I had an assignment to photograph the former CEO of Philips Lighting for New York Times. He flew into Boston for a few days for a conference from Europe. I had to find him in between meetings and in a few minutes create an interesting photograph. The idea was to compare an LED build with a traditional light bulb.
The challenge, how to do this in a hotel hallway. The solution, have him hold to lit light bulbs. To light the bulbs, I went to the hardware store and bought 2 clamps on garage lights. I threw away the clamps and the reflectors, all I wanted was the sockets and cords. I had him hold the lights and plugged him in. To get the effect off the LED I used a cross screen filter.
To determine my exposure, I read the ambient light off the light bulbs. I wanted to shoot at about f8, using that as my starting point I adjusted my shutter speed for the proper exposure for the bulbs. I used a small Chimera soft box with a speedlight to light his face. Both my camera and strobe were set on manual. Using a Sekonic meter to read the strobe output, I adjusted the output of the strobe until it matched my ambient light from the bulbs.
The shoot took place at the hallway of Intercontinental Hotel in Boston. I arrived at the hotel before my shoot, to scout the location & the set up. This is a busy hotel, you cannot have a big set up. First thing I did was, look for the outlet! I did bring an extension code, but you really cannot run a long extension cord through a busy hotel floor. Second pick a background. I choose this neutral wall for my background. This is a hotel: this is not his environment. I wanted to keep it simple and neutral.
My shooting time with him was 19 minutes. ( I looked into my metadate of this shoot: time between the first frame and the last frame of him was 19 minutes!).
I used 1 speedlight with Chimera small softbox.
Here is to just to give you the space I worked at.
