The Andy Aupperlee Explosion 5000

Atlas Clothing, a stylish vintage threads shop in Capitol Hill, hosted their one year anniversary party at Sole Repair Shop. The evening was replete with a full bar, hip guest list, runway fashion show and a photo booth. Julie Harmsen, the photographer shooting all the promotional and event imagery for the party, asked if I could lend an extra lens or two and help document the evening. As I had recently acquired some new lighting equipment, I offered up the idea of building a photo booth to capture the oh-so-debonair party goers.

Julie and I had several discussions about what we’d like to do photographically, and to pull it off I needed nearly every piece of lighting and grip equipment I owned. I arrived at the space around 5:30, about an hour and a half before the start of the event. Julie already had my “Strobist” kit setup to get some pre-show photographs of the models. The Strobist kit consists of lightweight flashes, stands and umbrellas—essentially the kit I used to photograph this busted lens. Inspired by the website for which it is named, the Strobist kit offers portable, quality off-camera lighting solutions for almost any situation. Check out Julie’s shots here—they turned out great.

While Julie photographed the models, I began building the photo booth on the second level of the space. I hung a nine-foot white seamless background and setup two Bowens Gemini 500 watt-second monolights. The plan was to setup the photo booth with a large softbox and beauty dish. I also hit the background with an SB-800 to add a little flare. Check out this behind the scenes shot on Flickr for details. For the fashion show, I’d move one of the lights to the runway, swap the beauty dish for a grid, and use it as a high-powered, off-camera flash to capture the models.

Since it was pretty dark during setup, I attached a 60 degree reflector to one of the lights and turned on the modeling lamp so I could see what I was doing. The event’s producer, Bethany Papenbrock, saw the lamp and immediately had an idea. In addition to using the monolight as a strobe, she asked if we could leave the modeling lamp on so it would act as an additional spotlight on the models walking the first floor runway. As the show was only scheduled to be 10-15 minutes long, I wasn’t too worried about heating up the grid—although it did get a little toasty.

With the gridded strobe/spotlight in place on the second floor, I consulted with Bethany and dialed in the optimal angle and power. By taking incident meter readings from where the models would pose, I found that with the strobe at half power I could shoot at f/4.5, 1/250th of a second and ISO 200. During the show, I mingled with the guests on the main floor, pointed my lens and triggered the second floor strobe via a pair PocketWizard Plus IIs. The directional light gave me a nice contrasty look. Thanks to the inverse square law and the distance the strobe was from the models, the light did not fall off too much from the foreground to the background walls. The wood paneling at the Sole Repair Shop really tied in quite handsomely with the whole “Mad Men” motif.

For the rest of the evening, Julie and I traded spots running the photo booth and encouraging antics. There is nothing like taking schwills of PBR and blasting 1100 watt seconds at party guests. Even Andy Fitts of The Banyans showed up to get in on the fun.

What impressed me most about the evening was the collection of talented people that came together to pull it off. Producing, photographing, styling and hosting a fashion show/party is no easy task. Big props to the folks from Atlas, the stylists, the models, the bar staff, Bethany and my photog pal Julie for getting this thing together. It was a privilege to shoot and hang out with yall! To check out more photos, head over to Flickr, or watch the slideshow below. Also, if this whole photo booth thing looks like something you’d like at your party, give me a holler at andy@explosion5000.com.