The Kentucky Headhunters are an amazing, down home, rockin’ band. They’re also a helluva nice bunch of guys. Super talented. Grammy winners. A country rock institution. And, when you walk into their headquarters, visually, you get smacked right between the eyes. You look around and your first thought in this chock-a-block room, seen above, is “I gotta shoot in here!”
And your second thought is, “How the hell am I gonna do that?”
It’s beautifully busy, this room. And it’s got reflective, glossy 8×10’s all over the place, polished guitars, and even some vinyl tacked to the wall of memories. You want to shoot it, but you also realize that if you put up some spiffy umbrella or big ass soft box you’re gonna step on the essential character of the place, not to mention create reflections everywhere.
So, I sat there and stared at it. You let the place speak to you. There was a window to the camera right side and a door to the camera left side. The light from these two sources was nice, just not plentiful. What if I put SB 910 units right where the light is anyway?
Which is, tried and true, what I did. I put up a diffuser on the window and banged a Speedlight through it. And I put up one SB unit in the doorway, bouncing off the floor, ’cause that’s what the existing light was doing. Made a click and hoped it would work out.
The light just has to not interfere at this point, or draw attention to itself. I simply wanted it to look like the light that was already there. The one guitar on the left had a hit from the door anyway, so I just let it be. The heart and soul of the picture are the two characters (and I do mean characters!) in the photo…Richard Young (seated, left) and Doug Phelps (on right). Had a great time with these guys, and Black Stone Cherry, working just outside Nashville, this past summer. More on the adventures of both bands in blogs tk.Â
The window diffusion is a Lastolite skylite panel, and the floor bounce is a tri-grip with a warm reflector cover. Nikon D810, fitted with a Nikkor 24-70.
More tk…..
Great peek behind the curtain Joe, many thanks. See the assets, celebrate the assets, talent, environment, lighting. Joe for President.
An image with great character. What a room. The warm balance provided by the incandescent lamp does it for me. Nice, Joe.
Thanks, Joe!
Lovely, just lovely and the light is unobtrusive and if you hadn’t explained it, almost no one would know you added light…and that’s your magic. Thanks.
What a great photo and great lighting set up! I live down the road from Richard. Thank you for sharing your lighting technique. Love your photography artwork!
Joe – Where was this shot. My wife is from Green County Ky – the Headhunters home area. Just curious.
What a cracker! Would love to see a close up of that telecaster 🙂
Well done, as usual Joe.
Another master peace! Done wise and simple.
Lovely room
Beautiful, warm, meaningful image. Great capture – as always. And the capture was from analysis, planning, knowledge of light, and creativity.
It is safe to say that Joe McNally is the master of seeing light and knowing lighting.
Thank you for posting and sharing the behind-the-scenes process.
“Go where the light already is.” Great advice for every photographer. The lighting in this photo is masterful and beautiful. Thank you for sharing your process.
As always, when I have periods where I ‘lose inspiration’ I turn to your website, spend a bit of time looking and admiring, then before I know it I’m enthused again. Thank you for having such a inspiring and visible collection.
Graham
Well. The tougher the lighting, the more one has to conquer it :))
Tom
Would you be able to show what the room looked like without flash? If the natural light was so good why did you light it? Thank you for your inspired teaching.
I’d like to ‘ditto’ Simon Vail’s comment above. With the ridulous capabilities of modern Nikons in low light – what would it have looked like shot in ambient?
I do something like this sometimes at our car service. Have to photograph the guys working on some interesting cars, or doing some interesting fixing, and I don’t want to interfere with the otherwise tricky lighting, so I put up a flash on a stand for fill(a lot more simple setup though) and I was satisfied with the results 🙂
Love how you work so hard for that one shot!, its really the one shot you are looking for!? – Amazing work Joe
Great tips and stunning shots
Nice technic, thanks for sharing.
Really amazing collection. You have a very nice instruments collection. Awesome stuff. Thanks a lot.
WOW!!!! Great shots. Your stunning picture always looking nice.
Really amazing collection..thanks a lot.
too late to see this, nicely described
I’d like to ‘ditto’ Simon Vail’s comment above. With the ridulous capabilities of modern Nikons in low light – what would it have looked like shot in ambient?