A photoshoot in a car park

The plan was to do a fashion photoshoot with coloured flashlights at an outdoors location. However, the weather forecast predicted rainfall. Therefore, we decided to do the shoot in a car park instead. The links in this blog post are affiliate links. When you buy something via these links then I get a small provision - however that does not cause you any additional cost.

One of the final photos

This is one of the final photos. In the background, you can see a red flash and a blue flash. The coloured flashlights cause reflections on the floor, which look pretty nice.

Flash equipment

At the end of this article you can find a list of all the equipment and where to get it. To create this photo, I used portable studio flash equipment. I used the ELB 500 TTL Dual to go Set.

This includes a battery pack so that no electrical connection is required.

I placed one of the flashlights on the left side in front of the model and equipped it with an Elinchrom Rotalux Octabox 135 cm. The octabox requires a Rotalux Speedring, which has to be ordered additionally. For mounting the speedring on an ELB 500 flashlight, you also need an adapter. Furthermore, you need a lamp tripod not included in the ELB 500 TTL Dual to go Set. I used a Walimex Pro WT-806. It was windy in the car park, so I placed three sandbags on the lamp tripod to prevent the wind from smashing my octabox. I recommend sandbags from California Sunbounce. Moreover, you need a transmitter for firing the flashlight. I am using a Skyport Transmitter PRO for CANON.

I placed two Canon 430EX III-RT Speedlites in the background. I mounted each Speedlite on an EL-Skyport Receiver PLUS. This allows me to fire the Speedlites with the Skyport Transmitter. I placed each Speedlite on a Walimex Pro WT-803 lamp tripod. For making the flashlights coloured, I used coloured filters from AODELAN.

The making of

This picture illustrates what the scene looked like. I also placed my second ELB 500 flashlight on the right side behind the model to create the second picture. I equipped this flashlight with a reflector included in the ELB 500 TTL Dual to go Set. This flashlight was my hair light. For connecting the second flashlight to my battery pack, I needed an extension cable. In the ‘making of’ picture, you can barely see the Speedlites in the background. So, I am providing a lighting diagram here:

Camera body and lens

For this photoshoot I used a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. If you don't want to spend that much money, you can use an EOS 850D or an EOS 90D instead. The lens was a Canon EF 135mm F2.0L USM. This lens allows me to blur the background very well.

The final photo

For this photo, I set the camera to manual mode. I put the aperture value to 2.8 and the shutter speed to 1/200. The ISO value was 100. How did I figure out these parameters? First, I set the camera to aperture priority and chose the value 2.8. To check, I did a test photo without enabling the flashlights. Then I set the shutter speed to a shorter value than the previous picture to darken the background. The flashlight was then activated in front of the model, followed by the flashlight behind the model and the coloured flashlights in the background. Those flashlights were set to manual mode and 1/16.

More fashion photos

You can find additional fashion photos in my fashion photo gallery.

Summary of the equipment