Looks out the window, grey.
Checks the ground, wet maybe; can’t tell.
Looks at the trees, windy.
Hey-ho let’s go for it.
We had an offer to use this lovely April RSV4 at SP-Motorcycles in Exeter, it looked great with this paint-job but beyond that nothing was certain other than that the weather would change.
I packed some punchy Bowens strobes and even though one is 1500w they will charge from a battery. Stands, cameras, the huge trolley and the yoga mat.
Kutchenhaus Exeter kindly offered to let us use their car-park for the lovely door and even provided us coffee!
We had to work quickly, I’d planned to use a massive brolly as key but it would have been in France by now such was the wind, as soon as I tried I knew it wouldn’t work. Rain threatened everything.
Plan-B then and I’m a little surprised at this. Basically a 90cm Octabox was used as a key-light at the front and a gelled grid on the roller-door. The Octa was a much smaller modifier than I would normally use. Two Bowens 1000w Geminis giving their all provided the main lights, I couldn’t be asked to get the 1500 out given the potential for rain. Although we’d been given mains power I left the key-light hooked up to the Travelpak battery. Finally two Nikon SB910 speedlights were either side to rim the tyres.
The final image at the top is a no-retouch shot – as it came out of Lightroom. The concrete will get tidied up but this is pretty much what I visualised. This time the tripod was clamped down so it’s sharp too, the unlit shot isn’t actually sharp because I’d not clamped the tripod down fully! There is one interim shot where you can see how much the speedlights add. The setup shot shows the camera position and the £5 yoga mat, one day I’ll do a video post with all of the cheap but unbelievable useful things that I own!
Due to the time constraints I used the 70-200 rather than the 85mm on the Nikon D850.
Thanks as ever to Karin.