Location, Location, Location

Yesterday I was in Jacksonville for a few hours to photograph Christian metalcore band Oh, Sleeper for Kerrang. The band is on tour and Jacksonville just happens to be where they were playing on the day that I was available.

The toughest part about this type of job is that I have to fly in and find a place to do a shoot very quickly. I’ve been to Jacksonville a few times, but have never scouted for locations.

After I landed, I went to the venue to see if it might work. It was locked and there was no one there, so I just walked around the neighborhood.

What did I find about a half a block away? A church! Too cliché for a Christian band? Maybe. But it was all I had and time was ticking.

I walked into the church offices and explained my situation to the director (“See, I’m shooting a Christian rock band for a British music magazine and would love to photograph them in your beautiful church.”)

To my surprise, he agreed.

I called the band to tell them where I was and began setting up my lights.

I kept my lighting very simple. I turned off most of the ambient light except for the altar and used a Nikon SB-800 with a Honl snoot in the front. It was placed as high as my stand would go and centered right over my head. I put a warming gel with some bubble wrap (yes, bubble wrap) in front of the snoot to soften the light a tad.

I also put a bare SB-800 in the back. It’s zoomed all the way so it doesn’t spread out too much.

I used the snoot in the front because it focuses the light onto their faces and upper body. I wanted the light to fall off at their legs and, more importantly, stay off of the carpet in front of them. If I had any stray light on the floor, it would wash out those nice beams of shadow being created by the back light.

Specs:
Nikon D3 body
Nikon 24-70 mm lens
Shutter speed: 1/13 sec (to bring up the ambient light in the background)
Aperture: 4.0
ISO: 800
Front light w/snoot: Nikon SB-800 on 1/8 manual power
Back light: Nikon SB-800 on 1/4 manual power
Both strobes triggered with pocket wizards

Right before I shot my first frame, a sweet older woman came in to practice on the pipe organ. Talk about cliché. It was pretty cool to hear that blasting away during the shoot as it really enhanced the mood.

The shoot went great, I packed up my bags, made sure everything was exactly as we found it, and left to catch my flight home.

As the TSA guy was screening my bag for explosives at the airport, he said he was impressed with how nicely my camera gear was packed. From a man who looks in people’s suitcases all day, I’ll take that as a compliment. Luckily he didn’t think my snoot presented any kind of threat.

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