The only thing I knew about this picture of three young Kempo black belts was that it would require some kind of lighting effect. I didn't know for sure if there was going to be one person or three people, their ages or their heights, but I did know that I'd be doing the picture in a school gymnasium or somewhere close to it, so it would need lighting to give it a bit of punch.

Kempo black belts
Having been in this particular gym once before I thought I remembered there being climbing bars on all the walls, so I had planned to set-up the shot in a nearby corridor with a brick wall as a background. Luckily when I arrived at the gym I found that there was in fact one brick wall that I could use, although there was some chalk graffiti that I needed to clean off first.

The lighting set-up was as simple as it looks: My new Vivitar 285HV with a CTO (orange) gel on a light stand pointing at the wall, and a Canon 550EX fired into a silver brolly about eight feet high and six feet from the subjects, to camera left. Both flashes on manual power settings and fired by Pocket Wizards.

I had arrived early so I had about half an hour to set-up and do test shots, then I marked the floor with tape to show where the light stands should go and moved them out of the way until it was time to do the picture.

We quickly ran through a variety of 'safe' poses before trying the arms-folded one for a bit of attitude. That was the pose I had envisioned all along for a group of three, and the final image is exactly what I had planned the day before, so you see: Some shoots do go according to plan!

Here's a wide view of the lighting set-up:

Lighting set-up