Music and Pictures in the Country!

First off, what could go wrong when you are in the sweet town of Cookeville, Tennessee, in a legendary ice cream shop, with two amazing country rockers? American Young is wonderful to listen to, and were an enormous amount of fun to work with.

So, the big bones of a good picture are in place. Great subjects, good location. Over to you at camera to light this well. We were working Speedlights, the SB-910, which means line of sight TTL triggering, not the very facile mode we have now of radio control. So, there were a couple of challenges. I wanted to pour some light in the shop from outdoors, and I had optical sensors (slave eyes) on my units, out in the July Tennessee sun. In other words, those puppies out on the sidewalk were cooking, and intense sunlight on a sensor can interrupt coherent transmission of the pulse from your commander flash.

For our subjects, I chose a Lastolite 4 in 1 umbrella, a shaper I helped Lastolite design. We used it in shoot thru mode here, as you can see, mounting three Speedlights on a Tri-flash. ISO 250, 1/500th, f/1.4, 24mm prime lens.  Filled a bit with a Tri-flip, gold side up. We goosed the background with another threesome on a Tri-flash, on an Avenger c-stand out in the street. That one kind of just blasted some additional exposure into the bar area of the shop. It gave the background a little pop, shadow and direction of light.

For the banner pic, up top, we shifted all the lights outside. By this time, the sun was gone and it was raining, hence the plastic bags. Again, big umbrella up front, raw light for the background. No c-stand for the lead light here, we went with a Manfrotto stacker, and I can’t completely remember why. We were moving fast at this point, as our artists, as they always do, had places to go and songs to sing. The combo for the window picture was ISO 200, 1/80th, f/7.1, with a 24-70mm lens. Tough part of that pic was doing my best to keep my lines straight, and not have Jon and Kristy so far pushed into the corners of the frame that they took on distortion. For both of these images, the camera of record was the D810, now supplanted by the D850.

At the end of the day, just an enjoyable, simple shoot. Still following American Young, and they are doing great. Many thanks to TheJaneEllen, DJ and social media whiz kid, for the introduction to Jon and Kristy.

More tk….

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