No, I haven’t quit google to work for a Mexican drug cartel.

This is an outtake from a photo shoot.

Mike invited me along to help him photograph the Mountain View S.W.A.T. team. We were to attend a live-fire exercise to get shots of the guys in their full tactical gear; the deliverables would be used for trading cards that they hand out to kids and as promotional material.

The conditions were pretty tough. We were in the open air, in the blazing sun. Going natural light alone would have meant high contrast and dark shadows. It took a lot of faffing around we settled on something we were happy with:

We clamped a 4ft diffusion panel to some 7ft stands, to act as a sun shade. We then had my ABR800 camera right as the main light and a bare 430exII off left for fill. To get a good exposure we were at about f/16 with the strobes providing 50% of the light. To get a nice bit of background blur, we stuck on my 3-stop ND filter to give us f/5.6. Not too shabby.

The guys were all really nice (I admit to being a little surprised…) and in good spirits (amazing, considering they were wearing heavy gear and the temperature was around 95F). Unfortunately, due to range rules, we were not allowed to take any photos of their actual exercises; it’d have been fun to photograph them shooting from moving vehicles.

I’ll hopefully upload some of the actual photos soon, I’m just waiting for permission.