On Sunday I met with some Düsseldorf friends to practice lighting scenarios. Sven & Manfred had arrange a couple of great models and we had tons of fun.

Since we were too many photographers for Sven’s studio we broke up in two groups. One stayed in the studio with Tina and the other went to an abandoned building with Alexander. Alexander is a great model and he entertained us with good music. It was a pleasure to work with him and I just hope he had at least half as much fun as we did.

I had brought my small flashes and umbrellas so I joined the second group. I am an fan of the amazing Joe McNally and always wanted to do this kind of shooting. Here are some of my best pics of the day.

I set up a flash with a snoot and a CTO gel to get some hard light focused on Alexander only and set up the White Balance to Tungsten to make the background go blue. I also let the ambient light drop a stop or two in relation to the flash.

First we started with some posing and I took the chance to make some close portraits with the 85mm 1.8

And then the performance started. One musician and 5 photographers dancing around him. It was amazing.

I tried to capture the magic of the drumming but I am afraid I didn’t totally manage.

After the first half of the concert we let Alexander take a break, protect himsef from hypothermia and have a smoke.

As I was editing this image I thought “What does make a picture interesting, the light or the shadows?” and today I my RSS feeder gave me this answer from Rick Sammon: Light Illuminates; Shadow defines. Well, maybe not…

… or, maybe yes.

You can see more of the session on Barbara’s and on Sven’s blogs.