Perrin was one of our brides this year so you’ll see some other pictures of her around here. When I was photographing her on the school bus that was moving us from the reception venue to the church I noticed just how deep blue her eyes are. At our meeting after the wedding I asked her if she would let me photograph her in a more formal portrait setting to try and capture those eyes. Here’s what we ended up with.
Behind the Scenes
In the first shot above, I used a LED light panel (a YN-900) inside of a Westcott Apollo Orb. I removed the barndoors (pretty much useless other than protecting the LEDs in transport) and aimed the panel into the Orb. You can get very soft light out of the Orb because by design you aim the light source into the reflective back and it bounces all around before coming out of the front diffuser. They are inexpensive, quick to setup and well made. I used continuous light so that I could get Perrin’s pupils dialed down a bit for more blue and also shoot wide open. The Orb was camera right and positioned high and pointed down.
In the second shot I used a AB800 with a medium octabox off to the right of the camera and high. I also placed a large white reflector on camera left to soften up the shadows.
Any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments below.
Thanks for your time!
Tim
Hi Tim,
I was wondering if you are having success using the Yongnue YN900 in the Apollo Orb .
I love the shot of Perrin and the way the continuous light worked on her eyes.
Is the YN900 powerful enough? Or does it require slower shutter speeds. For example, can you shoot 400 ISO, f 5.6 at 1/125th for a head shot?
Thank you so much for the info!
Steve
Steve,
First off, sorry for the long response time! Second – I’m not sure it would be powerful enough for what you’re thinking. One of the problems is that the unit itself blocks a decent amount of the softbox. Not terrible, but it does work against it. I actually had one of them start smoking when I was on a shoot, so I’ve quick using them since. The Digibees with the LED modeling lamp put out a ton of light – more than the YN900. I also picked up four of the SAMTIAN FL-3060 lights from Amazon (think knock-off Flex lights). I’ve used them for hours and they work fantastic. The cool thing with these is that you can put one or two in the back of the Orb and have a ton of output as well, with nothing blocking the front of the box at all.
I hope that helps some and thanks for checking out our blog!!
Tim