Canteen Queen

I thought this week I would dive into the archive and walk you through my thinking on this pic.

Canon EOS 7D 1/85 sec f7.1 ISO 400. Canon 15mm f2.5

The shot was taken for The Advocate Newspaper to illustrate a story about a visit to a local high school by Masterchef finalists Andy Allen and Ben Milbourne (Ben is a former teacher at the school).

I knew the school had a canteen lady (the lovely Anita White) that had been there "forever", so my concept was to show the "new kids on the block" being amazed by her culinary wizardry.

The setup is deceptively simple (it had to be as I had very little in the way of equipment). First I selected a shutter speed that would let me pick up the ambient light to make it obvious we were in a school canteen and so the subjects weren't just black shapes. Next was the placement of a Canon 550EX speedlight inside the pot (flash output was adjusted manually), fitted with a Cactus V5 radio trigger (supplied from home as it wasn't part of the Advocate kit). The flash head was purposely aimed up into the curved lid of the pot. The theory being that the light would spill out evenly around the pot. 

I re-arranged some of the items on the counter to add foreground interest, but more importantly, to act as a reflector to bounce light back on to the subjects' faces (you will notice that no light from the flash hits their faces directly).

A simple one-light setup that adds a little "magic" to what could have been a pretty mundane pic.

Until next week. Happy shooting.