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Colorado Adventure and Editorial Photographer

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Flaming belly dancers

November 18, 2009 • Blog, Workshops

port8687aWow!  That’s about all I could say after returning from Vegas teaching a flash workshop for Photo Quest Adventures.  Las Vegas is full of interesting people to photograph, and we had lots of great models over the weekend.  I would have been happy just walking around the strip with camera in hand to photograph the locals.

One highlight was photographing a belly dancer on a dry lake bed at sunset.  Not only that, but she offered to twirl flaming torches above her head and ignite flames on the desert floor around her.  Are you kidding?!  The trick with any twilight shot is getting the image at the perfect sunset moment.  To early and the sky is washed out, to late and the sky is black.  We had about 15 minutes of really sweet sunset glow, and everyone rapidly shot through this moment.  I normally don’t shoot much on these workshops, I want the students to get the image.  But I squeezed in about 4 frames, and this was one.

To light this image, we chose a deep octabank which is a little more directional than a standard softbox.  This light illuminated her well, but didn’t spill to much onto the desert floor.  We wanted the flames to add their orange color here.  The light was positioned high to further reduce spill onto the ground.  A Ranger RX powered the light, triggered by a Skyport. Tech: Nikon D3, 24-70mm, 1/160 at F5.6, ISO400.

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