Harrisonburg Day Two

Well the plan was to go out early and take some shots of some models around downtown Harrisonburg, but these college students decided to sleep in (the nerve of them  :P   ). Anyway it was a nasty rainy day anyway, so I decided to play around with some lighting effects today. Using my newly made Pringsnoot I took some shots of the cast members and crew of The Pillowman before their rehearsal today. (I took a bunch of photos during the rehearsal which I'll upload in a slideshow tomorrow or Sunday).

Jesi, quite creepy as a ragdoll/puppet...

Speedy, aka Foofa, is quite the mannquine. He even threw himself down a short flight of stairs to get into character (or maybe he just said that after he tripped)
Kristen has a fantastic smile that just doesn't go away.

After rehearsal, back at my sisters place I wanted to take it up a notch and forced Jon to be my model, while he was tweaking some shots he got during the show on my laptop. The first shot shows how tight the snoot would be restricting the light. The second shot shows the 'lighting modifier' I used to get the nice stripes across Jon's face. The third image shows the snooted flash with the amber gel, acting as a hair/fill light to give the image a little extra.

1 BILLION points to whoever can guess what time of day this was taken at.

I can't decide which of these two images I like better. The top one seems more environmental with the filled in background with the various gear I had out of my bag at the time. The second seems more personable showing some personality in the subject. Any opinions?

I had to throw in this last shot. My sister has this bright red pot on her stove and I thought it really stood out. A gelled SB-800 at 1/32 power in a pitch black dark room, made it pop a little more I think...I was amazed at how well this came out. Manual focus with absolutely no constant light, total luck.