On the road right now working on an advertising assignment. I was just in San Diego shooting some surfers and had a chance to do a quick portrait with Josh, a friend and great local surfer.
Since I was working on a tight schedule, I used one soft light using an Elinchrom Quadra and a 53″ octabank. A great trick to mix up lighting in your images is rather than keep changing the position of the light, try shooting a full 360 around your subject with your light stationary. This means you will be using front lighting, side lighting and back lighting depending on where you are shooting from relative to your light. Some shots will work, others won’t, but you might be surprised at some of the results. Walking around your subject and light, both stationary, also forces you to shoot outside the box. Staying creative and developing your style and technique comes with lots of experimentation and failure. But the times everything does work gives you a new technique to use down the road on future shoots.
Tech: Nikon D300s, 24-70mm, 1/160 at F6.3, ISO100. Elinchrom Quadra and 53″ Octabank used for the lighting, triggered by Elinchrom Skyports.