How I Lit It: vSpring Capital's Dr. Dinesh Patel

Dr. Dinesh Patel
Managing Director, vSpring Capital
Winner of the 2009 Utah Genius Award

Salt Lake City, UT
Nikon D700
Nikkor 35mm f/2

This is an outtake from an assignment for Utah CEO Magazine but I thought it would make for a good example for my "How I Lit It" series.

These executive portraits are normally short on time as the executives have understandably busy schedules. The last few executives I've photographed had only about 15-20 minutes available for shooting and I've learned both from experience and from pros like David X. Tejada that arriving early (up to an hour if possible) to scout, set up lights and test is highly beneficial. In this case I had about 30-34 mins to find two locations and test lighting them using a mix of available light and my three Nikon Speedlights.

In the above outtake I used a stand-mounted Nikon SB-800 as my key light, which was immediately camera right, shooting through a 43" white shoot-through umbrella and was gelled 1/2 CTO to warm it up a touch to match the ambient color temperature (a mix of diffuse daylight and artificial lights). For a hairlight/rimlight I used a stand-mounted Nikon SB-600 that was positioned camera left and behind Dr. Patel, shooting through a homemade 2" gridded snoot and also gelled 1/2 CTO. Both Speedlights were fired via the Nikon D700's popup flash using Nikon CLS (Creative Lighting System).

Here's a diagram of the lighting setup:



Speedlights are perfect for situations like these. They're light, require no cabling for power or triggering and are quick to setup/takedown - all positives when shooting on-the-go. With Nikon's CLS controlling them it's easy to either dial in manual power adjustments via the camera or just use TTL (through-the-lens) metering to let the camera control all exposures.