ASSIGNMENT: THE ARS NOVA QUARTET

Here I am again, with one more photo from an assignment; this time, a woodwind quartet. These four very young musicians are playing together since 2011 under the name of Ars Nova Quartet, and they needed a photo for an oncoming Festival participation: this is the final image, the rest of the story after the break.

Ars Nova Quartet, Istanbul 2012

For this shoot, we met on a Saturday at the Conservatoire where they study; I looked for a suitable place in the school's yard for the shooting, and found this wall with a sort of bas-relief that implied the modern feel of Ars Nova (New Art) compared to the alternative, a very old Ottoman wall. The wall offered the added bonus to be in the shade, though this was shrinking very quickly during the shoot, which caused some repositioning of the flashed as we went.

My purpose here was to give an evening, before-the-perfomance feel; therefore, I underexposed the ambient to the point of semi-darkness and used 2 Speedlights to lit the wall behind the group; these were positioned low and clamped on a chair behind the two musicians center frame. Then I added two more Speedlights left and right of the group, slightly behind them, to add some rim/hair light, and finally I lit them using two more Speedlights, one high camera right in a SB, one lower camera left for fill. All the lights were gelled, CTO for the main and fill, CTB for the background and rim, all controlled via PocketWizard MiniTT1, FlexTT5 & AC3; WB set to tungsten. We shot a few frames while setting the lights up, and once ready we had to deal with some camera-shyness and self-awareness on the kids side, which was quickly got rid of through some jokes and laughs; once they were comfortable, the final frame presented itself. Total time for the shoot, about one hour from walking in to walking out.

Now for the technical stuff (click to go to the related product page): the image above has been shot with a Nikon D3x, equipped with the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AF-S; lighting was provided by 6 Speedlights: 1 x SB-910 & 5 x SB-700, controlled by PocketWizard MiniTT1, FlexTT5 & AC3; for flash support, a Joby GorillaPod, 2x Manfrotto 5001B stand and 2 x Photoflex LS2214 8ft Stand have been used. Photos have been developed in Nikon Capture NX 2 and finished in Adobe Photoshop CS6.

Thank you for reading this far, and see you soon on the blog! Stay tuned for more...

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