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.
