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I did a photoshoot last night of my friend Dave on his motorcycle. I wanted an industrial looking setting and I found it in an alleyway between two buildings near my office.

The lighting setup consisted of two Canon Speedlites – a 430EX and a 580EX. For this shot, the 430EX was used as the main light. It was placed on a lightstand above and to the left (camera right) of the model. The fill light was provided by the 580EX with a diffuser. I held this light in my left hand a couple of feet away and below the camera. An f-stop of f/11 was used to darken the background. This was shot just after 8:00 pm and the ambient light was still fairly bright (f/4 or so) so setting the strobes to f/11 underexposed the background by around 3 stops.

The final result is very near to what I envisioned for the shot. The harsh lighting adds nicely to the dramatic look of the stern faced biker. The two Speedlite setup worked very well and was easy to set up.

Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/60 second, f/11, ISO 100

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