Model Photography

In preparation for some upcoming projects of mine involving photography and the Maxwell Renderer, I thought I'd try a visit to a photo shoot.

This was a group shoot, and I wasn't in control of either the lighting or the model direction, but I did gain some experience in exposing using photographers strobes.

The shoot itself presented certain challenges. The models were good at posing and mainly self directed, which placed the photographers more in the position of paparazzi, all competing to get a shot. It seemed to me that every time a model would strike a good pose, another photographer would either rise into my frame or beat me in sending his wireless radio signal from his camera to the strobe, causing me (since the light takes a moment to refresh) to miss the flash.

Not having ever worked with one before, I was concerned at first about how to best meter and expose for the strobe, but I soon figured out that the light wasn't going anywhere, and neither, for the most part, was the model, so the lighting conditions were fairly constant. Since we were shooting digital, I could just manually set the camera shutter speed to no higher than 1/250 - the synch speed of the Nikon D200, and just take a guess at the aperture. After a test shot or two, the lcd screen and histogram told me enough to make the necessary aperture adjustments.

Is that really all there is to it? Sure seemed that way.