Always Have a Plan B

"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

You've heard it before. It's Murphy's Law and it too often proves true.

I shoot on location a lot. Murphy's Law takes on special meaning on location shoots. That's why I try to have a Plan B when shooting in places I'm unfamiliar with. What do I mean by Plan B? It means doing my best to be prepared for, ready for, Murphy's Law.

A big piece of Plan B, for me, means having back-up gear. I know that if some of my gear is going to go South or make life difficult for me, it's going to do so when I'm on location. That's why I have a back-up camera body, back-up glass, back-up strobes, back-up eye-glasses, back-up flash cards, and a way to back-up the photos. But sometimes, even with back-up gear, Murphy's Law finds a way.

Here's an example from a recent location shoot.

We were in an auto body shot. I set up my lights and shot the first set with the first model. Everything was running smoothly. But suddenly, my strobes seemed to acquire a mind of their own. They began firing, continuously and erratically. Okay. I figured there might be a short somewhere in my system: Either with the transmitters, receivers, or the strobes themselves. Since only one strobe, my mainlight, was being fired with a wireless system and the two others optically, I decided the short was, most likely, happening with the light that was part of the wireless system.

I swapped out the receiver. The strobe kept firing. I swapped out the transmitter. The strobe kept firing. I swapped out the strobe. The new strobe kept firing.

I was perplexed. I was also getting concerned. The strobes were firing or trying to fire on their own so often, about once a second or faster, they didn't have time to recycle. This was seriously messing with my game. Especially since my strobes were set to almost full power. (Increasing recycle time.)

Then, like a mini-epiphany washing over me, I thought, "I wonder if it's a frequency thing?"

I changed the frequencies on the transmitter and receiver of my cheap, Ebay-purchased, wireless system. (They are capable of 4 different operating frequencies.)

Bingo!

The strobes quit firing at will.

Whatever was interfering with the original frequency was not messing with the new frequency. Perhaps, earlier, when the strobes were firing away, I sub-consciously noted that when I pulled the receiver out of the strobe it didn't fire? I'll admit I didn't consciously think of that.

Okay. That worked.

But that's not the Plan B part. What if changing frequencies didn't work? What if I couldn't get the wireless system to work? I needed a back-up plan for if or when a complete failure of the wireless system happens.

Option: Have back-up transmitters and receivers. But I already do. Four sets in fact. So I needed another option.

Solution: A long PC sync cord: A cheap, low-tech solution. So that's what I did. I bought myself a 15' PC sync cord. If, for whatever reason, all my wireless systems fail on me, like in the event of an electro-magnetic pulse from a nuclear blast or for some other reason, I'll go hard-wire to my mainlight (I'm rarely more than 15' away from it) and let the other strobes fire optically.

The pretty girl at the top is Felony from the auto body shop sets. She was that "first model" I referred to above. She's also from the "the stills could'a been better" shoot I wrote about recently. I cropped it a little weird as I've decided to crop out genitalia for pics I'm posting to this blog. There's a bunch of reasons for doing this but I'm not going to go into all of them now.

BTW, speaking of "the stills could'a been better," I recently came across a quote attributed to photographer, Diane Arbus. She said, "I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse."

Ain't that the truth!