I first met Stacy-Ann in Rio during the Olympics. If you have heard me teach you have heard the story. I look back on the images now and would kill to have my Westcott FJ-400's for the images i shot with her in Rio but i digress. After 4 years of living within an hour of her she is onto a new adventure so we scheduled some time to shoot in the city. As always life gets in the way of living and you never get to shoot as much as you like but we were determined to get as much in ans we could. With me being a one man band 99% of the time i pack light and try to be flexible with my mods so that i can get different looks quickly.

Lately I've been carrying my 2 Light Fj-400 kit with the Medium Rapid Box Octa and the 1x 3 Strip. it's funny that i didn't consciously plan it this way but it happens to be the kit that Westcott sells together....(get it from a local store if you are thinking about it - small business owners need your support more than ever) We ended up taking our first shot at 4:38pm and our last at 6:19pm for a total of 101 minutes of shooting. During that time it rained twice. Once after we had walked to location. I'm not saying this in hopes you'll call me a wambulance. I'm just saying that for such a short shoot i'm very proud we managed a few different looks and different set ups within the looks....We started by walking out and around a couple corners till i saw the grafiti door and the purple flower door and i started to set up the lights... two seconds later the wind started hard and then the rain... we scurried back to the apartment and of course it stopped raining. We had a bit of roof access so we headed up there with the gear and again i got to the point where i had attached my Rapid Box Octa M to the Fj-400 and it started to rain again... We moved in the stairwell and i said - lets shoot while we wait...

That brings us to the set of images we shot in the stairwell - i used the medium Octa as my main light at the top of the stairs and then aimed a bare FJ-400 into the corner at camera left to blow out the walls and add some fill for really soft light....

All shots during this shoot were with the Sony A7rIV

Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art

4:38 - 4:32 PM

I checked outside and it had stopped but the sky still looked like it didn't know what it wanted to do... I set up the lights and grabbed a few of Stacy-Ann with the World Trade as the backdrop....

Sigma 135mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art

4:44 - 4:48 PM

The sky was not exactly what i wanted so i decided to go with the old standard and put Stacy-Ann against the bricks for a few before we would change outfits and location... 

Sigma 135mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art

4:51 - 5:00 PM

The rain seemed under control and even though i knew i could explore the rapidly changing sky we decided to do an outfit switch and go back to the street where we had first set up earlier. We were now fully starting to feel the weight of the clock on us - Stacy had a dinner planned... She switched into this dress and i set up some very simple lighting to try to maximize the time...As mentioned above the grafiti door and the the flower door were just inches apart... 

5:29 - 5:39 PM

We then moved the lights and Stacy to the street to the left of where i was shooting these... the dinner was at 7 with a 15 minute travel so we had less than an hour left and knew we wanted to get some shots in front of her building before she moves to the future.... so it was time to hustle a bit....

Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG DN Art

5:41 - 5:43 PM

Starting to do the "we gotta going" dance that is closely related to the peepee dance... I'm very anal about time and even though Stacy was pretty chill about it I didn't want to be the reason she was late....

We started walking back to the house and i saw a rough white wall on the corner and decided i could do a quick white background and then turn for a more edgy light off the same wall....

Same lens

5:50 - 5:52 PM

Home stretch now - I'm carrying the lights and the camera and the stands and the mods and rushing to her apartment so she can change into something that she will yet again look great in while i try to figure out how to get what I want with two lights.... 

She comes down and like always she looks super cool - i set up and we shoot some shots to say good bye to the door step....

6:11 - 6:19 PM

Great shoot - the lights were consistent. No misfires. That is all you can ask from pro gear... The camera and lenses did what they needed to do and Stacy just killed it.... 

101 Minutes from first shot to last....