Big City House @ W Lounge
May 10th, 2009
My good DJ friend Josh Max celebrated his birthday in style with a Big City House night at W Lounge, a small but very cool club in Salt Lake City. Josh was on the Knobtweakers lineup, so I had the privilege of hearing his DJ sets almost weekly while we were working together. He is an encyclopedia of music knowledge, and a damn good house DJ. He’s been doin’ the house gangsta thing with Karen (Kinetic) and Dan Dixon on the Big City House roster for a while. I try to support them all when I can.
As this was a pretty informal photo shoot with friends, and not a professional gig, I kept my equipment light. I got the rim lights (outline) you see in the shots above by mounting a small SB-600 strobe camera left, near the back of the DJ booth. You can actually see the flash in-frame in the second image, to get a good idea of the exact placement.
I hand-held another SB-600 flash and triggered both with the built-in Nikon CLS infra red lighting system. If you own a Nikon better than a D70 (D80, D90, D300, etc…) you have the same capability. Look for commander mode in the manual for details. I use CLS all the time, because I love having control over the flash power from the camera. I set the flashes to manual settings, and I frequently change the settings depending on the circumstances. It’s very handy to be able to mount a flash to a lighting rig and adjust the power right from the camera. Nikon speedlights can also shoot in TTL using CLS, but I prefer to know what power my flash is firing at so I can control it more precisely.