Don't worry, I'm not being stuck in a niche, if you can call a niche being obsessed with taking pictures of people with guns. Guns are not surprisingly popular on Flickr and not just because the U.S. is a gun-crazy culture; Canadians are too. In the past month, Vancouver has been the absorbed with an ongoing gang war that has claimed dozens of lives in brazen hits including the life of a young mother this week. It has brought home the fact that criminality isn't just fantasy, it is very real.

On that sober note, let me note that these photos were taken at a gun safety (of sorts) course given to actors. None of these guns are real but I suppose one could note that we are perpetuating the fantasy of gun happiness through television and film. The other part of the course was how to hold these weapons to be believable or menacing. Before any of you actual gun owners send in corrections, please note that these photos were taken before they have had any training so any fault is mine. The best of these photos will end up on the marketing material for the instructor of this course -- a professional arms master and stunt coordinator.

Set up

As this was before an all-day class, I had only a limited time with about nine actors so any thought of complicated gelling, funky cross-lighting quickly gave way to getting the shot. The majority of these shots used my trusty Alien Bees B800 shot through the large Paul C. Buff large softbox. I set it up as a key about half-a-head higher than the model's head and then just positioned it for the height of the actor and farther back if I wanted a body shot.

Because I had the black-on-black problem (see the Challenges section), I wanted badly to have a proper background light. This did not work as well as I wanted because of A) not having a very good backdrop and B) having batteries quickly die on me due to the pressures of the shoot timing. In any case, having some background light was still better than not having one at all.

In addition to the Key and Background Light, I chose at various times to switch in a Fill (speedlight against or through a white umbrella), rim lights, and even put lights into the shot for their cheesy / catchy flares.

Challenges - backdrop, speedlights vs monolights, the ever expanding monster shoot

One idea that was quickly thrown aside was trying to gel the background. I had decided the night before that I wouldn't be dragging my seamless paper background to the location. Instead, we relied on a foldable cloth backdrop -- something I would not recommend based upon this experience. It was not that it had creases and folds -- I actually liked some of that texture in the background -- it was that the cloth was not very reflective at all and so my background flash suffered. Even with the background flash at full-power, I would have had to drop my aperture all the way to f/2.8 to get it to really show up. With some of the group shots (that you may have seen in this post), shooting wide open would have meant some of the rear actors would be partly out of focus. In contrast, paper seamless is quite reflective and picks up strobes very well and also gels. Another factor that might have weighed in my favour is that my best seamless is storm grey and so I would have avoided the black-on-black problem.

Of course the moment you tell someone that they should dress like they are going to be in a movie or TV show that will involve guns, everyone shows up in black or dark clothing. White is the colour you wear when you are shot (red on white contrast) but if you are the shooter well, that means black trenchcoats and leather, right?

Actual shot issues aside, I want to put it out there that the moment someone tells you that you are going to be shooting three people (but that the number might change) you have to assume that it will be more. In this case, I was told three and the number kept rising (I believe it was nine individuals and three groups in two hours). I'm going to say just for all of you who seldom do groups: bring the batteries and live with inconsistency. Speedlights will not be able to keep up to your bang-bang monolight. In a pressured atmosphere, it is very difficult to ask your model to hold a pose. All they are seeing is the big light going off; they don't see what you see which is every other light behind them going on and off like Christmas lights.

My set

I'll be filling up this Flickr set with more as I continue editing.

This report is continued in Double Gun Action: Some More Gun Workshop Shots.