How to complicate your life...

I do funny things. Not happy of taking the normal fishing pictures you can get using available daylight or with the help of a small flashgun, I decided to do it the my way, complicated. That is. During my last trip I brought with me 4 flashes. To be exact, 3 x SB600 and one Metz 54 recently bought as a bargain. To fire these lights I had with me 3 Skyport receivers and eventually one slave, that due to the strong light wouldn't work, or better say, would work whenever it wanted.

Now, to put together all these lights and make them work the way I wanted, I had to carry also my Manfrotto 001B light stands. The Manfrotto Justin Clamp. Another smaller clamp. Two small translucent umbrellas. Gaffer tape. You name it... All this stuff found place in my suitcase leaving home many lures I could have used for fishing, but this is what I choose, so much for the lures frenzy.


The idea was to put together two strobes on tne 001B stand, and one on the Justin Clamp as a backlit unit. The latter would not work properly because people holding a fish cannot be also asked to stand still in one very place and anyway, the distance between the rail where I would clamp the flash and the fisherman was always very short so the use of such light was pointless. I ended up lighting the subject from one side, and naturally backlit by the sun itself, using two flashes on the light stand but, at one point, in my mighty effort to overpower the sun I added a third flashgun to the stand ad went for the real thing.

Imagine what kind of chaos I have generated on board. Every time somebody had a decent fish I was removing the stand from the "safe" place, unfolding the plastic bag covering the flashes, turning all the darn receives and the flashes on, positioning the stand and the lights in order to have one pointing at the fisherman and the other at the fish, and start shooting. The light for the fisherman was usually half the power of those used to lit the fish, wouldn't always work flawless but it was pretty much under control. Anyway, big work. Tough, and easy to make mistakes, and mistakes I made, quite few many. Thus, the results in some of the photos were extremely rewarding and unique, hence, for as weird as it seem I will keep using my life-complication-combo trying to figure out how to make things roll easier.

Eventually, Lastolite seem to have heard my screams from the Maldives and put together a great gear : The Triflash. Strobist brought the news last week or so and I figured out is what I really need to buy in the nearest future (read, as soon as it is available). Is a triple flash bracket you can stick into your light stand and use with one, two or three flashes, as you like. As simple as that, great ideas don't need to be complicated anyway. Some more detailed info are available here http://www.lastolite.com/triflash.php

This is how my next boat lighting set up will look like, maybe if is very windy I will skip the umbrella but I'm sure this will make my life easier. Can't wait to try that.....