Tutorials

Dramatic Low Key Pet Portrait

Strip-Bounce-and-Firefly-par-hires

For the new Aurora Lite Bank ad, I had two exciting new products to use: Aurora Strip Bounce SB-50 and Firefly PAR. These two speedlight modifiers are both very different: Strip Bounce creates a narrow strip of light, similar to a strip softbox for strobe lights and Firefly PAR is a 16-sided, deep parabolic softbox.

I love how easy Strip Bounce is to setup and the unique light pattern I can create. Strip Bounce comes out of its carry case, zips into a tube shape and then a top cap pulls into place. Available in two sizes (SB-50 at 50cm long and SB-35 at 35cm long), Strip Bounce creates a very narrow beam of light.

Firefly PAR is almost perfectly circular. It’s 16 ribs are double what most octaboxes have, so it smooths the shape. There are two diffusers – inner diffuser and outer diffuser – and you can also use the DFS-15 Deflector Plate to bounce light back into the PAR, similar to a beauty dish.

My sister had recently acquired a Beagle-mix puppy, Miss Maple. A brown, beige and white dog on a black background seemed perfect to test Strip Bounce. I wanted to shoot low key images with Strip Bounce, as the tight lighting pattern helps create drama.

Miss-Maple-for-Ad-hires

Normally, octaboxes are my favourite main light as they create lighting patterns similar to the sun, as well as gorgeous round catchlights in the eyes. This time, however, I wanted the catchlights with just a touch of fill.

Another great feature of Firefly PAR is that it’s deeper than most softboxes, helping create more contrast and longer shadows than compared to a standard Octabox. The deeper shadows created that drama that I wanted in the portrait with the two Strip Bounces providing the main light.

I set up my black cloth background, as I thought the dog’s claws would puncture paper. I positioned the Strip Bounces on Cactus RF60 flashes on the floor, near the edges of the background with Miss Maple slightly off-set.

Using a Gossen Digisky meter, I set the power of each RF60/Strip Bounce combo to f/8, at the imaginary mark in the centre where I would position Miss Maple.

The Firefly PAR was my fill light, positioned camera right, with another Cactus RF60. I metered this setup to f/4 – half the amount of light compared to my Strip Bounce.

My camera settings were 1/250s at f/8 to get enough depth of field. I used ISO64 to keep the background dark. My trusty Tamron SP 24-70 f/2.8 Di VC USD was the lens of choice, as I needed some flexibility in cropping in camera – dogs move as fast as kids, some times.

Artboard 1@2x

Controlling all of my Cactus RF60 flashes was the new Cactus V6 II – a High Speed Sync (HSS) capable wireless transceiver. It will allow me to use shutter speeds beyond the 1/250s my Nikon natively allows. I wasn’t sure how much Miss Maple might move, as this was her first photo shoot, so I wanted to be prepared and was excited to try out these new speedlight triggers.

As it turned out, Miss Maple was very co-operative and I didn’t need to try out the HSS capabilities and could keep my ISO low.

I was able to get some great portraits, with strong highlighted edges and contrasty light sculpting, a soft fill and round catchlights. I added the reflection in Adobe Photoshop CC.

Share your pet portraits in the PHOTONews Canada Flickr group, using the keyword #photonewspets


Floating_Head_Split_Light

About the Author – Will Prentice (www.capturaphoto.ca) is a professional photographer based out of Whitby, Ontario and Brand Specialist – Lighting for Amplis.

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