This weekend was my first studio shoot with a person other than Jess. It was much more challenging than I expected. Of the 40 or so shots I took, only 4 or so were what I would consider "good enough" and none of them were "great". However, I learned quite a few valuable lessons.
# If you're in a small room (and therefore using a wide-angle lens), and you want to photograph a model from head to toe, 6 feet is *not* enough height for a backdrop and 8 feet is *not* enough width. Regardless of what you do, you will end up wanting to shoot at angles that cause portions above and the the side of your backdrop to be shown. 8 feet of height and 10 feet of width are right about the bare minimum that I would consider workable.
# The color of the walls in the room you are shooting in really does make a *huge* difference. I was in a room with red walls, therefore, all of the images have a reddish\pinkish tint to them that had to be corrected in post-processing.
# It takes a lot of practice to be able to point two strobes at a model and only see one shadow.
# In a perfect world, a studio would have at least 10′ of available space between the model and the backdrop, and at least 5′ of space in front of the model.
# Being tethered to a strobe by a PC Sync cable really limits how quickly you can move and react.
# Reflectors make a much greater impact than one might first imagine.
# A well placed diffusion panel works equally as well as (if not better than) a softbox.
I had a few things working against me at the shoot. First of all, the house we were shooting in had a broken air conditioner and no windows open. It was hot, sweaty, and stuffy.
Secondly, we were very short on power outlets. Next time, I'll remember to bring an extension cord and a power strip.
Finally, electrocution sucks. At first, I thought one of my new monolights was malfunctioning because, when I had the PC Sync cable attached to it, I would get a nasty shock holding the camera. Since I was holding the camera with two hands, the shock entered my body in one hand and exited it through the other, travelling through my chest in the process. It didn't feel nice at all. At first, I made due simply by hooking the sync cable up to the other light and setting the first light in "slave" mode. However, at one point, I decided I only wanted one light coming from the side of the room where the "bad" light was. After getting shocked a few times, I decided to swap out the lights. However, I kept getting a shock, even then, and couldn't figure out why. When I got home I tested both lights to determine which one was giving me problems, yet I never got a shock. It wasn't until later that night that I realized what was probably happening. Most likely, the outlet on one side of the room was poorly grounded, causing the light, and therefore the camera, to be "charged".
Overall, I'm very pleased with the shoot. Sure, I only got 4 decent images, but I learned so much. "Rachelle":http://livejournal.com/~titania_kitty was very patient, and very naturally accepted many different poses without much direction. She was a real pleasure to work with.
The idea for the shoot was to make a modern recreation of the story of Pan and Syrinx. I wanted a metal trash can as a prop as well, but was unable to find one for free and couldn't find a place that carried them to buy.
bq. "Pan and Syrinx":http://photos.revjim.net/pan_and_syrinx/ (NSFW)
Any comments, suggestions, or criticism you might have will be greatly appreciated.
