January 12th, 2010 by Brian Cooney

So this post is a little early…. because I am boared and in a hotel room all by myself.

I am here in Cincinnati tonight, after flying in for work.  I decided to try some of the magic I have learned form reading Strobist, and came up with these pictures.  I am pretty happy with the results, given the tools at hand and it being just me, myself, and I.

How did I do it?  Well,  I re-arranged my hotel room.  The room has UGLY two tone striped wall paper.  I hit that wall paper with my Vivitar 285 at 1/2 power, from about four feet away.  The flash was tied to one of the rooms wall lights (which was de-shaded and de-bulbed) with a big piece of Velcro.  My crappy little radio triggers werernt working right, so I ended up putting a second flash on the camera and using an optical slave to trigger the first one.  I was planning on using two flashes anyway… I just didnt really want the one lighting me on the camera.  Oh well.

The Light on the camera was probally at 1/4 power, and definatly pointed strait up, with a Lumiquest 80/20 to try to get some even light on me.  So what we have happening here is simple.  Two flashes.  One of them is over exposing an ugly wall so bad it just looks like I am in a softbox.  The wall is at my back, five feet behind me.  The first flash is to my left, blasting the wall.  The second flash, with the 80/20, is on the camera, and is set with enough power to make me look good.  I am fairly happy with the results.

You will be amused to know that not only did I not have a light stand, but I also didn’t have a tripod.  My camera is sitting on the hotel lap desk,  which is sitting on the luggage rack,  which is sitting on the bed.  This whole mess is about 3-4 feet away from me.  Focus is always a pain in the butt when you are doing a self portrait.  I used a ugly floor lamp as a stand-in to manually focus on…. putting it close to where my face would be.  I have decided that… while shooting other people scares me a bit….  shooting myself is MUCH more of a pain in the butt from a logistical point of view.  Anybody want to be a subject so I don’t have to work as hard to make a frame?  Let me know.  On the bright side…. Live view…. and zooming in on what you are focusing… makes focus MUCH easier when there is a bed preventing you from putting your eye to the camera without killing your back.  God Bless live view for this type of case, and to think I would only use it for macro.

All and all, not bad for two flashes, and ugly wallpaper.  I didn’t even have to edit the pictures to get this look…. which is good because I suck at editing pictures.