lighting demo: ring light & softbox

In what i hope to have as a continuing series I wanted to share more examples of images captured with one - two lights. Today I broke out my handy Westcott Apollo 28 flash kit plus the Orbis Ring Flash to experiment with some portraits.Starting with the Orbis Ring Flash on a Nikon SB-600 flash. I used the commander mode in my Nikon D700 to trigger the flash. These first two images were captured by shooting through the ring flash. Camera settings: ISO 100, f/3.5, 1/160, the flash was set to TTL.Then we moved to a soft box setup. Now for portability the Westcott rigs are perfect. I can throw this in a relatively small gear bag that also holds a few umbrellas and two light stands. My go to when I want softer light, in a one light setup is the Westcott Apollo 28 flash kitThis first image is lit from camera left, at about a 45 degree angle. At this point I'd moved the light into manual control, and reduced the flash output by .7 of a stop. My goal was a softer, more low key light. Still at ISO 100, my f-stop went to f2.8 and my shutter speed at 1/125.With a suggestion of my friend Amber. We raised the light, and added a white card, under the chin to create this. No changes in camera settings here, this is just about playing with the light and adding a kicker.And we rounded out the session when my friend Colby decided to pose for us a bit… To this setup we had a Nikon Sb800 with no modifier behind his head. This was down about 1 stop from full power, to add just a bit of rim lighting.First rather serious:Then we got silly:If only he was an expressive soul…All of the images were tethered via the Tether Tools Tethering Cable with a Jerkstopper to keep things in place, to a Macbook Air into Lightroom 4, yes, you heard me, Lightroom 4, hahaha…All of the images were edited a bit, to do lens correction and had a bit of contrast. My goal with lighting, is to get it as close as I can in camera. By doing this, I've already been able to quickly edit and send copies of images to those who were willing to be in front of the lens. And a blog post to boot…How did you spend your sunday?~ kate