Pink Ribbon Party - Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Not A Triumph Of Artistic Effort: It's simple shot when one has the bare minimum of equipment and enough time to execute the shot. If you hadn't guessed, it has been augmented by flash. Need proof?

Here is essentially the same shot without flash. I can tell from your collective gasp that you were surprised by how much the image depended on a speedlight or two. Here's what went down.

Placing The Key Light: I arrived on the "set" with a notion that i wanted to include the breast exam van, and when I found that it had a large graphic on the side, I decided that I would include as much as possible. As luck would have it, the morning sun arrived at an angle, putting the side of the van in shadow, while the open door was partially front lit.  There would be something of a balancing act to prevent the sunlit highlights from being overexposed beyond recognition while applying enough light to bring detail to the shadows. I went back to my car and retrieved a Flashpoint Nano light stand and used it to raise my key speedlight to a height of about six feet off the ground and positioned just out of the frame. Since I was in an area with limited foot traffic, I felt the stand's placement would not present a safety hazard. The speedlight defaults to an A-Channel, Group 1 setting, the same setting to my radio flash trigger. And while the flash to subject distance wasn't recorded, it was less than to the camera-to-subject distance of the final shot. I made the shot from a low crouch position.

Now I was getting close, but the cigar wasn't within sight. I intentionally aimed the flash head at the door, as I planned to position my subjects around the short stairway. I could see that the flash was definitely adding some shape to my subjects faces, but the shadow area wasn't bright enough to match the sunlit portions at the right of the frame. 

Second Flash: This was almost a Hail Mary move, but I fished out my second flash, a Flashpoint/Godox like my key light. It too was set to Channel A   Group 1, so I now had a second full-power flash at my disposal. I knew that if the output of this fill light was too much, I could decrease its output by covering a portion of the flash head with my hand. As it turned out, I needed all the light the fill flash could give me.

Light Is Additive: In this cropped portion of the final image, you can see that the second light filled in the shadows nicely while helping the Key Light brighten things up a bit. And as frosting on the cake, that fill light brought the graphic on the side of the van to life. By holding the fill light close to the lens axis, there is no indication of a secondary shadow.

Speaking Of Equipment...In past posts I have mentioned that occasionally Murphy's Law will hijack the situation and leave you unable to complete the assignment. To address this,  I always carry at least two of everything in case of a mechanical failure. In the case of my speedlights, they were pre-set to respond to the dedicated shoe-mounted radio controller. Either flash will function on-camera or as an off-camera remote right out of the bag. This allowed the nearly instant application of a second flash when it appeared the photo was about to go south.