Strobist Information: My partner, Keoula, plays Roller Hockey at a local club (Rink Rats) run by our friend Julie. I often go along and take a few pictures of the games. This Friday, they asked me if I could also take a few new head shots for the web site. This turned into an exercise in gorilla improvisation and thanks to a few strobist tricks I think I got away with it! :) Last time I had done this, I had a black cloth with me to use as a background. Then, I had only got two lights so the resultant pictures were okay, but a bit dull and lacking badly in separation from the background. This time, I decided to ditch the cloth and try using the corrugated iron walls of the hockey rink as the back drop. While this seemed like an ideal plan in my head, when I got there it became obvious that this was not really going to be workable. The main problem was space. While there are good stretches of wall that would make a nice background, they are either in a corridor sized gaps or there is some immovable piece of equipment in the way. Time for plan 'B'. The two large free areas available were the changing rooms. One had unpainted chipboard walls and the other was locked. Luckily, the locking mechanism consisted of an iron bar pushed through a hole in the roller door all hidden by an old fridge. While no locksmith, I still managed to 'break in' and was greeted by an open shed, again with bare chipboard walls. This changing room however also had a little treasure trove of useful items that could be called into service to make a usable backdrop. In the best 'A' team spirit, I set to work building a backdrop from a shed full of junk. First, I took a large board that was tucked into a gap in the wall and propped it up on one of the benches. Next I used a roll of blue plastic netting I found under the benches and hung it over the top of the board. As I only had three light stands with me, I decided to see how the netting would look back lit. A couple of test shots showed it sucked up quite a lot of light, but two sunpak 383's on 1/2 power gave a very nice glowing blue effect. One blue backdrop sorted out. My next concern was a florescent light fitting directly above the spot I wanted the hockey players to stand. With a very low roof and all the players wearing skates (which makes them all a couple of inches taller) I was worried it might cause a nasty colour cast on the players heads. One quick test shot with the flashes turned off revealed a totally black display on the cameras LCD. The light was having no influence on the shot, so nothing to worry about. The last thing to do was set the main lights up. I used a couple of shoot through brollies as the main lights and a reflective brolly as the helmet (hair) light. After a bit of fiddling about with the settings, I dragged the players away (reluctantly) from there game one by one and got a portrait of each of them ready for the web site update. The picture I picked here is Graham, who plays in goal for the Dragons. He has the coolest helmet of all the players! :) Picture here: Hockey Head Learn how to light: www.strobist.com