portrait in 60 seconds

My previous post was a slideshow from RVAlution for GRID, and one of the shots I was assigned to get was of Mitch, the general manager of the Hat Factory.  I had spent two hours getting all the crowd and dancing photos, so his was the last one before this old guy could head home and get some sleep.  Also, it had to happen quickly, as Mitch was understandably very busy making sure the night went smoothly for the crowd.

I knew I wanted the shot to show the atmosphere, so I had pre-planned to get the shot from the balcony, which was closed that night.  The balcony had small tables lined up around it at a perfect height for Mitch to sit on for placement into the shot. I positioned myself up on a barstool so I could be high enough to shoot down and show both Mitch and the dance floor/stage.

First step: determine the exposure I want for the background:  f3.5 @ 1/25 seems to work well:

next, turn on my sb-900 (on camera), set it to manual mode (1/128 power), and rotate it with the goal of bouncing it off a large window to my right:

first try; aim’s off, not hitting the window at all:

second try; missed the window again

third try; got the aim right, but how about some focus?

fourth try; good, but some moving blue party lights rotated into the shot (which i kinda  liked).  if he’d been looking at camera, this may have been the keeper:

fifth try; got it!

final shot after some Lightroom adjustments:

Total time, about a minute.  It actually took longer to write this post than to do the shot, but I’m very happy with the final results.

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