Gear Talk // What’s in my Lighting Bag 2020

I have been getting a lot of questions lately about my camera gear and what I use day to day on assignments and to that end I’m going to be doing some blog posts on my kit and various loadouts. 

Today we are going to start with my lighting bag. If you prefer watching a video tutorial then please pop over to my YouTube channel and if you want to pick up any of the kit mentioned I have tried to collate as much as possible into this amazon shop. I also generally post behind the scene images and shots over on my instagram page too if that’s of interest.

I have used the ThinkTank Security rolling bag for the last 12 years. This bag is a beast and although it is battered, it is still going (relatively) strong. I think they are on version 3.0 of this bag, this one is version 1.0 - the original! These are built to last, they have a lifetime warranty and are designed by photographers so they have tonnes of really well thought out features. This one for example has a cable lock built in and zip locks too. The rear section even has backpack straps which are great if you need to lump this bag away from urban areas. If you want to pick them up in the UK Snapperstuff and Fixation are good bets along with the usuals such as Amazon.

Inside the bag I tend to transport two or three lights depending on the job. These will either be Profoto B1s' (500W) or Profoto B10s' (250W). Recently I have been packing one Profoto B1 head along with the two B10 heads. What I love about these lights is that they are wireless and they work really well. I have one or two gripes about the B10s' (the tightening knob looks beautiful but it’s lack of any kind of grip can make it tricky to work with sometimes, and the lack of a PC sync port on the heads does mean you are reliant on using triggers)

Also in the bag I have what I call my 'trigger bag’, which as you can guess contain triggers for the lights. I currently use the Profoto Air Remote TTL. I have one of these for my Canon kit and one for my Fujifilm kit. This allows you to control the power of the lights remotely and a number of assigned channels. The only thing is that they don’t tell you is the power of the lights. The Profoto App however works with the B10s' and is actually quite handy (unfortunately it won’t work with the older B1s'). Along with that trigger I carry some cheap radio triggers as a back up. As I mentioned the B10s' can’t work with these because of their lack of PC sync ports but if using a B1 I can fire the B10s' via slave if I needed too. Generally I don’t need these triggers but I have in the past (on at least one occasion) destroyed my main trigger on set and needed these as backup. 

Other things in this bag include spare pc sync cables, camera trigger cables, spare AAA batteries, velcro zip ties, bungee cords and sharpies. Velcro Zip ties are a godsend! They are reusable and can be used for all manor of things - from keeping cables tidy to holding up backdrops (I’ve held heavy canvas tarpaulins up with these threaded through the tarps eyelets - velcro has amazing strength) 

At the top of the bag I have a small ‘Grip bag’. This is full of spigots and various other grip. The bag itself I believe is a Muji wash bag, but it works well for this as it is made of tough wearing material. It holds all sort of paraphernalia that has proved useful on shoots; croc clips, bungee cords, Super clamps, umbrella clamps, spring clamps, cold shoes etc. Generally when you are lighting on location it’s really important to have grip that will help you manipulate your physical environment to allow you to create the lighting you want. This could be blocking natural light, flagging things, shaping light, rigging your own lights etc - so you really need a good bag of tools to help with that. 

Next up is a small pouch that I try to always have on me especially on big sets. This particular one is by a company called Life Behind Bars and I picked it up in Indonesia whilst working out there. There are plenty of other options - if you search for EDC pouch I’m sure you will find something similar. It contains

• A Seconic Flashmate L-308S light meter
• Grey, White and Black Card
• A sharpie
• An LED pen torch
• A Leatherman Wave with the additional Bit Kit

Tape is important, I have a least two types. Gaffer tape for general stuff and bright orange Pro Gaf tape to mark positions or to wrap around the end of a brolly so someone avoids poking their eye out etc. In with these I also have a small Honl Grid which can be taped onto the front of a B1 or B10. 

I generally have one or two Manfrotto (001B) Nano stands in the lighting bag too. These are useful for small lights or to hold up flags or reflectors etc. I normally always travel with two other master stands (Manfrotto 1052BAC stacking stands) in a stand bag along with two Profoto brollies. Therefore this gives me four stands to work with. Sometime I will have more, sometimes less, depending on the job.

In the main section I also carry 8x AA and 11x AAA eneloop rechargeable batteries in small plastic cases. These I use for the triggers and walkie talkies if needed. I moved over to rechargeable batteries a few years ago and have never looked back. That said I also have backups of Duracell AA and AAA batteries elsewhere in the case. 

In the inside zippered compartments I have the following:

• ‘datacolor Spyder Check4 24’ colour checking card for getting a consistent colour reading throughout a shoot.
• Ear Plugs
• Mints and Chewing Gum
• Eye Drops (a photographer is no good with grit in his/her eye)
• Cleaning Wipes
• Nano Pads
• Model Releases
• Cheat Sheet with a photographers legal rights
• Model Releases
• Silica Gel (just in case stuff needs drying out)
• Spare sealable plastic bags (to be used in conjunction with the silica gel)
• Basic OpTech USA Waterproof Camera cover

On the front of the bag I store the following

• 2x black corrugated plastic sheets that I can use as flags - these are 460mm x 310mm in dimension and fit snuggly in the from pocket.
• Black wrap or cinefoil which I again use to make flags or channel lighting
• A4 Craft foam in grey and black (again for flags)
• Rogue Flashbender (this I might use if I have the Profoto A1 head with me as it fits around it like a snoot and can be shaped in various configurations)
• Whiteboard card and pen which I sometimes use to jot down a diagram with lighting setups. I then can shoot an assistant holding this up to camera in the lighting set up so that I can use it later as reference back at the studio.
• Tin Foil which can act as a powerful reflector in a pinch

As I mentioned at the start I have listed a lot of these items over at my amazon storefront so if you want to add any of this stuff to your own kit, you shoul dbe able to find most of it there.

Advertising Campaign // Shell Rimula

Towards the end of 2018 I was awarded a contract to shoot a campaign across SE Asia for the energy giant Shell. The job involved travelling through six countries, capturing truckers and truck drivers using Shell’s product, Rimula, an engine lubricant. To do this we teamed up with the excellent London-based production company, Foxtrot Papa, and Shell’s then creative agency, Iris. The schedule could have been quite punishing – especially as I was due to be getting married right in the middle of it all! But thankfully Louise Allen, from Foxtrot Papa, is an excellent producer and brought things into line that would have most people tremble and give up. We ended up shooting in Russia, China, South Korea, India, Malaysia and Indonesia. For each country we had to sort visas, source local models and crew, find locations, and work out logistics. Louise managed this all seamlessly. In most locations we had one day for a recce and one or sometimes two days shooting, aiming to build a library of images that Shell could use across local markets. To complete this brief we used local models (often real truck drivers). The trick then was to create realistic and authentic-feeling scenarios across different times of day, in different locations, some urban and some rural. This meant being very clever with locations and creating scenarios where we could get multiple assets with minimal set-up. The shoot as a whole also had to feel consistent across the time frame, geographic and cultural spread. Below I’ve included a selection of final campaign shots and below then some behind-the-scenes snaps.

 

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Behind the scenes shots

Breakfast in a roadside Dhaba, India

Indian village set-up

Drawing a bit of an audience from the local villagers, India

Dawn location, Jaipur, India

Shooting truck to truck, Jaipur, India

Working with Tim as my assistant and right-hand man

Pulling some interesting photo squats whilst shooting in Malaysia

Setting up a location in Indonesia

Shooting into the night in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia

Assignment // Sierra Leone, Sunday Times Magazine

A dugout canoe shot from the Mavic Pro, Bonthe Island and the Sherbro River Delta, Sierra Leone, 03 May, 2018. Photo by Greg Funnell

Jena Bacong collecting oysters, Bonthe Island and the Sherbro River Delta, Sierra Leone, 03 May, 2018. Photo by Greg Funnell

James Green, of the Whitstable Oyster Company, talks with Allieu Bakarr Kamara, 32, about oyster harvesting that Allieu has been running trials on. Sherbro River Delta, Sierra Leone, 04 May 2018. Photo by Greg Funnell

Oyster smoking taking place in the village of Kgnama, Sherbro River Delta, Sierra Leone, 04 May 2018. Photo by Greg Funnell

A poster advertising the Bonthe Oyster festival, Bonthe Island, Sierra Leone, 03 May 2018. Photo by Greg Funnell

Oyster shucking taking place in King Jimmy village, Sherbro River Delta, Sierra Leone, 02 May, 2018. Photo by Greg Funnell

Women buy fish at dawn from a young fisherman who has been out night fishing, Bonthe Island, Sierra Leone, 04 May 2018. Photo by Greg Funnell

Fishing boats on a mudbank at low tide in the Sherbro River Delta, Sierra Leone, 04 May, 2018. Photo by Greg Funnell

Rugiatu (foreground) and Mabinty, collect oysters at low tide on a mudbank in the Sherbro River Delta, Sierra Leone, 04 May 2018. Photo by Greg Funnell

About this time last year I was commissioned by the Sunday Times to go to Sierra Leone. I was hugely excited to get another chance to visit this amazing country having previously been there with ActionAid to document their local development work. On this occasion I was asked to photograph a story on mud oysters of Bonthe Island, in the Sherbro River Delta. To do this I was teamed up with the writer, Michael Hodges, and the head of the Whitstable Oyster Company, James Green, and Dr Francis Murray from Stirling University. James Green had set up an initiative about five years previously to promote education and development of the local Oyster scene in the Sherbro River delta, to see if they could become a source of sustainable food and potentially a local form of income. To do this he had started the Bonthe Island Oyster Festival. Now to say this makes it sound like this was quite a large scale event, but the reality was the Bothe Island is rather remote and it takes a number of hours and a significant boat ride to get there from the capital of Freetown. Once on the island, there is very limited (non-potable) running water, and electricity only when the diesel powered generators are running. 

My room on Bonthe Island for the duration of my stay.

There are very few if any vehicles on the island, most people getting around by walking or bicycle. Every morning at dawn fisherman would return from having spent the night in small wooden dugout canoes. When the tide was out (mainly women) would head out to harvest the mud oysters from the exposed mud banks. This would involve walking in knee deep mud filled with razor sharp oyster shells. Sometimes they would take the dugout canoes and hack the oysters directly off of (and including) the root of the mangrove (a practice that Mr Green and Dr Murray were trying to discourage, as often this would involve destroying the mangrove root and in turn the trees. Once they had dieed back, the riverbanks would become more vulnerable to erosion, much in the same way deforestation elsewhere leads to soil erosion and mudslides.

Collecting oyster on the mudbanks, many of the women would get cuts to feet and ankles that would have a hard time healing.

We spent a number of days on the island, staying in a small two storey building (a rarity on the island). I would get up most mornings and wonder into the local market or villages on my own to make the most of the good dawn light. After a few days of doing this the locals were relatively used to me and I could shoot somewhat uninhibited, I’d often teamed up with one of the local students working with Dr Murray and therefore get to utilise their local knowledge and language skills. I always find it interesting working in these situations, trying to walk the tightrope between being the obvious outsider but striving to make photos that feel very observed, rather than constructed. On this assignment I was shooting with my Fujifilm X setup which included (at the time) the XT2 and the X-Pro 2. The cameras are much smaller than my normal DSLR set-up and they are therefore much less obtrusive and intimidating. Using the electronic shutter they are totally silent; when you are photographing at dawn on an island with no cars and little electricity with just the sounds of the lapping water and the bush, this is surprisingly important. 

Shooting with the trusty Fujifilm X-Pro 2. Weather sealing in these conditions is a bonus.

On this trip I did also decide to use a drone, flying my Mavic Pro (often taking off and landing on two small planks of wood when flying off the mudbanks). This allowed me to get a real sense of the landscape and show the island and the community in context that I simply wouldn’t be able to do any other way. I did feel a sense of guilt however using this as once or twice I felt flying it too far away from where I was might cause some distress to anyone it happened upon - and loud buzzing drone is the antithesis of my softly softly approach and so I tried to use it sparingly. The kids however, as kids do everywhere, loved seeing it fly. 

Couple of the local guys enjoying the drone on its rather meagre improvised landing pad.

The photographs I made ran in the Sunday Times Magazine and for that I have to thank Emily McBean, Russ O'Connell and Leanne Bracey. I take comfort in the thought that when a magazine is willing to send you half way around the world to shoot a tricky assignment it's a mark of trust. I'd also like to thanks James Green for inviting us out on the trip in the first place, Dr Francis Murray for his fascinating input and knowledge along the way, Michael Hodges for being an excellent team mate and traveling companion and of course all the people on Bonthe Island for having us, and looking after us so well. The photos were subsequently picked up and shortlisted in the ‘Photojournalism’ category of the 2019 AOP awards.

Assignment: Hotel du Cap, Eden Roc

A bit late with this one, but back in April of 2018 I was commissioned to photograph the renowned establishment, Hotel du Cap, Eden Roc in Antibes, France. The hotel is often associated with celebrities and was a popular and iconic destination for those escaping to the sun for many years, becoming particularly famous in the 50s and 60s. It's a fascinating establishment with a rich and colourful history. Being granted access to do a behind the scenes piece was a real privilege, but also obviously came with it's own challenges.

The story, for Gentlemans Journal, was designed to reveal a day in the life of and as such we photographed everyone from cleaners to gardeners, pool boys and barmen. We had a limited window and the weather was not with us on the first day – which always adds a little pressure on these type of shoots. Thankfully we had windows of sunlight had I made the most of getting up at dawn every day to make the most f my time there. The following images over a little vignette into one of Europes most famous hotels. You can see more for this story on the website here.