Self Portrait - New Strobe Test

I just bought a used Sigma EF-500 flash and wanted to put it to the test.

Here's the rundown on how I lit it—

I used the new flash as the main light, diffused through a white umbrella. The rim lights are created by snooted Vivitar 285HVs behind the subject (me!) at 45º angles.

The Vivitar strobes were triggered by Cactus V2s and the new strobe was triggered via its built in slave (it fires when its sensor sees another flash pop).

The Transaction

Click Here to see more photos from this shoot

My friend Ian is in town for a few weeks and I wanted to take some portraits of him while he's here. The other day I noticed a tipped over train car on a back road to my house and decided it would be the perfect place for a photo shoot!

So, last night around 9:30 PM we headed to the train car and I set up some lights. Since it was pitch black out there, I used a high flashlight to focus. Sometimes I ended up using the flashlight to add a bit of warmth to Ian's face.

There was a surprising amount of traffic on that road, and we must have looked really strange to passers-by...

Speaking of which, partway through the shoot I got a call from some friends of mine. They asked me where I was, and I said I was doing a shoot. They said, "By a train?"...you get the picture.

So they turned around and hung out for a while. Naturally, I took a few portraits:

i shall imagine life

I was in Chicago, IL and Bloomington, IN this week. I'll post a few shots from Chicago soon. First, a few shots from an impromptu photoshoot in Indiana. I was in Bloomington visiting my friend Kyle.

When I arrived at his house, one of the first things I noticed was a metallic lamp with a red bulb hanging from the ceiling above a chair. I filed it away in my mind as a possible photograph location.

After a great Turkish dinner at a quaint restaurant called Anatolia, we went back to the house and listened to a few LPs from his awesome record collection.

Then, feeling nostalgic, we decided to go out in his back yard and catch some fireflies...ah, the memories...

(Note: fireflies are hard to shoot, especially without a tripod! you can see them at the top left and bottom right of the inside of the jar. Click on the photo for a larger view.)


Anyways, back inside, I noticed the light fixture again and asked Kyle if he'd be willing to sit in for a photoshoot. He graciously agreed, and here are the results:







BTW...Kyle is really not a creepy guy, he's just really good at appearing that way in photos!