Today, another shot in the “Keeping it simple” series.

Relatively simple, anyway:

Model Evanna Mills, photo Michael Willems

For this photo, taken during our last Creative Lighting workshop, I could have used large strobes with softboxes and portable lead-acid batteries. Instead, I used two simple speedlites.

• The main light: a Canon 580EX II flash fitted with a Honl Traveller 8 Softbox. Inside that softbox, a half CTO gel.
• The hair light: a Canon 430EX flash with a Honl Photo 1/4″ grid.
• Both flashes on cheap, simple stands.
• Camera on manual/ 1/160th second, f/9, and set to “Flash” white balance.

This is simple and can be reproduced easily and consistently.

I used Pocketwizards and manual settings to fire the lights, because that way I was able to use any flash (even a very cheap one!) and to hand the Pocketwizard to each student in turn to shoot the shot and get consistent results immediately, but I could equally well have used TTL.

The next Creative Lighting workshop in Mono is August 14.