{"id":17569,"date":"2013-09-16T03:47:23","date_gmt":"2013-09-16T07:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/?p=17569"},"modified":"2017-10-23T21:37:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T01:37:00","slug":"on-location-corporate-headshots-efficiency-speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/on-location-corporate-headshots-efficiency-speed\/","title":{"rendered":"On-location corporate headshots – Efficiency and speed"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On-location corporate headshots – Efficiency and speed<\/h1>\n

That’s me, all set up for on-location corporate headshots last week.\u00a0Five speed light & Softbox set ups, to be placed in a different area each, to efficiently give 5 different looks.\u00a0My client wanted head-shots of a list of people, with varying backgrounds around their offices. And also with different sets of clothes. We decided that 5 different looks would work best, and give them variety.<\/p>\n

I considered the options I had. Two of them amounted to too much disruption:
\n– dragging one light around, and setting it up every time for each person, or
\n– setting up in one spot, and then having everyone file past. And then setting up again, and having everyone file past me.<\/p>\n

The best and most elegant option immediately seemed to be to\u00a0\u00a0set up lighting in 5 different spots, with pre-determined exposure settings and flash settings … and then walking each person to each spot. This sounds like a mission, until you realize that 3 of the spots were within 20 yards of each other in the main lobby area.<\/p>\n

Instead of moving a light-stand around, I would walk up to the already set up light-stand & speedlight, and switch on the radio trigger for that spot. All setting up and testing done before-hand.\u00a0Fast and efficient. Then, at 30 minute intervals, the next person would join us.<\/p>\n

Here is a close-up shot of one of those setups:<\/p>\n

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A medium sized softbox, a speedlight, and a battery pack and a radio trigger. \u00a0Simplicity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Deciding on the gear I needed<\/h2>\n

There was no need for a lot of flash, since the light had to match the ambient light of the offices. For 4 of the 5 setups, I used the out-of-focus backgrounds around the offices to give a corporate-looking background. So there was no need to blast studio-levels of light. The speedlights in the medium-sized soft boxes were sufficient. In fact, at the levels the manual flash outputs were set, the battery packs were nearly redundant. (I say “nearly” because I didn’t want to take chances that a flash would run out of juice at some stage.)<\/p>\n

Since I only had three Nikon SD-9 battery pack<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>), I used my two\u00a0Canon CP-E4 battery pack<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>)\u00a0with two 580EX speed lights. This brought the tally up to 5 speedlights. I recently changed from the Lastolite 24×24 Ezybox to the Westcott Rapidbox – 26″ Octa Softbox<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>), as explained in my\u00a0review of the Westcott Rapid Box \u2013 26″ Octa Softbox<\/a>. So I just had to buy one more OctaBox. Spendy? Not really. The Octabox (and an extra light-stand) wasn’t more expensive than an assistant would’ve been.<\/p>\n

By carefully working out what equipment I needed, and how to carry it in roller bags, it was just two trips to my car to get everything.<\/p>\n

What helped a lot, was the\u00a0medium-sized\u00a0Manfrotto 1052BAC<\/strong>\u00a0– medium light-stand<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>)\u00a0that I used. As described in the\u00a0review of Manfrotto lightstands<\/a>,\u00a0they clip together as a group. So I was able to carry 5 of these lightstands over a shoulder, all neatly stacked together as a group.<\/p>\n

I initially thought of bringing my Profoto D1 kit when the company approached me, but when I scouted the location with the two PR ladies, I realized that at the camera settings that I’d be using, that speedlights would be sufficient. In the end, most of the speedlights were set to around \u00a01\/8 power, and I was shooting around the 800 ISO @ f\/4 @ 1\/100 mark. So the Profotos would’ve been overkill.<\/p>\n

The lighting in office complex is fairly uniform, so my camera settings remained nearly the same, from location to location. I memorized what each set-up needed in terms of my camera settings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo gear (or equivalents) used during this photo session<\/h2>\n