I suppose this picture is the odd one out since the food isn’t actually unhealthy. Watermelon is, however, photographically appealing so it made the cut.
As you will note, Cameron isn’t looking particularly happy at this point. Each of the kids who modeled for us were asked to show three distinct emotions – happiness (as in all the previous pictures I’ve posted), concern and terror. This is Cameron’s terrified shot.
For the technically inclined, strobist types, all these portraits were lit with 3 flashes. The main light was a Nikon SB-900 fired through a white umbrella camera left and about 2 feet from the model’s face. Fill light, camera right was provided by an SB-600 fired through another white umbrella. The kids knelt on a reversed chair between the two umbrellas and I had a third light, another SB-600, this time with no diffuser, directly behind their back to provide a pretty hard rim light and outline the model against the black background. I synchronised the whole thing from an SU-800 commander mounted on the camera.
I initially used the SU-800 because the in-camera commander can only control 2 independent lights whereas the SU-800 can handle 3. It also turned out to have another benefit that I had not realised. The internal commander uses visible pre-flashes from the pop-up flash to send messages to the other units but the SU-800 uses infra-red. As a result, I found a lot fewer of the shots with closed eyes since the models didn’t see any flash action until the main lights fired. I’ll have to remember this for future portrait shoots.
Love this shot – he did a good job showing terror! Thanks for the lighting setup too!
Glad you like it. If you enjoy terror, tomorrow’s picture will be right up your street, Jim!