By Jaren Wilkey/BYU Photo
This year we tried to create a really unique image for the annual "Christmas Around the World" Concert with the BYU Folk Dancers Company. We wanted to shoot directly down on a group of dancers with some fog and lots of different colored lights. The best way to do this was to attach our camera to a lighting bar directly above the stage and take it up 20 feet above the dancers.
The lighting setup - click for larger
Mark triggered the camera with a Pocket Wizard Remote and the camera was connected to our iPad's Shuttersnitch app with Canon's WFT wireless transmitter. The transmitter is set up to send jpgs to the iPad after each shot it taken. This way we could see the images as they were being shot and make adjustments to the dancers and the lighting scheme.
Using the iPad with Shuttersnitch
For lighting we used two medium soft boxes on the top and bottom of the stage to provide light to some of the faces. Then we put a gelled light lying down flat on the floor at each corner of the frame that would light up the fog and also provide kick some light onto the dancers. We relied on the theatre for their heavy duty dry ice fog machines, one on each side of the stage to provide the massive fog bank that made the photo work so well.
Setup in action - click for larger
We are really pleased with how everything turned out, check out the final image below:
The final image - Canon 1D-X, 38 mm, 1/200 Sec, F/10, 400 ISO - Photo by Mark A. Philbrick/BYU
