Sometimes I just don't feel like carrying heavy and sturdy light stands with me with all the umbrellas and softboxes. Sometimes it feels like my 30D with battery-grip is enough for me to carry. So what is a better idea than to get a light stand that is light, small and portable? Especially when I go out with kids it is nice to have something small instead of big and heavy because then it's easy to position the stand in the right location and fire up your camera. Ofcourse you will have to re-locate your strobe every once in a while but the idea is to have the strobe in one place and let the kids do their thing while you shoot.
My point today was exatly that. When my younger daughter Adele wanted to go out to do her street art, I decided to grab my portable light stand and shoot her with bare strobe (don't worry, I didn't really shoot her). I wanted to get better-than-out-of-your-little-camera pictures of her and using off-camera strobe is the way to go. Besides, shooting with bare strobe without all the umbrellas and softboxes minimizes the chance of being seen crazy in my neighbors' eyes.
I have two light stands. One is big and sturdy but it comes with a price of being heavy. Another one is cheap and light which works just fine if you shoot without umbrella. With umbrella this stand will not stand for long on even smallest wind. Up until now I always had a tendency to grab my heavier stand.
This evening we had a beautiful sun and thus I set my shutter speed to 1/250s and the ambient light got correctly exposed at f/7.1 so I set my flash either to 1/2 or 1/4 power, whichever exposed my daughter best. It all depended on where I placed my strobe in relation to her. Mostly I tried to do cross-lighting, having the strobe light coming on 180 degrees in relation to the sun.
Few times I under-exposed the background to bring in the flash on her little more. This in turn gave the pictures a more of a 3D effect.
Even though most of the time Adele wanted to draw on the street and other things she usually likes to do outdoors, she asked me few times to take a portrait of her. I just couldn't resist and perhaps the outcome was the best shot of her tonight...
The idea of using small stands and bare strobes came from Brent Williamson, a father in New Zealand who also loves to photograph his kids.
