Kahulani, Ronald and I met up with models Alyssa and Alana for another shoot, this time in the late afternoon at the old train bridge in Wailuku.
Since we had three photographers this time, we planned to do two different lighting setups in separate areas so that we could all be shooting at the same time. Due to time constraints and the high winds we experienced that day, we ended up doing just one lighting setup and rotating the photographers and models through that.
While we were setting up our lighting at the location, Alyssa was already coming up with ideas I never even thought of doing at this location. Since our lighting was setup in the other arch from where she started doing these poses, we ended up shooting this with just natural light. The sun had just gone below the mountains behind our location, but there was still enough light from the sky coming down so give her a soft rim light. Shot it with the 85mm
It was really windy at this location in the early evening and it stirred up a lot of dust. It seemed to calm down a bit when we first got there so I thought “maaaaaaybe I could get away with putting up the Octodome if I braced the edge of it against one of the walls”.
Big Mistake.
As soon as I set it up, the wind picked up again and started whipping the Octodome around in every direction EXCEPT the one we wanted.
So then I tried switching to a medium softbox. Of course the wind just laughed at me and said “Dude, don’t even THINK about it”.
Soooo we finally went to the beauty dish which seemed to hold up pretty well.
I’m dense like that sometimes.
. One of the SB26 flashes was used to light the back wall and the rest of the lights were setup to rim light the models and also to light the ground behind them.
This is the view from behind showing one of the rim lights- the AB800. If you look past the wall off to the left, you can see about where we placed the main beauty dish light.
Here Ronald is setting up one of the SB26 flashes on a lightstand as a rim light. There is one more SB26 on the ground that has a CTO gel on it to add some warmth light to the ground behind the models.
Another angle (shot from the archway where the models were standing) showing the AB800 rim light and also the third SB26 which is aimed at the wall. This third SB26 was gelled to add color to the background.
All these lights were mostly triggered with Pocket Wizards
It was starting to get dark by this time, so we had to hurry. For the first look, we used a dark blue gel to light the wall behind the arch. If you look closely at the background light, you’ll see a diagonal shaft of light below the blue – that was a happy accident – because the blue gel didn’t quite cover the flash head completely.
I’d be lying if I said we meant to do that. Sometimes things happen and it’s best to just roll with it. Especially when you’re rushing to get the shots done before the wind covers your models in dirt.
For the second look, we swapped out the blue gel with a red gel for the background. This time we were able to fully cover the flash head with the red gel for a more solid background color.
Mizomi Photography 
