I have an assignment lately, that is to shoot a cover for the company's newsletter. The basis of the cover is to emphasize hands, specifically a child's hands in prayer. Well, the easiest hand model for the task would be my daughter and probably my son.
Since I was at home early at around 15 minutes before 6pm, I quickly called my daughter to come out in the sun for a fast shooting session. My wife was around to help with the directing of the shots.
By attaching my camera with a normal zoom lens, and using two flash that can be totally controlled remotely up to 6 meters, the outdoor studio was ready. Amazingly, with the simplicity of the E-system remote flash, all was set up in less than 5 minutes.
The main shots were to have the hands in cusp position, as in mimicking a prayer posture.
The first shot was simple. All I needed was a single main light to lighten the hands. Otherwise, the strong sunlight will render the cusp dark in the shadows. To get the blue sky, I simply meter it as the reference exposure value.
The shot below used the two lighting setup, with the main light directly covering the palms, and the fill light was to the bottom left of the hands. The effect of the fill light gave added dimension to the image. And shadow emphasis was not only from the main light. Otherwise, the image would rather be flat.
The next shot is a bonus shot, as I quickly captured my son holding my wife's hand. The lighting was simple. Direct flash from the camera plus a fill from below. My left hand holding the main flash, while my legs shoving the fill flash to follow their quick movements.
The whole exercise was over within 15 minutes, and the three images bore testament to the ability of the system.
*** A little bit of technical stuff, here. ***
To enable the shoot, I used the Olympus E-3 camera with the HLD-4 battery grip. Attached was the Zuiko Digital ED14-35mm F2.0 SWD lens. Also, for the portable lighting, I used the Olympus FL-36R and FL-50R flashes.
The exposure setup for the camera was A-priority mode, with aperture locked at F8. With the flash strobe on, the shutter was set at 1/60s. The ESP+AF TTL exposure was set at -2.0EV.
The exposure setup for the remote flash was both at FP TTL. FL-50R was in Channel 1A, and FL-36R was in Channel 1B. The exposure for both was at +1.0EV.
Other settings were set to Auto.
Postprocessing was done using the GIMP to balance some exposure, and for the last image, a monotone conversion. No added sharpening was done.
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