See how to leverage a transceiver speedlight for maximum flexibility of your lighting on location. When you’re in a setting like a bar, you can either use an on-camera flash that bounces light off the wall, or you could use off-camera flashes on raised stands with nice modifiers. When we did this Jessica Rabbit themed bar shoot, we only had 30 minutes to setup, complete the shoot and tear everything down. This means we didn’t have the time to perfection our off-camera lighting as much as we would usually do.

We kept it as simple as possible with at least two lights. We opted to use an octabox for the main light, which was equipped with a speed light set at 1/16th. For the rim light we fired a speedlight through a Rouge Grid. The grid was used to ensure the light didn’t spill on the furniture inside of the bar. In an optimal situation, a third light would have been used, but there wasn’t enough time.

As a third light, Michael used a Mitros+ speedlight, a transceiver flash that can contribute to the exposure and also control the off camera light (http://goo.gl/b1Yteu). On the flash he used a little DIY gobo that shielded the on-camera flashlight so the light didn’t hit the model directly. This gobo was inspired by Neil van Niekerk’s “Black Foamie Thing”, an awesome concept.
In order to bring the bar to life for these shots, Michael swiveled the flash head towards the bar to add some brightness and sparkle.
The additional on-camera light can be used to bounce light off of reflective objects. Michael gave the model extra fill-light in her shadows by turning the flash to bounce off a vase and a fruit bowl as well as the back of the bar where the liquor bottles were.

With a similar approach he shot directly into the rim light from behind the model. In order to do this, Michael turned the flash to glasses that were standing on the bar, which acted as the main light in this case.