Use what your given

I was asked to shoot a flooring company that needed new pictures for a web site. Part of the job involved shooting different wood samples. Not the most exciting work I have done, but it isn't all beach weddings with crazy sunsets. I set up a SB-800 speedlite with an umbrella at a low angle to the ground. The umbrella was to soften the light and the angle was to try to keep the shiny wood from reflecting the flash. So after the wood it was time for some staff head shoots. This was all at a concrete tilt up in an industrial park in town so there wasn't a lot of natural beauty around to use as a backdrop. There was a lot of boxes of wood flooring and rolls of carpet and I decided to try to use the carpet out of the depth of field. In the front of the building there were offices with nicely painted walls but all the lighting was florescent. When shooting in florescent light you need to be careful that you don't end up with a green tent to your pictures. If you move your white balance to correct but then use a full flash your flash will look wrong unless you gel them to look lile florescent light also. The back of the building had skylights and a big open door so I had more natural light. I also had bigger distances. Because I wanted the background out of focus that meant I needed a bit of space between the subject and the background and all the offices were small. When shooting head shoots I try to use a 50mm prime or keep my zoom around 50mm. On a digital camera that crops the lens this gives you a film equivalent of 75mm. That is about the right look to my eye to not compress or stretch any part of a face. For this shoot I set up one SB-800 with a yellow gel to hit the rolls of carpet about thirty feet behind the subject. I did this because I had too many colors and the background would distract. I set up another SB-800 to hit the back of his head. This was to lightly outline him. Both flashes were about 5 feet high on light weight stands. I was controlling the flashes with the command function on my Nikon D300. I grabbed a roll if paper towels that was close by and set it on the roll of carpet that was in the for ground to fired off some test shoots. Once I had my light dialed in I had him come out and sit on the carpet. His time away from his desk? Maybe two minutes. This was a good chance for me to get a custom look in a less then ideal situation with very little time.