Breaking it down
However, for all that effort, when done right, photos lit outside with strobe equipment have a quality and richness that is unmatched by any other technique. Let’s break down the steps I went through on a recent shoot that I did with a “lifeguard” theme.

I knew that I’d want to shoot at the beach, and I knew that I’d want the sky to be as blue as possible. So my first step was to figure out approximately what exposure I’d need to use in order to shoot west in the mid-to-late afternoon to get the sky nice and blue. Later on, I could match the lighting I brought into the environment to my “ideal” exposure for the beach and sky. In scouting the location, I took several photos:

See Photo 02

What to expose for
What I learned was, even at 100 ISO, in order to have detail in the sky and not have the sun blow it all out, I needed to have a very fast shutter speed. Using the built-in reflective meter on my camera, I was getting a reading of about 1/800th of a second at my lens’ maximum aperture of f/22. Now, for those of you who are familiar with strobe lighting, red flags should start going up. When you shoot with strobes, your shutter speed can only go so fast (on most cameras it’s 1/200th of a second) before you start seeing a swath of “unlit” image in your photograph. This is known as your maximum sync speed. The details of how and why this maximum shutter speed affects your image when using strobes, especially when mixing a constant light source like the sun with strobes, is a story for another day. But for now, just know that the fastest shutter speed you should be using with strobes is about 1/200th of a second, more or less depending on your model of camera.

Making it work
How do we get around this? I decided to use a couple of filters on my lens in order to reduce the amount of light in the scene without having to push my shutter speed past the maximum sync speed. The first was a circular polarizer, which would serve dual purpose of cutting down the amount of light entering the lens by 1 1/2 – 2 stops, and also allow me to make the sky even a little bit bluer. For good measure, I also added a neutral density filter, which uniformly cut down the light by 2 more stops. So, I could comfortably shoot at, say, f/8 at 1/200th of a second.

I decided to do a little bit of testing with the circular polarizer to see how blue I could get the sky. I noticed that shooting directly toward the sun produced a less pronounced effect, and that the bluest skies came from the east. Being in California, though, we wanted to showcase the beach, so I knew I’d be shooting in a westerly direction. The circular polarizer still made a difference when shooting toward the west, so I knew the circular polarizer was a good idea.

Bring out the “Big Boys”
As I said from the start, I love studio lighting. My weapons of choice for outdoor shots are the Profoto line of battery-powered packs. There are several flavors, from “AcuteB” packs that pack 600 watt seconds, to the Pro 7b, Pro B2 and Pro B3 packs, which all have 1200 watt seconds and varying flash durations and recycle times. They work with regular Profoto heads, which in turn work with the wide variety of modifiers that Profoto has available. They’re rugged, they’re versatile, they’re powerful, and because Profoto is a popular professional brand, if you’re missing anything for a shoot, you should be able to rent it nearby. (If you need something extra for a lesser-known brand of lighting equipment quickly and locally, you might be out of luck!)

 Working it through
On the day of the shoot, using a Sekonic incident meter, I found that the ambient sunlight that would be hitting the model’s back was reading at about f/11 at 1/200th of a second (this was the camera’s max sync speed, as I discussed above). Because I wanted the sun to create a slightly blown-out highlight on the back of the model, I decided to set my exposure to f/8, and set the power of my key light accordingly. I then went about choosing exactly what light I would use.

I had seen other photographers use just a ringflash on camera to achieve some pretty cool outdoor effects on a beach, but when I tried it here it wasn’t giving me the look I wanted. So, I moved to a 5′ Octabox. With some minor adjustments of distance and angle, I found that this was exactly the lighting style I wanted; it had a very nice directional quality which suggested natural light, but at the same time it had a softness to it that seemed more polished than natural sunlight could produce on its own.

Tweaking the final image
Once the model was out of makeup, I experimented with different light distances and positions to achieve the right look. The light from the sun hitting the model’s left shoulder (camera right) was exactly the kind of back lighting that I wanted, but decided a second back light would accentuate his musculature and further separate him from the background.

For this I had my other assistant Griff hold a 4×6″ silver reflector off to camera left. To make the highlights a little more noticeable, I also opened the aperture, settling on an f/5.6. I adjusted my strobe’s exposure down to this level as well.

Once all this was locked into place, I had the room to experiment with different camera positions and angles. I even flipped the setup around for a few shots, repositioning the light, model and reflector to my right.

The Review
The keys to this shoot were methodical pre-production (scouting locations, testing ambient exposures and filters, securing a permit), having the right tools (powerful and rugged battery-powered strobes), bringing different options of lighting tools (the ringflash, the 5′ Octabox and reflectors), and having assistants that could both act as stand-ins and help me out with the logistics of the lighting.

 All of this can be a lot of work, but the photos you can get from it are definitely worth it! For information on my two day workshop, click here.

Credits
Assistants: Ben Ortiz and Matthew Griffith
Makeup: Grace Pae
Model: Rick Casswell Source: shootsmarter.com