One of my friends, excellent base guitar player, was asking me for quite some time to take few pictures of his guitars. 2 weeks ago I finally took some pictures of 2 of his guitars: acoustic 5 strings base and electric 6 strings custom made Fodera base guitar.

For this little project I used 6 Vivitar 285HV portable strobes with Cactus brand radio remote triggers. 3 of flashes were set in Lastolite medium size softbox to the camera right and slightly in front of guitar for creating soft main light. One flash with 3 red gels for deep red color was set at 1/4 power on the floor behind guitar aiming at drapes in background. Actual background drapes color was beige. 2 more strobes were used to add accent light from different angles on different shots. Power setting on those flashes was set from 1/16 to 1/2 depending on the angle and how far or close it was set to guitar. Flashes in softbox and one of the accent flashes was outfitted with warming gel, and camera (Canon 7D) white balance was set to tungsten. Accent flash used for strings on most of the shots was without any gels, effectively giving strings blueish tone.

Here is one of my favorite shots from that session:

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