Someone asked how I created my birthday shot so I figured I'd post here to give everyone a chance to see.If you're not sure what photo I'm talking about, it's this one:
Since I only have 3 lights, lighting an entire set would be difficult, especially when I'm trying to isolate each of the subjects with their own lighting to help pull focus to them. Because of this I decided to shoot each individually.
NOTE: If you are going to do this, shoot on a tripod and don't move it at all!
First I took a base exposure, with a AB800 in a Beauty Dish just left of camera. This image will be my bottom layer and will allow me to layer the subject photos above it:
Subject 1: Firefighter
Beauty Dish camera left (fill)
ABRingflash left of subject (in shot)
Subject 2: Birthday Girl/Chef
Beauty Dish camera left (fill)
ABRingflash Right of subject (in shot)
Subject 3: Drunk Dad
Beauty Dish Camera Left (fill)
ABRingflash right of subject (in shot)
Confetti
Beauty Dish Camera Left (fill)
Those are the main exposures I used. Of course I shot many of each so I could pick the best, and I stole smoke from some of the others to make the oven look better. In Photoshop I layered each of these on top of another, and then used layer masks to erase parts of each image that hid the subject below it. Here is the image without any color correction done: