Graffiti photo shoot

A friend of mine, Oddur, and I decided to do a shoot out in the fading sun this weekend. This was taken around 8:00 with a fairly overcast sky, which had nothing interesting about the lighting. This was the beginning of the shoot against a nice graffiti-ed wall.

I liked how orange the graffiti was, and wanted to play up the warmth with my flashes. I'd scouted this location before, here, and had tucked it away in my mind as a good backdrop for portraits.

Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
Main set to full power with,
1/8 CTOrange gel,
through white shoot-through umbrella,
at middle zoom setting (this fills the umbrella with no spill)
Rim set to 1/4 power with,
1/2 Window Blue gel
Full zoom setting
Main light stand was at 2.5 meters height, rim was at 1 meters
Main light was slightly in front of the subject, 2 meters to the right
Rim was slightly behind subject, 3 meters to the left
Both were aimed directly at the subject

Here is the setup shot, click through to flickr for the notes over each flash and larger image:



I started with the sync-speed at 1/200 to get my flash values correct, then lowered to 1/100 to let in more ambient light and brighten the graffiti-ed wall. The blue rim was to provide a bit of separation from an otherwise all warm scene. I kept the WB set to Flash, so that my very lightly colored gels would show through. At 1/8 orange, auto white balance would correct for it, making everything else very blue. This is useful at times, but not the look I wanted here, as my goal was to capitalize on the warm background. The flash values came together quickly, and I got the gels right the first time, so the only experimentation was figuring out the angles I wanted them at. I shot a few times, moving the umbrella closer and further forward to reveal more of his face. I also originally had the rim light set to rake across the background as well, but found I didn't like the look, and rotated so it was hitting only him. I wanted a very normal Field of View on this, so I used my 35mm lens, which is not only my sharpest lens, but turns into a very normal 56mm lens on my 40d camera.

Here is the final result:





Click through for the whole set