the wall of posters and modified with a small Honl snoot slightly opened on the side facing the camera. The light was not close enough to cause lens flare.

The snoot focused the light onto the wall behind Brent keeping it from directly striking his right side. I wanted just a little light on his side to rim light his face and shoulder. Opening t4he snoot just a few inches gave me just enough light to fill the shadows from the main light.

Both strobes were fired with Nikon CLS. The main light was on a different channel that the second light so I could separately modify the strength of each. The snooted strobe needed more output than the main light because it was further from its intended subject, the wall.

The entire shoot took no more than a few minutes. As usual, it took more time to set up the lights than do the shoot.

I’ve shot Best Buy more times than I’d like to remember.

It is a friendly company usually welcoming news photographers with a legitimate need access to their store with little more than a knock at the door.

Other consumer electronics companies are prepared to physically remove news photographers from their property without any opportunity to discuss the story’s efficacy for their product line and the possibility of getting free mention of their company in newspapers from Shanghai to Des Moines.

I’ve been escorted to my car and berated by overly efficient corporate guardians when simply wanting a photo of MP3 players or a sale sign during after Christmas closeouts.

There probably isn’t a quantifiable method by using my anecdotal experiences to measure Best Buy’s continued success as an electronics retailer. All I know is its profits continue to increase as they allow photographers easy access. Circuit City experienced little profit as it denied access without national corporate public relations office approval which is rarely given or provided too late for daily deadlines. Best Buy leaves the decision up to the store manager. Rarely have I been refused and only when a new manager or assistant manager didn’t understand the policy. You remember what happened to Circuit City.

Today’s photo, taken in Best Buy’s electronics install bay, was from a D200 lit by an off camera SB800 using Nikon’s Creative Lighting System.

How could you get anymore cooperative than allowing me to throw a direct flash beam into the face of an installer working on a customer’s car?

Today’s lesson uses flash in a near-noon daylight photo to create an image balancing daylight and fill-flash.

The girl is standing in open sun coming through an opening between two trees. The spot was chosen because it put her right hand in the soft shadow of one tree and her head in the open sunlight.

Her hand, in shadow, becomes a darker object against the sky instead of a bright object that moves your eye to the edge of the frame. The same effect could have been created with a scrim but the tree’s shadow was convenient. And, I didn’t have a scrim.

The second light is a LumoPro LP120 from Midwest Photo Exchange. The LumoPro LP120 is a fully manual flash that is the main unit in the company’s Strobist kits.

The LP120 fired into a Westcott 43″ collapsible umbrella set just a little behind the girl’s face to give a small nose and face shadow. The height is just above her head to fill the eyes and give the appearance of a matching reflection for the sun’s direction.

The exposure, in noon daylight, is fully manual.

Nikon D300 was manually set to 1/320th second, the highest shutter speed for focal plane flash exposure. The ISO was set to 100 to keep the shutter speed and f-stop in a range that would allow me to underexpose the background by a stop and fill the girl’s face with the manual strobe power. The lower ISO also allowed me to use a relatively narrow depth of field to isolate on the face de-emphasizing her hands and blurring the tree line in the background.

The f-stop was set to 7.1 on the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 lens. At 1/320th shutter speed and an f-stop at 7.1 with an ISO of 100 the sky was underexposed by about a stop.

The flash, set to 1/2 power bounced off the silk umbrella fabric creating a soft directional fill the matched the sun’s angle. The natural look of the light doesn’t distract attention from the subject. A different angle or intensity might have detracted from the pose.

The strobe was fired with a Pocket Wizard.

There are several small compositional aspects to the photo that make it work.

The tree line and tick across her shoulders are close in their horizontal angle. The tree line is in the lower third of the photo providing a a background and frame to keep your attention at her face. Her eyes are slightly positioned to the left of center. This opens the whites of her eyes making them appear larger. The rough end of the stick is in her foreground hand creating a set of angles that act as an end frame to the object.

There are a few things I’d change or at least work harder at next time. I don’t like the highlight on her nose. Her left hand is too hot although that could have been better edited in Photoshop. Her wild hair at the top of the frame should have been fixed before shooting.

What’s important about this photo, for the New Digital Photographer, is that it was shot on manual exposure, manual flash, inexpensive flash equipment, near noon in full sunlight.

There are ways to create good photography without breaking the bank or wishing you had the same high-end equipment of the pros you read about.

It was Grandparent’s Day at school and I was under instructions to shoot my 12-year-old granddaughter with some of her friends.

There were really only two choices. The third, a near-full studio setup wasn’t going to happen.

At best I would have just a couple of minutes to gather the kids after lunch and between our class tours for a couple of quick photos. Lighting in the lunchroom, hallways and classrooms appears bright but overhead fluorescents and minimum lights turned on in the gymnasium-lunchroom was flat and directly overhead resulting in shadows under the eyes and falloff from head to foot.

I could have used the Canon G9 with on-camera flash. You know the results.

Being the owner of a Nikon D300 and several SB800 strobes they were my first choice for lighting and posing.

I’d previously shot this specific photo at the end of a track team photo. I’d tested shooting against the red padding on the wall under the basket to see how much reflection I’d get from the strobes and knew it was minimal depending upon subject and light placement.

The setup is simple. The D300 strobe set to Commander Mode. Both SB800s set for Nikon Creative Lighting System exposure.

The strobe’s built-in diffuser are lowered to spread the flash wider at the closer distance to the subject. The girl’s arms are just about long enough for the strobe’s light to fall evenly along the group.

Part of the glee from this shoot was the reception to the unorthodox lighting and posing by the girls, their grandparents and the other photographers who gathered and questioned me about the process.

Now all I have to worry about is getting prints made for each of the girls, their parents and grandparents.

Maybe next year, for the track team photo, Ill bring along enough strobes for a group strobe lighting session.