corwinprescott

A Night at the Mansion with Rant

Added 2015-07-13 20:23:48 +0000 UTC

Finding locations when traveling is one of the most difficult parts of being on the road, so when I hit a city and a model has already taken care of it for me, it is pretty much the best thing ever!!

My trip last fall I did bring a single Alien Bee 800 with me, so that I could shoot at night. The short days of late fall and winter made it very important that I travel with some studio lighting in order to optimize my productivity. It means a lot less extra room in the car, since I have to have a modifier (usually my 60 inch pop up soft box), a light stand, and a bunch of extra chords, but we always manage to make it work.

Whenever I enter a new location I haven't shot at before I normally try to break it down into smaller areas. I'm used to shooting in little 160-250 square foot rooms, so a giant mansion is a bit overwhelming as far as space goes. The nice thing about the giant rooms in this mansion is that I was able to get far enough away from Rant to use my 70-200mm F2.8 for almost everything. I did use the 24-70mm F2.8 for a few of these shots, but for the most part I preferred to stand further away and zoom in to achieve a more isolating DOF.

I used my standard sort of portrait light set up to shoot all of these, which I demo in my most recent Photography Resource Video, though I backed the light away from Rant and raised the power to do the more environmental full length photos.

I hope you enjoy the resulting photos.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uhz6k4epipeihju/AACKQ-QT9Ln2kQJvTz9T8sb5a?dl=0