Ryan Brenizer likes challenges. He lives in NYC. That’s challenging. As a journalist he covered among others, the last three presidents. That’s challenging. And he’s a wedding and portrait photographer, which can be extremely challenging.
Brenizer appreciates photo gear that works under challenging circumstances, and if the gear is smaller and lighter than the competition, so much the better. Not surprisingly Brenizer fell in love with the B2 Off-Camera Flash the moment he first saw it.
In a bid to see how quickly he could capture a bold portrait of his models on an unseasonably cold afternoon in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, Ryan and Tatiana Breslow, his soon-to-be-bride & business partner (and a terrific wedding photographer in her own right) coupled one of Profoto’s new OCF Light Shaping Tools – an OCF Softbox 2×3′ onto a B2 Head.
Truly compact and easy to use on the fly, Tatiana did away with a light stand altogether and hand-held the B2 Head for maximum speed and mobility.
Shooting at the wide end of a Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 DG HSM II zoom lens on a Nikon D810 camera, Ryan positioned his couple on either side of a low-angle sun that popped in and out of the clouds. Setting the lens to f/14 guaranteed near-infinite focus and turned the sun into graphically-pleasing six-sided star.
Shooting tripod-mounted at ISO 64, f/14 at 1/250th-second in TTL mode, Tatiana stood off to the side and hand-held the B2 Head about 3′ from the model on the left. She then switched sides and lit the other model from the same distance, both times with the B2 set to just under full-power. By doing this little two-step they were able to create a light source that seemingly reflected the sun’s rays, when in reality they were coming from behind.
Tatiana, who was visible off to the side in both images, was easily eliminated from the scene post-capture in Photoshop. “The whole process took two minutes to shoot and was easy to piece together post-capture,” she says.
THE GEAR
Icon 1 x B2 Off-Camera Flash
Icon 1 x OCF Softbox 2x3'
Icon 1 x OCF Speedring
Icon 1 x Air Remote TTL-N