If every trip visiting New York City could begin with a rooftop headshot session I would be a happy man. In this case, it involved a pre-dawn drive from Raleigh that had me snapping pictures in the Upper West Side by 5PM. That evening light is a terrible thing to waste.

The lighting for a majority of the shots you see here is the typical portrait setup I have been using for a while now:

1. Main Light = Elinchrom Ranger in an Octabox (triggered w/ PowerST4)
2. Secondary Accent Light = SB-900 (triggered w/ Plus II)
3. FlexTT5 on camera

You might be looking at that setup saying to yourself, “hey, why not another FlexTT5 on that SB900?” Cause those triggers are expensive friend! And at the time, I only had enough for one… Luckily though, I have since upgraded to a second TT5 and an AC3 Zone Controller on camera and It Is GLORIOUS! No more running back and forth to the Nikon unit every time I want to change the power setting, making you look like a mad fool in front of the client… But for this shoot, Plus II with lots of running.

I brought both the 39-inch, deep octa and the 69-inch octa for this gig and to be honest, I rarely leave home without them. The majority of the close-ups are the smaller box while the wide, full length shots are, you guessed it, the larger one. As much as I like the flash shots, I am also curious as to how things would have turned out only using natural light and a reflector. Lots of great angles and textures up there to play around with. Other things I want to try/get/experiment with… more lights, grids, harder light, and edgier lighting setups. But for this straightforward headshot session, I figured I’d stick with soft light at 45 degrees + accent light. Hard to go wrong with that.

Now please enjoy a myriad of different looks from the day.

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