Bethabara Village

This week between storms, I was able to stop by the quaint village of Bethabara in Winston Salem.  This is a beautiful picturesque location with some original and reconstructed buildings on the site.  This was home to the first Moravian settlement in NC.  It was also the birthplace from which the Town of Old Salem was planned.

Poi, oh poi!

Last week while in Raleigh, NC I had another chance to shoot one of my favorite performers, Irene Henriette.  I had shot her and Mindy Reeves last summer outside under a bridge, so I was excited to see what kind of images I could get in a warehouse environment.


My setup was pretty basic.  I just wanted try to create some ambience using gelled strobes to highlight the interior and create a mood.  I had originally planned on using a softbox to freeze the action, but decided on the bare strobes.  I like the hard edge that it give the shadows.


Irene is a talented artist.  She as been performing with Poi for years.  During this shoot she used an LED hoop and LED and Fire Poi.  It takes a lot for coordination to maintain the Poi and Hoop's rhythm while making it look beautiful at the same time.


The LED Poi shots were great.  I set the exposure at 1 or 1.5 sec and shot away.  The great thing about the Poi is that they don't shed any light on the performer.  She can spin away and leave a nice light trail and when the strobe fires her is image is frozen.  Fire, on the other hand is totally the opposite.


Flames inside a building reflect off of everything and light the performer.  And they are hot and variable and moving.  It is hard to get an exposure where the flames are not overexposed and you don't have time to say, "Wait, can we try that again."  You have to go with the flow and I was constantly adjusting my exposure and aperture.  The burn time is a few minutes and towards the end of the burn I got the best images. 

Shooting fire performers is an awesome experience and I learn a lot with each session.  I learned that next time I will do a better job of hiding the light stand or using a black one.  I thought about photoshopping it out, but it kind of adds to the environment.  And I bet you didn't really notice it until I mentioned it.  

RGB Light Painted Portraits - Charlotte, NC

I just got the new Syl Arena book, The Speedliter's Handbook.  It is an awesome read.  If you want to learn about how to use your speedlite or using off camera flash, this is the book for you.  It is well written with tons of examples, tips and ideas.  And that is how I came upon this idea.

Syl had a cool example of blending gelled speedlites.  He had 3 lights all pointed toward a corner.  A red on one wall, a green on another and blue one along the ceiling.  When they flashed, of course you could see the three distinct colors, but where they all intersected was an explosion of colors.  Pretty cool idea, huh?  Nothing super technical.  Anyone can do this. 


Last night we had one of our CPMG Coffee & Strobes Meetups hosted by Scott Stallings, our Strobist Guru.  I set up a very simple triangle of bare gelled strobes and here are the results.

I am really pleased with how they came out.  These images are pretty much straight out of the camera with some minor editing in LR3.  It was a lot of fun.  We shot for well over an hour in a 8 ft space bouncing lights around and having a blast.