VOGUE inspired shoot with MAGMOD

Wedding photos made AWESOME with MagMod!

 For this wedding, my second shooter and I decided that we would do a vogue inspired composite shot for the bride and her bridesmaids. 

 The idea is to light each of them with my MagBox 24" Octa individually and composite all 7 images back into the same, final image. This gives me the ability to get really close to each person and have the ability to shape the light hitting them in a way that wouldn’t be possible if I were to light them from afar. 

 BTS view of making a composite image

For the technical aspect of this shot, I used a 24mm lens at f/7.1 to ensure they were all in focus (since they weren’t all on the same focal plane.) My shutter speed was at 1/125 sec. and my ISO was at 100 to prevent noise from coming into the image in post. This is also important since I would be recovering shadows while compositing the image together. 

I used the MagBox 24" Octa with and the fabric diffuser, with a speedlight at 1/32 power to get nice, soft light on them.

(You could use something like the MagSphere and Grid as well to get more controlled light, with a slightly different look!)

FINAL RESULTING IMAGE

 

 Some tips if you’re interested in shooting a bridal party composite:
  1. You DO NOT need a tripod! This wasn’t shot with a tripod. When you bring the images into photoshop, you can use the align layers tool and photoshop will act as a digital tripod and align the images for you!
  2. Make sure you try and light everyone from the same side to show some consistency in your light! You want it to look like it was taken by a large light source, and lighting from the same side is the easiest way to do this!

 

 

For this next image, I used High Speed Sync (aka: HSS) and my MagBox in order to erase the distractions from my backgrounds. I enjoy using this technique when I don’t have much space, or beautiful backgrounds to work with!

Less than ideal backgrounds vanish with a little creativity and MagMod!

  The idea behind HSS is to give you the ability to override the shutter sync speed limitation when using off camera flash. When using Off-Camera Flash, your shutter speed is the most direct control of your ambient light. With HSS enabled, I can bring my shutter speed up to 1/8000 and get rid of that messy background you see in above the BTS shot!

 Since the shoes were sitting on a mirror, I placed my MagBox with the Fabric Diffuser directly on top of the shoes in order to create a nice reflection from the mirror:

Gear and Settings for above 2 photos:
Nikon D850 and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART
 MagBox with an AD200 at 1/32 power

f/1.6 1/8000 sec. ISO 64

  

Esteban Gil is a Connecticut based wedding photographer, educator, and MagMod Ambassador based in Guilford, CT, USA.
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