Father Mitro and When a Nice Stairs-shot Won't Do | Blog | Mikko Niemelä - Freelance photographer

I was running walking fast from shooting a burial of a soldier found after being M.I.A for 60 years. I had 70-200 and 300 hanging from my shoulders and had worked up a little sweat because it's my allergy month, when any physical strain instantly collapses my lungs. I was on my way to photograph Father Mitro, who is a controversial figure to some for stepping into politics while being an Orthodox priest.

He was giving a speech in a recently-built school and while new schools are certainly nice to study in, they are usually far from being photogenic in any way. Inside there were nice brown wooden stairs though, running three stories high. But the staircase shots are so-ooo overdone. When frantically climbing the stairs and trying to come up with something, I noticed this little opening in the wall next to the stairs, a sort of non-protruding balcony. I instantly got an image of a Pope in balcony flashing through my mind (and yes, I know that Pope is Catholic and I was shooting an Orthodox priest).

I was stressing on whether I should use my Skyports or Canon's ST-E2 infrared transmitter. I opted for the latter since it's just so fast to set up. I raced a 580II with a 8" Honl snoot and battery-pack to the top floor and used a Justin Clamp to secure the flash to a railing. I placed a second flash behind where Mitro would be standing. It provided some separation on some shots, but mostly it would fail to fire. I should've used the second flash as a non-flashing master flash, instead of the ST-E2.

I had time to take just 20 frames with Father Mitro in place, and the main flash failed to fire on five shots. With Skyports those figures would be 20/20, but then I would've had to run up and down the stairs had I guestimated the power settings on the flashes wrong. As I said, the best option would've probably been to use one 580 as a master, since the pre-flashes come from the flashead, which is much easier to direct than the infrared ST-E2's.

(All images: Canon 5D, 70-200 2.8IS, 16-35II)