Had the opportunity today to take advantage of our (recently rare) warmer weather and head out east of Denver to a private hunting club with Dave and a couple of friends to do some bird hunting.  Well, actually, Dave and I were there to get some pictures of his co-worker, Riz, and another friend, Earl.  I was hoping to try out my new “Boom Box” (a softbox on a stick, a la Syl Arena) but the terrain and harsh lighting conditions made me reach for the “Boom Stick” instead (this is two 580EXII’s on a monopod, a la Ed Pingol).  I’ve got to do a post about these soon…

Anyway, those are Earl’s dogs – Junior and Sassy – above.  For this one, I had Dave hold the boom stick about shoulder level from hard camera left (flashes were both set to 1/8th power, which made the whole unit act like one flash at 1/4 power.  Sun was the main light from over my right shoulder, but the flash just flicked a little light into Junior’s eyes and brought out some neat color in the pheasant feathers…

Here’s Earl with the two of them before we headed out:

This time the sun was behind them to camera-right, and again I had Dave hold the Boom Stick to the left to cross light them.  This kept them from going to a totally dark silhouette and gave nice catchlights in the dogs’ eyes.

Now for an action shot.  I swear I didn’t see the feathers flying until after I had snapped off three frames but there’s no doubt at all that Riz has a great eye.

I was following Riz, trying to stay behind and to his right, while Dave took the lights behind and to his left.  The idea was again to setup a nice crosslit zone on him when any action happened.  Here, though, the bird popped up so quick that I dropped to a squat, aimed and fired without checking where Dave was.  I honestly have no idea if the flash is contributing to this exposure or not, and I was far enough away here that I doubt it, but the shot worked out so I was happy.

We did catch up to Riz by the time the dog brought the bird back so I was able to get a nice celebratory portrait:

Again, sun’s off the right, so Dave brought the flash around to my left to just give a bit of fill on Riz so the whole left side of him didn’t go black in the harsh light.

For this one, I asked Dave to hide behind the tree trunk to the left and use the flash to give a nice rim light on Riz.  This really helps pop him off the background and keep him from getting totally lost in the trees.  Really didn’t take too long either, so we weren’t in the way of his hunt too much.  Think we stopped here for maybe 30 seconds before moving on…

After Riz dropped a chuckar, we worked on another celebratory portrait.  The sun was giving us all kinds of crappy harsh light from behind and camera-right, so we balanced with the Boom Stick off to camera-right but just in front of him for fill.  This keeps the shadows (for some drama in the portrait), but again keeps his right side from going black in the exposure.

Finally, one more of Sassy bringing a pheasant back in.

This was actually just before the shot of Junior and Sassy at the top of the post. Dave and I had gone down different sides of a large brush patch, trying to get good light on Riz if he got a shot (again, I was following Riz while Dave was trying to get an angle with the light).  Didn’t work out for a good shot of Riz – the birds just popped up before either of us could get into a good position.  However, Riz is quick and a good shot so there was a still a picture to be made when Sassy came back.

I really had a great time out there today – got a good walk in, made some pretty decent pictures, and had a blast driving down the muddy roads to get where we were.  Don’t think the Highlander has ever been that dirty.   The Boom Stick is a great piece of gear and was a nice choice for this environment – we could move fairly rapidly and it didn’t stop Dave from taking some of his own pictures, though he was running handheld with his super-wide most of the afternoon.  If we’d tried to lug the Boom Box out here, we’d have had a hard time moving it through the brush.