Every once in a while, my colleagues from the company that I currently work for ask me to bring my camera to take some snaps of some event that takes place at our site, mostly speeches, presentations, get-togethers, you get the idea. Even though I am not a big fan of documentary style pictures, I jump on the occasion whenever I can. The downside is, and I guess I am hurting nobody’s feelings here, that these pictures are not really the kind of pictures that I normally like to take. The not-as-beautiful office location is dimly lit, the use of flash mostly not welcome due to the distraction, sometimes even the shutter sound of my 5D is already perceived as a major annoyance. It’s not that everybody’s waiting for the photog to show up and let him do his thing, it’s more like I sneak in, squeeze a few frames until I get annoyed glances and sneak back out five seconds later. And most pictures reflect that. But they document the event for other colleagues. So, whatever, I’m making somebody happy.

However, after the last event I felt like making myself happy as well. So I came back to my desk with just my camera and two bare speedlights and I felt like composing some pictures just for myself and the fun of it. Since my co-workers weren’t gonna move away from their computers I had all the freedom I needed to prop whatever piece of equipment around them. Since I didnt have stands or light modifiers I looked around for alternatives. What’s a good softbox for the key light? Bingo, bounce some light against the flip chart. Hair light? Put the other bare speedlight on the book shelf. Flare? Admittedly, I got lucky here. The sun was setting right at this time and cast a wonderful color into the office room. Popped two, three test frames to balance against the sunlight and, to quote David Hobby again, Robert was my father’s brother. Lucky for me, my co-workers were playing along nicely (even though it must have felt weird to have that flip chart stand 1ft away from their nose….). Oh, how I love this kind of distraction.