Vicky and James

I shot a wedding recently with my able colleague Ken and we decided to stay late to make the most of the beautiful grounds of the Bowden Hall Hotel in Gloucester and try a 'twilight' shot of the bride and groom, Vicky and James.

Using Ken as my 'couple', I set up two 580EXll's on stands with brollies, one ten feet to the right and one to the left and slightly behind him.  I used the ST-E2 trigger and played with the ratio control until I got something I liked, roughly 2:1 in favour of the right-hand strobe.  Keeping the shutter speed on 200th sec (manual) I then played with the aperture until I got the background 'twilighty' enough.  The ST-E2 ably adjusted the flashes to illuminate the subject as I went along.

When I was happy with the look of the light, we rushed off to find the happy couple and plonked them into the shot, and fired away.  This meant they got a great picture with minimal hanging around, so they could go straight back to partying.

Avram Grant Lookalike Crazy Lenny

Again I used the ST-E2, this time employing two flashguns for the stereo lighting effect.  They were placed pretty much equidistant either side of my subject, side-on.  The ETTL made light work of the exposure, leaving me to decide how much lighting ratio to give to either side of the face, which, as you can see, ended up being 50/50.  Setting the ratio is ridiculously easy, involving a simple press of a button one way or the other depending where you want the most light.

I used no diffusion on either flash to give the 'hard light' effect.

I think it has the look of one of those football manager shots you see on the front of Four Four Two magazine.

You may disagree!