Editorial Shoot: Nightclub

Editorial shoots can be lots of fun.  Especially when your subjects are willing to have fun with the process.  Because time and budgets are generally limited, I try to go in with as little gear as possible and get as many different shots as I can in 15-30 mins.

One assignment was to photograph Randall and Donya Stockton in Austin, the husband and wife proprietors of two or three nightclubs in the area.  We decided to meet at their Beerland club on Red River just off Austin’s famous 6th Street.

When I got there, I quickly identified two areas I wanted to pose the couple against.  The first was at the corner of the main bar.  I loved the cluttery atmosphere behind the bar and felt that the signs, bottles and lights would help tell the story.

Instead of just showing you the final selections, I thought it would be more instructive to use some fun outtakes as examples.  It’s often during the first few “test” shots, when I tell the subject(s) to just settle in and relax, that I get some great images to work with.  I really like the image above because the Stocktons are just being themselves here.  Getting a feel for who they are helped me know how to approach the rest of the shoot to capture their personalities.

In this image I’m using a variation on my favorite two-light setup.  I have a 42″ shoot-thru umbrella as my main, and a bare Speedlite as my kicker.  I’m using a Canon EF 17-40mm f4L USM lens at 24mm.  I adjusted down to f/7.1 in order to get enough sharpness for eventual cropping (I never know how my images are going to be cropped by the layout designer).  ISO was 200.  1/40 sec. on the shutter gave me what I needed to bring out the ambient in the background.

Two problem areas were encountered, and they both had to do with light reflections:  the shiny poster, and the eyeglasses.  What to do?  I liked the main light and subjects, and everything else, just where they were.  So, I could have pulled the poster, changed it out with another less shiny one, angled it somehow, or shot the same scene from the same angle later, with a different angle on the main light.  In post, just replace the bad poster with the good!

I was working quickly, figured I wouldn’t worry about it because it would probably be cropped out anyway in favor of a tighter shot/crop.  I was right.  All was good.

Moving on to the next shot, I had the couple sit at the edge of the stage where the bands perform.  I wanted to get the club’s nameplate as the backdrop.  Of course, they loved that idea, too.

Again, the 42″ shoot-thru umbrellas as the main, but this time I used my bare Speedlite to illuminate the wall that the nameplate was painted on.  The stage lights at some of the smaller clubs are rather low-tech and randomly gelled, so just controlling the background with my own light was the best, fastest way to go.   As you can probably tell by the image, I had that light positioned to feather across the wall from right-to-left.

Eyeglasses still posed a challenge, but you know, take a few shots, chimp, and you’ll know how to avoid the reflections in a given shot.  Sometimes all it takes is to ask the subject to turn this way or that just a tiny bit.  Other times, you can adjust your angle.  Don’t mess with the position of the light because that just takes too long.  Have fun and it will work.