I have a woman friend who rides a Harley. She and 7 of her girlfriends (also Harley riders) want individual shots and a group photo. I have access to a warehouse-type area and plan on wetting down the pavement, bringing a few cars and using their headlights for backlighting. I can also bring a few Dynatrons with umbrellas and my SB600 speedlight.

I will try to shoot this in the late afternoon-early evening and am going for a gritty look. I will bring a stepladder and plan to have the girls set up in a diamond pattern. My goal is to shoot around 5.6 or smaller to get some decent depth of field. Am I missing anything and does anyone have any suggestions for this type of shoot? Thanks for any comments.

Richard

The only suggestion I might add would be to gel your flashes with 1/2 cut of CTO or so. You'll be trying to make a reasonable blend of mixed lighting, from the ambient early evening to cars' headlights and then your flash (which will be much cooler). With those light sources, if you don't pay careful attention to color balance from your flash, you're probably going to have some issues. I don't think you want cold flash light in an otherwise warm environment. If I had this assignment, I'd do some practice shoots using this specific combination of lighting sources before the actual shoot with clients.

Having said that, from what you've described, a somewhat gritty black and white conversion might also be a good look.

Steve:
Thanks for the time. I hadn't considered a b/w conversion but that might really do the trick. These are mature women who just enjoy riding. They aren't beer-swilling, bar fighting females. But they do have a little edge to them. My job will be to capture that but let the nicer bits show through.

Richard

Sounds like a fun project! I am thinking f/5.6 is gonna be pretty narrow dof for a group shot... Double check a dof calculator once you get your distances pinned down a little better.

Paul

The added height will help with the dof angle ... using a tilt lens (rent one) can be an option here as well, but it might take a bit of practice before hand to get a feel for how to work with tilt if you've never used one. Maybe the rental house staff can help you get a feel for it to get you started.

Of course, you can always shoot a tilt shift "straight" as well.

Check out the Harley Davidson site in the motorcycles section. They have some great images on there.