A couple weeks ago I was in New York City attending the yearly Photo Plus Expo and conference. Having visited the city a few years ago, I knew I wanted to spend some time this trip wandering the streets shooting street style images. The city has a great pulse making it feel very alive with so many different people and cultures. Most of the photos were shot with my Fuji x100s and a few with my Canon 5D mark III and an 85mm. Here are my favorite shots from the trip. Thanks for looking.
Matt
Here is a quick portrait I shot of our dog Oscar last week. I shot this while testing out one of Elinchrom’s new DRX One strobes. If you aren’t familiar with this light, it is a new 100ws compact monolight from Elinchrom. It has about twice the power of say a Canon or Nikon Speedlite. The great thing about it that it is smaller, lighter, and much more compact that the other Elinchrom monolights I own. Its easy to travel with without taking up a lot of space in cases. The 100ws worth of power put out by this light is plenty for an indoor portrait for example. It also can also be powered down low enough level to let you shoot at much faster apertures with strobe lighting. So far its been a great addition to my lighting gear. Oh and the best part is it only costs about $225.00.
Canon 1D mkIV 85mm 1/160 F/8
Elinchrom DRX One
Lighting Set Up
A couple of weeks ago, my friend and fellow photographer, Matt Becker, helped me shoot some new work for my portfolio. I wanted to create a composite photograph of a cyclist (Coming Soon) and Matt was the perfect subject. Lets just say he puts quite a few miles on his bike each year. After we had finished shooting the frames that will be used for the composite, I wanted to shoot a quick portrait.
Canon 5d Mark III – 1/160 f1.8 3-stop ND filter
I used a three light set up consisting of two Elinchrom 600 Rxs with Creative Light 1×4’ strip boxes and an Elinchrom 500 BXRI with a Creative Light 5’ Octa.
The strip boxes were placed on each side and slightly behind Matt, creating a highlight on each side of his face. The octa was boomed above and slightly in front of Matt. Matt held a white reflector about stomach hight to help bounce some fill light under his chin. I really wanted to isolate his eyes in the shot so I put a 0.9 (3 Stop) ND filter on the lens allowing me to open up my Canon 85mm to its fastest aperture which is f1.8. This is a great way to make the eyes pop. After a few tweaks of the power of the lights, we shot away and ended up with a pretty cool simple portrait. Thanks for looking.
Matt
Matt Ludtke | Photography Blog 