The Studio

I tried two things—one simple, and one with a touch of complexity. In the feathery fashion shot, I put three SB-910s on a TriFlash and pumped them collectively into one of the new Lastolite 8-in-1 umbrellas, which has a Velcro port in the middle of the opaque backing. This creates something like a 2×2′ softbox, basically. It’s a strong, directional shoot-through light, but it’s also contained by the substantial swatch of material around the edges of the 40″ brolly. It collects the light in a concentrated but lustrous way right where you want it.

In this case, it was a good solution because I wanted the light to stay around her head and plumed shoulders, and not spread overmuch to the background. I let the camera ride on auto white balance, because the white studio wall in the distance took on a lovely warm tone, which complemented the fashion up front in the frame. The finals here read back as 1/250^th at f/2 with a 200mm lens, and the three flashes set to manual at 1/32^nd power. The three of them gave me wonderful coverage of that center window in the umbrella, and enabled me to run them at low power. Low power equals fast recycle, and when you have a model like Jasmine—who seemingly every second is rotating into ever more beautiful poses and looks—you are desperate to keep up.