This another from the Nedry promoshoot taken at Abney Park Cemetery, London.
This was quite a tricky shot to set up. The alcove is very tight, which gave this wonderful frame, but the sun was pumping head on. Brilliant you might think! Wrong, because it means that dark crevices are seriously dark.
The main issue was that Chris (in the back of the shot) was stuck in the shadows. Taking meter readings off the front was only going to expose the brickwork and Ayu and Matt at the front. In addition to this, although I wanted to get some strong shadows in to heighten the drama of the shot, I also wanted to balance it out a little.
A very quick fix for this would have been to use a reflector to fill in from underneath. Sadly, my Octopus skills were not as they used to be, so both were going to need to be cured with bare strobes.
First I attempted to get one of the Nikon speedlights’s to fire from inside the alcove, but due to the daylight and obstructions from peoples legs, it didn’t fire. The fix for this was to set up an SB800 on the ground with the zoom head set to 80mm. This makes the flash act similar to being snooted pushing the light in a more direct arc – strobe-tastic. I kept moving it back and forth until it was solely picking out chris between the gap.
To reduce the shadows, an SB600 was positioned on a stand, again in front of the subjects and pointed with a heavy 45 degree angle upward into their faces.
After a few test shots, and repositioning the light back and forth, I got the balance I was after.
More images from the will be cropping up over the week with even more information on setups and techniques used.
To listen to Nedry visit: www.myspace.com/nedrymakesmusic
For more photos crack on over to www.flickr.com/photos/theavangelist
