I ‘m currently tasked with writing a mini “strobist” style lighting guide for a “local” magazine. At the same time I was asked to do a product review for some Nissin flashes and powerpack as well. They don’t have to ask me twice yo!

Red shirts & Blue jeans, straight out from the camera, at The Barebone Studio, yesterday …

To me, it’s a “back to basic” kind of experience. When I first started out doing commercial photography, all I have were a couple of Nikon SB-26s Speedlights, purchased used, one at a time, from proceeds from a few assignments. It was only a couple of years later that I can only afford to invest in some Bowens lighting gears (of which I still have and use them till today!)

Even tho I already using the Bowens for most of my commercial shoots, those SB-26 units , with it built-in sensor slave, were still handy in some tricky lighting situations, like when I was shooting interiors and I had to throw some back light onto some part of the scene but there’s no space for a studio monoblock. For some assignments that involving people, the small form factor and footprints of the said Speedlights unit were a God-send when I need to do a super qwik lighting set ups. Using my then Fujifilm S2 Pro DSLR camera preview screen as my “polaroid test”, once I sort out the composition, within 4~5 shuuter actuations later, I turn around and said to the said Client, “okey dapat gambar sudah!” and we concluded the shoot and went for a teh tarik session.

(Editor: *ahem* ACTUALLY what Ted meant to say is that couple with his on location lighting skills and compositions that were already pre determined by the Client, usually an Art/Creative director who accompanies the shoot, storyboard/moodboard , he delivers the required imagery/visuals that the Client needs, on time and within budget and still managed to inject his visual style to the said project. Go on, give him a call at +60122315654 or email him at tedadnan@gmail.com if you have an interesting photography/video project to be execute in a professional manner)

Once the article is published (all I can say is that it’s a local magazine with a regional presence. Eh, Mr Editor dewd, can I say that much? I’m not breaching Natioal Security or something isnt it?) I’m going to write a Bahasa Melayu version here in my blog, maybe I made it available as a downloadable PDF only version oso.

See how goes looorrr…..