Inlightened Photography: Business on the fly.....

On our most recent holiday to South Africa, I was sitting at my in-laws house when I was asked by my father-in -law, John, if I wanted to go visit an aircraft factory. Very much intrigued, of course I said yes.......

So being the good little photographer, I was traveling with some gear that I had thrown into a bag just before we left....two bodies, lenses, three flashes, two mini stands, umbrellas, grids, gels and some other stuff. Yeh, I travel light. Whatever!
Luckily, my Think Tank Airport Takeoff swallows most of that up, the rest goes into the overnight bag.

So off we went to a little airfield outside of East London called Robertsham. It's a tiny GA airfield where a company called Savannah Africa are assembling light sport aircraft called the Savannah and the Oribi.

So by the time we arrived there, there wasn't much time left, as it was a Friday afternoon and the guys who were there were basically finishing up before closing shop for the weekend.

So I shot what I could within about twenty minutes.

The ambient lighting within the hangar/assembly shop was a mixture of natural, tungsten and florescent, with the florescent being the main source. Interesting, to say the least.

So my camera was set to ISO 200, Florescent WB, my flash units were gelled with a full cut of Plus Green. I knew this would give me some magenta and green colour shifts outside of the flash coverage, but I was OK with that as magenta and green on the aluminum fuselages and parts wouldn't look TOO bad.

Skin tones had to be right, at least.

I shot in Manual mode, and my flash was mounted on a Manfrotto Nano stand, fired with PW Mini and FlexTT5. I also used the AC3 zone controller to change flash settings/power.

Most of the tight shots were done with a Honl speed grid attached to the front of the SB900.
You can see the effect in the next few shots, falloff is very pronounced. But I like the effect!!