Library Shoot

Currently, Boone (Where I attend Appalachian State University in North Carolina) is freezing and has snow everywhere. Instead of shooting outside last night in the cold (really cold & windy) I decided I would rather shoot indoors with some of my friends. I have always wanted to shoot in the library and have scouted it out many different times, so I decided that this cold winters night I would give it a try. However when I was pacing around the library I was snapping photos of possible places to shoot with my blackberry.

I liked this spot best, the color of the wall (can't really tell with the wonderful camera in the blackberry though...) and the repetition of the books.

I invited several of my friends to tag along to hangout and assist. Assistants are great, I will always value good help while trying to shoot. A good assistant can truly alter the outcome of a shoot, equally so, I bad assistant can have the same effect just with a reverse outcome. Anyhow, I had my roommate David (who often assists and shoots), my good friend and fellow photographer Madison, Amy (the model, its nice to have beautiful friends) and her boyfriend Patrick all with me in the bottom of the library. Thankfully the library isn't packed after the first day of classes so we basically had the place to ourselves. We went right to the location I had preselected and started setting up. Setup didn't take long at all and in a matter of minutes everything was good to go. That's the beauty of working with speedlights.

It's a very simple set up. I had a SB-900 on camera in Master mode which was simply communicating to a SB-800 off camera with a snoot. I wanted to vignette the photograph and thats when the 8 inch snoot comes in handy. The SB was above me and to the right pointed directly at Amy. The camera was dialed -1.3 EV and the SB-800 was +0.7 EV. The camera setting are as follows.

And who said you need to base your image off your histogram? Shooting completely wide open is somewhat new for me because I have always been scared of the narrow DOF (depth of field). I've decided I'm going to shoot wide open anyways and conquer that fear.

It's amazing to see how much you always learn just from the experience of shooting more. Can't wait to do it again. Anyways, more shoots to come soon. Thanks so much

(Here's to great friends putting up with my photographic habits, thanks guys!!)