- Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on The Slanted Lens we headed to Maine. It was
cold. Rain, snow I'm from California man but we made it here. Of course, I've
got my Nursey Bungay hat on my down jacket. I'm ready to go so we came to
Maine because I want to do some one-light portraits of Maine fishermen. We're going
to go out to a little town called Stonington. We're going to do some great
portraits of lobster fishermen there. I'm going to do it with one light, a Triton
with my trusty OctoDome with a grid. We'll use a lot of ambient light and mix those
together. We're going to do some one-light portraits of fishermen up in Maine.
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- It's not too late to win this and this.
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- There were two main reasons for us heading to Maine. One and maybe the most
important we wanted to see Maine. We've never been there before. Just wanted to
see what it was like there and two was I really wanted to photograph fishermen. Our
goal here today is to show that you can get dramatic results with a single light
and working very much on your own. Julian's only going to be doing BTS and
I'll be moving my own light, setting my own light and photographing each of these
fishermen. We're supposed to be there at 2:00 PM to shoot which only gave us two
and a half hours to shoot. We got there a little late because of the issues we had
on the road so our time with the fishermen was cut just a little short. We
had just around two hours. First, my run-and-gun lighting set up. I'm going to
use a Photoflex Triton on a stand with an OctoDome that has a grid on it. The reason
I choose this so often is it's small and it's easy for me to move around. That
footprint is not very large. I don't have a huge softbox being blown around the
wind. It's also a little more directional. I like a little heavier, directional
light. I'm going to put the Triton on the stand with the OctoDome and I'm going to
hang the battery on the stand to give it a little bit of weight. I'm going to hang a
second Triton battery on the same stand to give it a little more weight but more
importantly I'm also going to have a battery I can quickly just unplug my head
and plug it in to and I can keep on shooting. So I've got that right there
with me the whole time when I'm walking around. Now to keep the stand from blowing
away, I'm going to add weight. There's a RockSteady portable sandbag that Photoflex
makes. I throw water bottles in them. I have two water bottles on each side and I
hang it on the stand that's my sandbag and off we go. I'm using a method of
mixing one strobe light as the key with ambient light as the fill. I'm only one
person so I don't want to move two strobes or a strobe light and a reflector on a
stand. I just want to carry a strobe in one hand and a camera on a tripod in the
other. This is going to make me very mobile so I can move to the next setup
without having to go back and get things and make two or three trips. I did however
bring a seven-in-one reflector that I knew was going to be too much. Once I
take this thing out, I've now got to move it around and I don't have enough hands
for it. So remember my goal is I want to expose for the fill light and add a key
light. So that's the way I'm going to set things up today. Now for my camera setup.
I'm going to put a Mark III with a Tamron 24 to 70 2.8 lens on a Vanguard tripod.
Using a Spider Holster, I'll carry a second Mark III with a Tamron 70 to 200
millimeter two point lens on my hip for quick access so I can pull it out, do a
few shots and then drop it back on the Holster. I'm ready to go. Two cameras and
one light. I use a Pocket Wizard on the camera to trigger my Triton. I wish I had
two triggers but the problem with two triggers is when you put that camera at
your side you're going to knock it off from the hot shoot. So I just have one
trigger. I'm going to have to move it from camera to camera as I switch back and
forth through the cameras. That'll slow me down a little bit but not impossible
thing to work with. I chose to shoot on a 24-70 as the main camera because I wanted
portraits that show a lot of environment. My exposure when I'm working
with just one light. First, remember our principle. We want to expose for the fill
light and then add a key. So I'm going to shoot on manual. It's pretty hard to
balance strobes in daylight when you're using any other setting. I set my shutter
at one sixtieth of a second. That's going to make sure I don't clip the strobe and
then I open up the aperture until I get a comfortable ambient exposure. I'm going to
use that open daylight to fill his face. Take a look at this first image. Now I add
my Triton and dial it up or down until I get a nice highlight on his face. I'm
using a grid on the Photoflex OctoDome so that I can keep the light more focused
and not have strobes reveal themselves by spilling all over the dock. I really like
keeping the light very focused. So here's my first set up before the strobe and
now I'm going to add that Triton as a highlight. Here's a couple of shots from
that first set up. I'm not really super in love with this set up so I'm going to
move on to something else. I moved my first subject to the corner of the old
building and reset my aperture to get an ambient exposure. I like this set up much
more. I wanted the background to be a little bit dark and I can control that
background with my ambient exposure. I think it's worth losing a little bit of
fill on his face to make that background just a little bit richer, a little darker.
Here's our first image with the background exposure. You can see that his face is
pretty dark but we have a nice, rich-looking background. So I'm going to
bring that key light around, my Triton with an OctoDome, and I'm going to give a
nice directional exposure on his face to give a little sunlight look like he's
looking out at the ocean with just a little bit of glow of the sun on his face.
When you add this second light, it opens him up and it makes him look really nice
in this position. Here's some of the images from this setup. I love this
setup. There's some great shots of him. I brought out that 200 millimeter lens,
did some tight shots, gave us a little bit of a look at just his face and I love that
look so there's taking a look at using a one-light with ambient as fill as we
photographed our first fisherman out of Stonington, Maine. Go to
theslantedlens.com and see the methods we used to light and to photograph the other
fishermen of Stonington, Maine. We're going to post one a week so go back to
theslandtedlens.com often to see each one of them. It was a great shoot we had a
great time. Julian and I love doing this kind of work together and I actually
enjoyed working just by myself with a single light. It was a great experience.
Sometimes it's nice to just get in the zone and then do your thing. So keep those
cameras rolling, keep on clicking.
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- It's not over. The giveaway's still going. Go to theslantedlens.com.
A 150 to 600 millimeter Tamron lens.
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- It's stinking cold up here. I'm from Los Angeles man. I'm looking at my phone
going, "It's 85 degrees in L. A. It's 33 degrees here." It's pretty cold but you
know what? It's pretty cool. We're glad to be here.
One-light portraits, Maine fishermen. Okay.