Abbie… again!

It must be all of two weeks since I posted a shot of one of my nephews and niece, so I think it’s about time for another one don’t you?  Actually this shot of Abbie comes to mind because it uses the type of lighting that I plan on using for a photoshoot that is in the pipeline in the next couple of months.  It will be a shoot that needs a bit of pre-planning, but should be fun to do. Before I talk about that though, I have a favour to ask…

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I get a fair amount of feedback on this blog, and it is generally very positive, and always appreciated.  I know from the stats of the blog that I have a pretty healthy number of regular readers at this stage, and if you enjoy the blog, be it the pictures, the words, or both, then you might allow me to point out to you that nominations have opened for the 2010 Irish Blog Awards, which include a “Best Photo Blog” category, for which this site is eligible.  Nominating a blog is easy, and requires you to visit the nominations page,  scroll down to the relevant category, supply the URL of the blog, your reason for nominating, the name and contact details for its author, and your own name and email address.

So, hypothetically speaking, were you to nominate this site you would use www.ronanpalliser.ie/blog as the URL, Ronan Palliser as the contact name, and ronan@ronanpalliser.ie as the contact details.   There are, of course, many excellent Irish photoblogs out there that you might prefer to nominate instead, and if so please do.  I’m currently trying to pick from them to decide who I’ll nominate and it’s not an easy task.  Also, if you do decide to nominate in one category, before you submit it look through the other categories and think of any other blogs you might read that deserve your nomination also.

So, with that suggestion out there, and out of the way, back to the photography.

Pre-planning a shoot becomes important as the complexity of the shoot increases.  Complexity can be due to the difficulty of accessing the subject, the area where you want to do the photograph, the number of photographs involved, the number of people involved, the technical challenges of the shoot, or a combination of these.

I’m in the planning stage for a photoshoot where many of these factors will come into play at once.   When exactly the shoot is going ahead has yet to be finalized, but I know now that it will need to be carefully thought out.  It will require shooting about 50 people individually and together, and will need to be completed in about 5 hours.  One thing in my favour is that almost all the shots will use the same lighting setup.

My planning has started with the lighting.  The style of lighting will be like the photo above, to give a clean, high-key look to the images, and thanks to this type of shot of Abbie, I have a good idea already how I will be lighting it.  I will be using my portable studio kit, so I can experiment with setups at home long before the shoot happens.  By using my camera and my speedlights on manual settings, I will be able to replicate the set up quickly and be assured of consistent results.

That’s one weight off my shoulders.  The bigger weight will be my time management to get things running smoothly for the duration of the shoot, and that will be the next thing to think about once I have the lighting tied down.