The orbis™ arm Virtual Launch Party

At the end of last year we invited everyone with an orbis™ to a Virtual Launch Party for the orbis™ arm, now available worldwide.

Throwing our own global launch party was going to require a Trump-sized budget. So we threw out the idea to everyone through flickr and elsewhere to shoot any party with an orbis™, post the results to flickr and the results would become the Virtual Launch Party, full of fast’n’ easy shadowless light.

The results are finally in! My excuse for the delay was a new addition to my family that addled my brain and shocked my eardrums, and a whole heap of work to do on my next Strobist-inspired invention.

We couldn’t decide on one winner to rule them all, so came down to two. The first stood out for its colour, charisma and ‘leap off the page’ quality. The second winner just puts you right in the middle of what must have been a super-fun party, with a little perfectly balanced ambient light to tick the “technically accomplished” box.

So I guess you want to see the winners ? First up, let’s step into Christopher Goette’s glamorous life with.. a photo taken at a 300-strong Triad Strobist meetup. Now I figured anything to do with a Triad must be a shady Yakuza-style “organised crime with an SB800″ type thing, but it turns out the Triad is an area in North Carolina full of avid photographers who run a regular meet-up, that Christopher runs.

If you’re a local, click HERE to find out about the next Triad Strobist meetup. Check out more of Christopher’s photography HERE. Look out for his winning photo in the Gallery soon. Christopher’s getting a name for himself on flickr shooting glamourous models at the meetups, and we’ve even run a little piece on them before.

The next winner is a very different image, dialling down the kooky, classy, sexy dial and dialling up the crazy, fun, late night party dial. Shot by Alex Suarez;

Here’s the behind-the-scenes from the source, Alex, himself:

“This photo was taken at a Halloween party.  The backdrop is the twilight sky after a Texas hill country sunset.  There were some amazing colors in the sky so I grabbed party goers as quickly as I could and had them pose in front of this amazing sky.  The little devil shot was one of my favorites.

I used a Nikon SB-600 with an Orbis™ Ring  Flash as a main light on the subject and dragged the shutter to get the ambient light to fill in.  Since I used a slow shutter speed (1/3 second) any motion of the subject or camera created dark halos in the sky around the subject as well as some bright areas that cut into the subject.

This was deliberate and desired.

I used a 12mm lens and got very close to the subject’s head to exaggerate perspective making for the perception of a large head on a tiny body.  The catchlight from the Orbis™ Ring  Flash in the center of the eyes also adds to the unique look.”

At first glance the photo looks like a really quick “grab and shoot” photo, so it’s great to read how much thought and work went into it.

You can find Alex online HERE or by following him on Twitter, where he’s @Alex_Suarez.

Alex and Christopher have both won themselves orbis™ arms and some other great orbis™ schwag. But no photo competition would be complete without featuring some of the great work from the runnersup:

both of which, as intended when we launched the contest, throw you right into the midst of a fun-looking party that’s been captured beautifully, easily, with the orbis™ ringflash!

Think you could do better ? Sign up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about our next competition!