5 Tips for a Good Strobist Setup

In this article, Brian, a.k.a. “aikidojones” on Flickr, from the Eugene Strobist group on Flickr, decided to share some of his best strobist setup tips.

So you’ve joined the Strobist revolution. You’ve picked up a couple of simple AA-powered strobes, some stands, umbrellas, snoots, radio triggers, gaff tape, gel, slabs of white foamcore, and a relatively cooperative pack-mule to carry all this highly-portable crap around with you. Now how to go about developing the actual craft? The short answer? Don’t just shoot pictures…  Shoot a LOT of pictures and care about each and every one of them. There’s no such thing was a wasted frame in the digital world because hard drive space is cheap and the delete button is free.  So get out and practice.  That said, I’ve compiled a few tips that are helping me out along the way.  I’ll try to list these in order of importance, but will likely fail. Prioritize for yourself.

1. Pre-visualize. Part of the whole Strobist gig is to be flexible, portable, and agile. I keep my crud more or less packed in a single backpack that I can throw over my shoulder, pick up a couple stands, and move out. This portability has lead me time and again to a sort of lax approach to planning. It’s so easy to talk with a model and say “sure, grab a couple outfits you like and we’ll work it out as we go.” To a point this can be a good exercise to keep me light on my artistic feet, but there’s also only so far you can take a shoot without some forethought. So here’s where the discipline comes in. Take the time before the day of the shoot. Talk with the model. Sketch out your ideas (yes.. on paper). Find out what the wardrobe will look like. Makeup? Location? See the shots as clearly as you can in your head and make a list. Once the day comes, you’ll be better prepared and can use that agility and portability to deal with the inevitable difficulties that arise with your initial vision.
2. Get the model on-board creatively. I’ll be honest. I like shooting women. Women are prettier than men. But owing to my bleeding-heart, left-of-center, feminist, liberal arts education I feel compelled to try and avoid having them simply be a pretty element in my images (sometimes I succeed.. other times? Well, I have women whose opinion I regard highly to yell at me for those times. What can I say, I’m only a man.) The number one way I’m trying to do this is to get the model (or models) involved in developing the shot. Sure, I may have a vision that I want to accomplish but I’m going to try and discuss it with the model, get their thoughts, modify it as they see fit (or abandon it totally if they make the yuck face), and get them feeling excited and in control of the creation of the image. A happy side-effect of my attempts not to be a bastard is that generally a more engaged model who’s on-board creatively will come across much more effectively in the shot and instinctively be able to work out the best poses for the feel of the thing. This is great for me as I’m terrible at posing models.
3. Take some “safety” shots, then push the envelope. I’ve had a few shoots where I really wanted to go way out on the fringes of what I know will work in terms of lighting, technique, etc. That can be a scary deal when I’ve got a model who’s giving up her time and trusting me to shoot something worthwhile. Paying the model would of course eliminate the ‘performance anxiety’, but who’s got money for that these days? (Apologies to professional models. You deserve to be paid. I just can’t.) So first thing is to make sure the model understands what we’re up to and that it might fail miserably (see #2 above). And the second thing is to take some safety shots first and check them out with the model on the preview screen so that you both know you’ve got some decent stuff done and everything else is just playtime to see what you get. For example; if shooting in direct sun and you’re not sure you can fill in and handle the harsh light, do a quick setup in the shade of a nearby tree or something first so you can feel like it’s not a total waste if they don’t turn out. This will free you up to go for broke, shoot right into the sun, light-paint a live model in the middle of the night (fun!), shoot with ridiculously saturated gels over every light. Whatever. It’s ok. You already got that “kill shot” earlier, right?
4. Bring an assistant. In Eugene Strobist we jokingly call anyone holding a strobe, reflector, etc in place a V.A.L. (that’s “voice-activated light stand”). An assistant can be invaluable in a location shoot. Sometimes the terrain is too rugged for a light stand. Sometimes you want the light coming in from right overhead. Sometimes you just need someone to keep an eye out for interlopers while you shoot a few of the model “au naturel”. So buddy up. If they’re a photographer so much the better as they can anticipate your needs. That said, be a buddy to your fellow Strobist friends. Set the camera aside and pick up a light stand for em. You might learn something. I always do.
5. The long-lost composition element: negative space. Ok, it’s not long-lost. Plenty of folks shoot with a tremendous amount of “air” in their shots and their work is brilliant. But I personally have found myself at odds time and again with two competing impulses in my head. The first is the mantra “fill the frame”. I want to compose every image with layer after layer of visual interest so every inch of the shot is busy with something. The other is from my theatre background and is the desire for the visual equivalent of a dramatic pause (think Shatner.. only less lame..). If you have just a single subject in a composition then the space around it can say as much as the subject does. Two subjects? What does the space between them mean? I may struggle with how much negative space is enough in a composition but one thing I never lose sight of is that empty space itself is a subject and a compositional element too.

Thanks for the tips Brian!  Remember to visit his Flickr photostream to view his work, and head over to the main Strobist site for more Strobist information.

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