Strobist Shoot: Jonny Walsh

I’ve just uploaded a new batch of photos from a strobist shoot last week with Jonny Walsh.

Myself and Jonny have been talking about doing a shoot for the past few months; he’s got an awesome collection of tattoo’s and despite never having done a shoot before he kindly agreed to meeting up last Thursday night for a shoot around MacDonagh Junction.

I used the shoot as an opportunity for my first proper attempt using multiple off-camera flashes, shooting with my SB800 and SB900 on wireless triggers. I used the SB900 on a small tripod as my main flash with the SB800 as a side or back-light depending on the location and pose.

We started in the main courtyard outside the shopping centre just after 9pm, the sun was starting to go down and it gave me a great skyline for the background. I added some gradients to the sky in post to really bring it out and they’re easily my favourite shots from the bunch.

We moved from the courtyard into the sheltered area in the outer building. I really wasn’t happy with most of the shots from this location, I wish I’d spent a bit more time positioning my backlight, I underexposed the background but unfortunately didn’t position my SB800 right meaning I lost the outline of Jonny’s head in most of the shots and didn’t notice until I transferred the photos to my computer. It’s annoying but one of the points of the shoot was to learn this type of thing. I scrapped the shots from this location except for one which I added a texture to.

We moved from there to the stairs outside the bowling alley and I tried a combination of different setups; with my Sb900 positioned high on a tripod near the camera and then moving my SB800 from a back-light to a side-light depending on the pose; some shots worked, some didn’t, but again I know where I went wrong and I’m very happy with the ones that worked. Finally we tried a couple of shots under the sheltered area near the bowling alley and at the wall.

It can be a bit confusing trying to figure settings between the camera and both flashes but overall I’m very happy with how the shoot went. You can check out my favourite shots from the shoot here on the Oss237.com Homepage with links to the rest on my Flickr.

Myself and Jonny have plans for a few more shoots over the summer so there’s plenty more strobist stuff and tattoo portraits on the way. I’d like to say thanks to Jonny for doing the shoot, for his patience when I was messing around with settings and for having the balls to get half-naked in front of my camera in a public place. I hope you like the photos dude!

Finally thanks to the two security guards who politely spoke to us on two separate occasions, for not kicking us out or having us arrested (I’m sure it’s not every night they stumble across a half naked tattoo covered guy getting his photo taken!).