Difficult light

elia 1, originally uploaded by gugs.

This picture has been used for a magazine and has been a tough assignment... this has been shot in the control room of the dispatching center of the power grid operator in Belgium. The problem was that the room was very dark, with an additional problem: the screen had a glossy finish, giving awful reflections if you used any flash or any misplaced light. It has been tricky to expose this properly. I used two fixed hot lamps (2x650W) with a softbox to get enough light on the person using the telephone, also using the ceiling as a reflector and using them from a distance to get just enough light to take the picture. I needed to balance that light with the information on the screens. I used a D200 on a tripod with a relatively long focal length (105mm) and with relatively slow shutter speed (1/3 sec approx). This is the end result, they liked it and this is the picture as it appeared in their magazine.