Ahoy!

Back in May a friend's band was on the Paganfest America 2009 tour. His pirate themed band Swashbuckle was opening the show in every city. From what I've heard, they did really well and got a lot of new fans and really got the crowds warmed up each night.

I was able to grab some portraits with the 3 guys in the band right after their set. It was done in the lounge downstairs at the Blender Gramercy Theatre in NYC. The lounge has this great stone/brick wall and round wooden tables. Makes the perfect backdrop for a pirate shoot. We did some cool colored strobe face shots and then I backed out and flooded the wall with blue and green to look like the ocean and turned the stone wall into the interior of an underwater cave. Not bad for 2 little Canon speedlights, some gels, and using what your handed in a situation. I'm no strobist, but I'm happy with the results I'm getting as I experiment more and more with speedlights on location.

Here are some pictures that I've been talking about, and you can always see the full gallery, which includes the live photos HERE

Admiral Nobeard

Commodore Redrum

Captain Crashride

Here is a portrait of Admiral Nobeard done with the green/blue lighting scenario:

If you're into Thrash Metal and want something new to listen to, I suggest picking up their new album coming out on Nuclear Blast Records entitled Back To The Noose.

How It Was Done

If anyone is wondering, the speedlight setup is a combo of a 580 EXII and a 430 EX. for the face shots I used the 580 pointing to the ceiling to trigger the gelled 430 sitting on the table directly in front of their faces. For the table shot of Nobeard the 430 was off on camera right with the green gel hitting the wall and rimming out his face, triggered by the 580 mounted on the camera shoe with a blue gel on half of the flash head, to allow both blue and white light out so it woulnd't look oversaturated with gelled light. That's all, 2 strobes, some gels, 3 pirates, and one hell of a way to kill a night.


More soon, as always.