Feb 10th 2012

A recent commission to produce some new photographs for House of Agnes, a wedding venue, led to a bit of fun at dusk outside.

The hotel had a garden and a gazeebo that they were particularly proud of and I had an idea to shoot it at dusk with the couple posed inside.  I felt it would draw attention away from the surrounding buildings and focus on the atmosphere of the couple's day by concentrating attention on them.  It also meant I had the reverse lighting situation from dytime when the gazeebo is shaded and darker than the ambient.  With some extra light in there, it would be brighter and a bit more eye cathcing.

I didn't have my G clamps with unfortunately so I had to improvise and use a (worryingly) small ledge where the roof joines the uprights to balance two speedlights.  They were hooked up to my Elinchrom Skyport and fired wirelessly from the trigger on my camera.  Unfortunately, Canon's speedlights don't work in a Master/Slave setting when fired remotely (not without their own trigger anyway) so each flash had to have it's own receiver attached to it.  Ideally I'd have put one on and set the other flash to Slave and let it pop when the Master was triggered.  Anyway, such is life.

To get the light filling the gazeebo evenly I opted to angle the flashes up into the conical ceiling so they bounced of the larger, angular surface and came flooding back down again.  The test exposure shows the balance between flash and ambient:

Notice the ambient isn't quite there yet-setting up in advance gave me time to pause once the flashes were set and avoid rushing the actual photography bit.

Next in were the couple.  It was freezing cold so the setting up was done with them in the warm.  Although the exposure is slow 9to record the ambient light) the flash exposure on the couple has ensured they are nice and sharp.

Canon EOS 5DMKII 0.3secs at f4, ISO 500.