Bill Leyden's Photog Blog

At the last minute, I decided to take a couple of extra flash units, a head light and a cart to photograph Wolfs Robe at Montezuma’s Castle in central Arizona. Although he said it might be dark and that no one had successfully shot a performance and captured the Indian ruins far in the background, I didn’t think that he meant, “Bill, it is going to be black out there!”

I loaded the cart and rolled 1/4 mile to the mini amphitheater and started to assess the situation. I decided to use every flash that I had brought with me. First, I set up two powerful flashes to light the ruins several hundred feet in the background: a Quantum and a Metz at what I hoped would be F5.6 (no metering here as the ruins are closed to the public. Then I set up two flashes on Wolf: a Canon 580 EX on a Pocketwizard flex TT5 with through-the-lens metering, and a second flash, the revered Vivitar 285 to his right and to the rear at 1/16 power. On the camera, I trigger the whole show with a Pocketwizard Flex TT1, 1/80 sec at F5.6.

The results out-of-the camera are shown below:

The head light? I used it to retrieve the two flashes that were 30 feet off the trail in the dark when the show was over.