And, at least for me, they aren’t terribly hard to do.  To get some practice and work on my portfolio I recently shot one of my bosses’ daughter for her senior pics for really, really cheap compared to what a lot of seniors are paying these days.  So I took my camera (Canon Rebel XTI at the time), one flash (Vivitar 285HV) with stand and modifiers, my kit lens (18-55m f3.5-5.6) and the great little Canon 50mm f/1.8 (I need to get the equivalent of this lens for my D70s) and headed downtown with her and her mom for a few hours and the end result was some awesome pictures (well, I think they are awesome).

Here are a couple of my favorites from the shoot and a few details about them.

This one was done with the flash on camera right through an umbrella with a full CTO gel and my white balance set to Tungsten.  Such an awesome trick…I don’t know what I’d do without it.  I love how it warms one side of her, but quickly changes to a cool tint from the Tungsten WB as the light falls off across her face.  And with the sunglasses it kind of reminds me of a shot you’d see in Hollywood somewhere.

One of my photog friends showed me this alley one weekend when we were downtown scouting locations and I decided I just had to use it.  Unfortunately for me the sun wasn’t even close to shooting some light down this alley when we were doing the shoot.  No biggie, I can make my own sun.  I stuck my flash high and directly behind me on full power through an umbrella with a 1/2 (or maybe 3/4) CTO gel on it and viola!  Fake sun.  Very easy to do.  There were a few shots I did of her where I created the sun wherever I needed it.

This last one is probably my favorite from the whole shoot.  This was one of the poses she sent me that she liked so I decided to do my best to make it look good for her.  Again the setup on this one is so easy.  Flash through an umbrella on camera right, probably 1/4 or 1/2 power, slightly above and at the magical 45 degree angle.  That’s it.  So easy and look at the results.  I did soften this one up some and add the vignette for some effect, but overall it was a very easy image to create.

All of that with one light and some modifiers and diffusers.  That’s the Strobist way.  And for good reason – it works!  Easy and light to carry all around downtown with me and easy to setup and change when needed.  These senior pictures are much better than the ones I did for my brother back in August (these were taken in early November), but back then I was still learning flash, so most of his were just ambient light with a reflector.  One portable light makes so much difference.

If you haven’t taken the time to learn about off-camera lighting, now is the time to start.  It will change the way you think about photography, I promise!

The biggest problem for me was where the hell do I find black straws?  They are definately not the most common type of drinking straws to be found.  After asking a few friends I was led to Panera Bread, and, sure enough, there were my black drinking straws.  After grabbing a few handfuls of those I was ready to go!  I pretty much followed the tutorial above and ended up with 2 pretty good Grid Spots for my Nikon SB-24.  You can see pictures of my craftsmanship below.

This was after the first row was glued down.  You can see all of the little straw pieces in the background.  Probably the most tedious part was cutting up all of those straws.  I also decided after this one to not use Elmer’s glue anymore, leaves too much white residue.  I used some clear spray glue for the second one.

This was after I had finally gotten the height right, just time to fill in all the missing straws on the sides.  Almost done…

And the finished Grid Spot.  This one was about 2cm or 3/4 of an inch in length.  It produces a fairly focused beam of light.  You can see some test shots of it below.  I also made a 5cm (about 2 inches) one for an extremely small, focused beam.

And now for a few test shots of the finished product in action.  The first 2 show off the beams on the wall, and the last picture is just a quick test shot I did on myself with the 5cm Grid Spot.

(Nikon SB-24 @ 1/8 power. ~6-8 feet from wall, 24mm zoom. 2cm homemade grid box)

(Nikon SB-24 @ 1/8 power.  ~6-8 feet from wall, 24mm zoom. 5cm homemade grid box)

(and a quick test shot of me, just to see how it looks)

Not too bad for a few hours of arts and crafts and almost no cost to me.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try these out soon.  I have a few ideas I’d like to try…just need to get some people to practice on.  Any volunteers?

This one was also done on on my Canon Rebel XTI, shot in RAW, and using 5 exposures (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2) and done in Photomatix Pro.

This one is a shot through the fence right behind Mike’s apartment.  I love the bridge and the water and I really like the almost cartoony feel that this image has.

This one is from one of the stone paths we came across while wandering around the art museum.  I totally didn’t notice I managed to get one of the mowers in the shot.  If you ignore that part it’s a pretty nice pic IMO.

These were both done by shooting in RAW with my Canon Rebel XTI and then taking 5 different exposures (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2) into Photomatix and doing all of the HDR work there.