Shooting it: Fairy of the Golden Tunnel

Background

This shot of Misa is taken at Takedao, very close to Sanda, this is a really awesome location a friend of mine told me about an year ago, and since then I went there a few times. There are old railway tunnels that are not used anymore, and not are a kind of a hiking course. The place is fantastic for experimenting with flashes inside the tunnel! there are about 6 tunnels there, and if you want to walk all of them, you need to arm yourself with a torch!

Lighting

So let me talk about the lighting of this shot! My main light for her is a 80×60 Softbox placed camera left. I am using it with a Canon 580EXII flash, at about 1/2nd power. I wish I was able to put one more fill light on the right of her, but I couldn’t do it in that situation, as I was running out of flashes lol. The back light of the tunnel is made by 3 Nikon SB-26 flashes. That tunnel is really big and high, so you will need a lot of power to lit it all. In this case my Nikon flashes did the job great! They are placed on different positions, and also pointed at different angle so they could lit the tunnel evenly. It took me some time and testing to do the arrangement of the flashes.

I am triggering the Canon 580EXII with Pocket Wizard II Plus, and the rest of the flashes are triggered by Optical slave, which is the main reason I love the Nikon SB-26 flashes for strobist work! The lens I’m using on my Canon 50D is Sigma AF 17-70 F/2.8-4.5 DC, a lens I’ve been using quite a lot before I switch to Full Frame. I will write a review about it soon, so stay tuned!

Also one of the tools that is needed when you shoot is such a dark place is the torch, I would never be able to focus on her without it. And actually to be honest, when I was clicking the shutter I almost couldn’t see anything from the viewfinder, because of the complete darkness! After finishing the shoot we had to quickly walk out of the tunnel area, as it was also becoming very dark outside, and believe me, this is not a place where you should take a sensitive girl by night! 🙂 You can see below the final image from the shoot!

So in the end I would like to talk about our new project called Creative Lightbrary! We started it recently with my friend Ognyan Dimitrov, and we are going to post everything connected to digital photography where we will cover our experience with different light modifiers, DIY stuff, lighting diagrams, post production, useful software and many other tips. Our main goal is not to teach but to give everything that is useful for your journey in the world of digital photography. Click on the logo below to check it out

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