Communion Shoots – Travelling Light
This year I shot more communion sessions than I usually do. The fact that my own son did his communion this year had probably something to do with that. With girls, these kind of assignments are usually easy. At that age most of them love to pose and be a star in their own pictures. With boys however things are a bit different. At eight years old most of them really start thinking that posing in nice clothes isn’t really cool.
I always adapt my gear needs to the subject and the circumstances trying to find a balance between having enough technical options and avoid having too much gear that can disturb the flow of a shoot. Sometimes that means giving up some technical options to ensure good interaction, certainly if the attention span of your subject is pretty short.
Here are some of the communion pics of Kobe. I’ve shot all the images in 15 minutes around my house. Maya assisted me by preventing my light stand from getting blown over by the wind.
So what gear did I use?
I shot everything with the 5D mkII and the 70-200 2.8 L IS. This camera keeps giving me great image quality and the 70-200 is the perfect portrait companion. Thanks to the long and fast lens, I get good backgrounds pretty much everywhere. The fast glass allows me to throw the background out of focus and thanks to the narrow angle of a long lens, I can find many different backgrounds in one spot by just moving my camera a couple degrees. When slightly overexposed I find the 70-200 gives me nice creamy skintones while keeping the facial features sharp.
Lighting wise I took a single 580EX II with an umbrella, mounted on a lightstand. It’s small, light and gives me lots of options if I can combine it with available light. I can use it without an umbrella to create a sunny hair light or use it as a soft main lightsource.
The 580EX II is triggered by a Pocketwizard TT5 with a TT1 and AC3 zone-controller on top of my camera. Although the TTL works pretty well in these circumstances I shoot mostly full manual on my camera and flash for ultimate control over my exposures. After lots of practice I’m pretty good at guessing aperture, shutterspeed, iso and flash power, so I don’t loose any time with it. By shooting full manual the exposures are also consistent which cuts down a lot of time in post processing. The nice thing about the TT5/TT1 combo is that I can control everything from the camera and I don’t have to worry about max sync speed, as the pocketwizards will automatically switch to high speed sync when I go over my max sync speed.
It’s usually not hard to find some soft ambient light if you know where to look. It’s way harder to find soft light with the RIGHT DIRECTION. On overcast days like here, the biggest amount of light comes from straight above which puts the eyes in the shadow and creates shadows under the nose and chin. They might be less ugly than with hard light from above but they still are not very flattering. I often alter the direction of the light by blocking the light that comes from above. It’s simple but not always practical. Another option, and the one I used here, is to use a flash to give the light some direction. The first picture below is takes with only ambient light. For the second picture, I added a speedlight, to camera left.
As you can see from the un-flashed picture, I’m only shooting the ambient light slightly under exposed, probably not even a full stop. By adding a flash, slightly above the ambient light levels, you maintain the soft light feel of the overcast sky but you add direction to the light creating more pleasing shadows and sparkles in the eyes.
This might not be a spectacular dramatic technique but it helps to keep a rather natural soft feel to the portraits.
Such a nice blogpost! KISS-technique really works. The pictures are, as always, very excellent. I have 1D Mark II and 70-200 ƒ2.8L IS USM and I too find that lens to be very nice for portraits. While ago I shooted some wedding pictures and I pretty much used the same setup as you did. I looked for nice ambient light and just added 580EX II through umbrella – pictures came out amazing! Best weddind pics I’ve ever shooted! I used another 580EX II as a master which allowed me to wirelessly control manual power of another flash. No money for PW’s
Keep shooting, you really have talent! My source of inspiration!
Hey Bert,
I am a part-time (read: very part-time) amateur photographer who started to experiment with off-camera lighting a few years ago. Just wanted to say that, along with David Hobby’s website, your site is the one I come back to the most often. Very inspiring work!
Beautiful pictures of your son Kobe.
Interesting blog post too.
I work for quite some time with the PWtt5′s. I did some tests with the AC3 zonecontroller but didn’t purchased it yet.
ETTL wireless seems too good to be true, and they often refuse to work without reason. As a wedding photographer hitches are like a disaster. Especially when you work with a group of people and your equipment does not want to work.
I am considering to return to the old PW’s. Unless, ..
My question is how the AC3 controller regulates the speedlites when shooting on manual.
Keep up the good work!
Hi Bert,
Again, very well done! I also do a lot of pictures with kids in school or any other happenings. I used exactly same gear as you, but I now upgraded to a portable flash-unit, because the 580 seemed too weak in bright sunlight, you agree? What would you have done, if this day wasn’t an overcast one? Would you still keep it simple or would you take the Ranger-Pack with you?
Regards (I keep on following on Twitter)
[...] | Bert Stephani nous détaille sur son blog ses astuces d’éclairages et de déplacements pour une séance de [...]
Man… Kobe seems to be so comfortable in front of the camera. He looks like a pro. Beautiful pictures. They are an excellent teaching examples for posing. Thanks Bert.
Wonderful series of images here Bert. Totally agree with you about the 70-200…wonderful lens for portraiture. I tried to do what we spoke about and use the 24-70mm more but still I return to the 70-200
Thanks for sharing,
All the very best to you,
Glyn
Awesome shots. I need to get a speedlight and a new lens.
And, son’t forget to work on that on-line workshop! 
Beautiful images made beautifully simply. I too do portraits with 70-200 and the 85 1.2L. I over expose often, especially for the girls, +2/3 to +1EV on a cloudy day, sometimes a little more sometimes a lot more, shady or cloudy white balance too. The creamy & buttery soft look is well liked by clients and helps with post, much less to do, keeps the eyes sharp but doesn’t pick up every pore of the skin that my 1DSiii tends to do.
It’s also good to see someone using the PW TT5 & TT1. I read a lot about the range issues when used with 580 EXii, most of what I read was reviews from the U.S. I’ve stayed away from them but recently I’m hearing that the problem of signal interference is not a problem in Europe because of our radio frequencies, hens PW bringing out hard & soft shields for the 580ii to help cure the signal interference. Any thoughts?
Thanks for sharing, great blog.
Cheers,
Jonathan
thx all
@jasper: I’ll give you a call
@Tobias: a 580EX packs a lot less power than a Ranger pack but it’s probably powerful enough to battle the sun if used up close (maybe in combination with high speed sync) like it was here. There are exceptions off-course and for those, I usually take a Ranger Quadra (or move to a shady area)
@Jonathan: I have the feeling that the signal of the TT1/TT5 combo is not as strong as my Plus II’s, but still strong enough for most situations. I only had interference issues once and that was when I tried to pass the signal through a 2 meter thick steel-reinforced wall
Everything looks great. I’m an amateur, I shoot with a Rebel T2i, mostly a 50mm 1.4, and I recently purchased my first strobist kit. Lumopro 160 and the Cactus V5 wireless triggers. I’m having a little trouble learning how to harness the light. Everything I do is self taught through blogs. Any help?
[...] first idea was to just make a simple but cool portrait. As I found out last year with his communion photos, Kobe really know how to strike a [...]