I took these at Bombay Hook or nearby. I messed with the first 2 in Picasa. I should go back and do them in Photoshop too.

Me painting the luan bi-fold doors to use as cutters to block the light from hitting the subject from the side.

In the foyer I set up the lights on the stands before taking them to the garage. This took about an hour to open them up, set them on the stands, check the connections, yadda yadda yadda.

Here’s the set up my Big camera is on the tripodbarely visible on the bottom right. The umbrella flash is set up for the subject. The flashes are behind the white doors painted earlier. The paper stand was a bit of a pain to set up. You can see the clamp on the paper to keep it from unrolling. Arias’ tutorial covered a lot! Biggest issues are managing all the other crap in the garage, and watching all the plugs for the strobes.

I set up a studio in my garage following a tutorial posted by Zack Arias on his blog here: http://www.zarias.com/?p=71. I used 3 Genesis 200 lights from Calumet. I picked them based on a review here: http://prophotolife.com/calumet-genesis-light-kit/. It took a few hours to get everything unpacked and set up for the first time. I’ll post those photos in the next entry. I set up the lights on 30 for the two side lights shot into the white backdrop. I used 10 on the the flash used to shoot the subject, in this case me, and the pup. I set the camera on manual at F5.6, shutter speed 1/60th of a second and ISO 100. I ended up setting the subject flash at 30 too and it looked great! There is still more for me to figure out, but, I’m pretty psyched by the results so far!

One of the first shots. Note the crap in front.

I set the lights, Mary took the shot.

A shot with no lights on for the background. This is one of the things to figure out. I want to be able to do a black background with the same set up.