Glamour on Wheels! Gitzo Shoot Part 2: Camera Work, Lighting!

So, it wasn’t enough to simply fly the camera on the Gitzo tripod on a moving vehicle and fire it remotely. Had to do some small flash lighting as well. It was necessary. The windy roads out in Nevada rarely lined up perfectly with the fading sun, making available light a dicey approach. I also wanted the power of flash duration to make sure Joli Irvine stayed sharp, while the shutter speed allowed the road to blur.

We started as you see above, but the raw flash was rough, and we immediately went to our main light being the Lastolite Ezybox Speed-Lite Two Plus, affixed to the main Sb-5000 flash, hotshoed to the camera. Which became its own little windsock, to be sure, and we had to tape it down. The force of the wind at one point pushed the flash straight up, so it was firing at the heavens. I put a lot of faith in the efficient power of Speedlights, but you do have to point them at your subjects to make them work. Luckily, as always, gaffer tape and zip ties to the rescue.

My shutter speeds hovered in the neighborhood of 1/20th to 1/30th of a second for a great deal of the night, making me thankful we had the Gitzo firmly rooted to the trunk of the car, and we were using the new 3-Way fluid head.

We worked a Z 7, via the WR-T10 remote controller, which liaised with the WR-R10 transceiver. Result was the controller fired the camera, and the R10 in turn fired the three flashes. Handy. Our trailing vehicle had to stay close, so close I was able to see I was getting good exposures from eyeballing the very bright lcd on the Z 7. Hmmmm….bit of tailgating going on here.

A fun day in the field! Jolie Irvine posed beautifully throughout, and we rolled that Gitzo down the road. The mandate of the job was to use a tripod in a somewhat unusual way. We kind of kept it in the family. Joli is a dear friend, Adam Silversmith, driving the car, is as well. And big thanks to my bud, M.D Welch – couldn’t have done it without him and no one else I’d rather work with in 110 degree temps to keep me laughing as we are sweating our…off!

And the backlight in Joli’s hair, of course is coming from the flash mounted on the windshield, gelled warm.

Last time we used a tripod in unusual fashion, we were also in Vegas. That time, it was Adam’s wife, Dasha, atop a big Gitzo. Just gotta love Vegas!

More tk….