Headshots Sam Muscat MC

It's been a while since my last blog entry but I have not been completely idle on the photography front. Earlier this year I was trying to figure out how to light a sweep of wildflowers in the foreground of one of my West Gate bridge series. I figured out I would need some kind of off camera flash. But I was totally ignorant about how to go about lighting the scene until I stumbled across David Hobby's strobist.com blog.

What an eye opener. To cut a long story short, through Daves' blog I entered the wonderful world of strobism. Having being focussed on landscape and architectural photography I found my key for learning about portrait photography both on location and in the studio. Before long I found myself purchasing umbrellas, grids, radio triggers and additional flash units of eBay.

My first strobist brief was to create a series of black and white head-shots for Sam Muscat a local wedding and event MC. I approached this assignment by setting up a simple lighting plan of a key light shoot through umbrella at 45 degrees to the subject, and a piece of foamcore as a fill light.
To adds a bit of separation from the background, I turned a strobe with a grid on the background.

To add a touch of old Hollywood glamour to the shot I added a rim light.

Here's the final shot:

And here's the setup shot:

One of these days I'll get back to the West Gate and setup the lighting on the wild flowers...