Strobe on a Pole
All due respect to David Hobby, who called this technique Strobe on a Rope, I shoot wireless infra-red via Nikon's CLS (Creative Lighting System).
If I had a dime for every time I've described how I handle light on nightlife shoots, I'd never need to shoot again. In case you are not one of the 17,000 people I've told... here's a photo for you (thanks to Salt Lake After Dark for the photo). Mount your strobe to the end of a tripod or monopod (I prefer the tripod because I can set it down and trust it to be stable if I want different light angels), aim the light where you want it, and shoot. It's that easy. That funky thing on the end is a Gary Fong Lightsphere Cloud Diffuser. There are a lot of pundits on Flickr who make fun of Gary Fong and his products, but diffusers work. They scatter and spread the light around, make everything a bit more evenly lit, and having one on a tilt/swivel flash makes it really easy to tweak your exposure by shining more or less light on your subject with a twist of the flash head. It takes some practice, but eventually becomes second nature.
Labels: me, nightlife photography, strobist, technique, tutorial
