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The band's drummer, Tony Martin, had recently spotted this old drawbridge near the campus, and thought it might make for a great shooting location. However, once we got there, we discovered that the drawbridge was completely blocked off on one side, so we were forced to go across to see if the other side was open. It was, but I quickly realized that there simply wasn't enough room width-wise for me to position my lighting gear far enough away from the band. Plus, the ground was really uneven, being that it was essentially railroad tracks with a strip of rocks on either side-- not good for setting up expensive lights that could easily fall over into the water!
So we scoped out the area even more, and eventually found what I'll call a "grassy knoll", which allowed us to still get the drawbridge into the shot (albeit in the background), and also gave me plenty of room for my lights. Here's a setup shot of the location, showing my 3 Alien Bees firing-- two on the sides/rear, and one in a beauty dish in front and up above the group:
That large, black, boxy-looking thing sitting on a stand on the left side of the image is my viewing station, which consists of a ThinkTank Pixel Sunscreen 2.0 with my laptop inside. It allows me to check my exposure on a much larger screen than I get with the tiny LCD on the back of the camera (which is especially small on a Canon 1Ds Mark II).
I grabbed several frames of the band with that drawbridge in the background, but never could seem to find a composition I really liked, so I shifted everyone and everything about 30 feet to the right to get the downtown Tampa skyline into the shot. Here's an unedited, SOOC (straight out of the camera) shot from this location, which will soon be featured in a "Before & After" post:
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