As the official photographers of the Georgetown Fair Queen Pageant one of our jobs every summer is to photograph the contestants. You see these pictures in the pageant program in in local newspapers leading up to the fair. This year we wanted to share a little behind the scenes of how we did the headshots for our friends out there who are curious about how we do photography for the Georgetown Fair Queen, and how we travel and set up on location in general.
This year we did the contestant headshots at Danville Area Community College in the Mary Miller building. We had hoped to do them at the fairgrounds main building, but when it got booked for an event, things got moved to the college. Above you can see pictures of our carts loaded up with our gear because we shoot in a classroom in the lower level, so part of our packing strategy is to make one trip through the building, down the elevator and into the room. On the cart is our lighting case which contains four speedlights, a small storage container with clamps and grip gear, two sandbags, two light stand bags and a tripod. On the rolling camera case are two Westcott Rapid Boxes and a Westcott reflector kit.
The lighting setup for the headshots were a pair of Westcott Rapid Boxes with two reflectors for fill. The setup shot above shows you everything, but we moved the main light, fill reflector and strip for the actual pictures. We used a Rapid Box 26" octa with a single speedlight for the main light, and a Rapid Box Strip with a single speedlight for the hair light. We used one reflector for bottom fill and another for side fill opposite the main light. The speedlights were Lumopro 180R's triggered with a Phottix Stratto II, and with any luck we'll do another post soon to tell you more about our gear and why we use it.
Pictured above (from the top) are contestants Billi Jo Shank, Kayla Liggett, Alyssa Bell, Heather Simpson, Lindsey Ferguson, and Behah Allsopp. Be sure to show up for the 2017 Georgetown Fair Queen Pageant coming up the first Monday in August at the Georgetown Fair to see who is crowned the next Georgetown Fair Queen, and check back for pictures all week long right here with Josh and Joe Travels.
