The Marangoni Girls at USC

The Marangoni Girls at USC

Ultimate Street Car is one of the biggest weekenders on the modified car show scene and title sponsor, Marangoni Tyres had the busiest stand at the show. And on their stand they had Jen and Sarah who you may have seen on the blog before along with Torrs. I’d spoken with Sarah in the week leading up to the show and arranged to make a few pictures, but I have learnt that you can’t plan too much at shows like this. It’s a case of seeing what you have to work with and coming up with ideas on the spot.

In this case the idea was pretty clear on arrival. Marangoni were promoting the fact their tyres are available from KwikFit and to the side of the stage was a fully kitted out mobile tyre fitting van. I think you know where I am going with this…

The Van/Studio

If the people running the stand and paying the promo girls are going to let me take their girls away from their main job for a while, I need to try and give some value back. In this case, producing some images emphasising the Marangoni/Kwik Fit connection worked for Chris, the man in charged, and the KwikFit fitters on site.

Five minutes later, the KwikFit guys were tidying the van, I was unpacking my Quadras while the girls wielded lip gloss and hair brushes.

I’d passed the van a few times and had already formed an idea: A CTB (blue) gelled light filling the van, with a CTO (orange) lighting the girls, gridded to stop the spill drowning out the blue. Then by setting the cameras white balance to Tungsten (the same colour temperature as the CTO gelled flash) I brought the girls skin tone back to normal and sent the interior of the van an even deeper shade of blue.

So after a quick explanation of what we were trying to achieve it was time to test the lights. I do this one at a time to simplify things, getting one right before moving on to the next. I this case I set my camera about 2 stops below ambient to stop daylight spilling to the van too much and set the power on the blue gelled Quadra in the back of the van. It only needed to be set just above minimum power to get a nice rich blue colour – any higher and the colour got paler.

Background light

That’s a bare Quadra head back there (no reflector) as I wanted light bouncing around in the van to fill in the shadows and the sheet of blue gel is held on with… chewing gum! Outside the van was a CTO gelled main light with a 30 degree grid spot in the standard reflector to keep it from overpowering the blue interior of the van. This light was moved quite a bit during the shoot to make sure it was aimed correctly and to maintain the flash-to-subject distance as the girls moved about the van.

And finally… the final images, one of which is to be used in an upcoming Marangoni/KwikFit flyer.

Working the CTO

Working the CTO

Another of my Adventures in Strobism, as originally posted on my Flickr photostream.

cto

Using info about creatively using a CTO gel on your flash by David Hobby aka The Strobist I decided to do a bit of Sunday morning experimentation.

What you have here is the same shot twice. The left is daylight white balanced and the right WB is set to Tungsten.

In the original shot the orange tinged flash (1.5CTO gel, 1/64 power, grid spot, camera right) illuminates the model wind turbine with a tungsten coloured glow. The overcast sky outside looks as it did when the shot was taken.

The image on the right shows the benefit of Mr Hobby’s advice: If you set the camera to Tungsten white balance, the colour temperature of everything in the frame is lowered. The warm orange light is cooled to bring it back to the colour of daylight while the already cooler sky is lowered to a deep blue.

Not the most exciting subject I’ll admit, but its a great effect and I can’t wait to try it properly. By underexposing, and using sufficient CTO, you can create that just after sunset look virtually anytime you like.