Platypod with Flash Mobile Photography with Dave Williams

Words by Dave Williams - A Platypod Pro
Edited by Eryka Bagwell

Over the past year I’ve been experimenting more and more with flash photography on my iPhone, and it’s been a very powerful experience. I want to write today about the way I recently used the Platypod eXtreme, Platyball Elite, Peak Design Mobile Creator Kit, and Profoto C1 Plus with the Profoto Camera App for iPhone.

Here’s what I did with all that: 
In Lofoten, Norway, with Russell Preston Brown, Senior Principal Designer at Adobe, I headed out for a mobile photography adventure. Our basecamp in Lofoten was Svinøya Rorbuer (https://www.svinoya.no/en). Svinøya is the name of the island and the word Rorbuer relates to those quaint little red fishing cabins familiar to many scenes from this beautiful part of Arctic Norway. The area is on the Gulf Stream which makes for extremely rich fishing grounds, so it makes sense that fish is the number one industry and has been for a very long time. One of Russell’s creative visions for this trip was to transform himself into a fisherman for a series of self-portraits. We headed inside a historically accurate rorbuer dating back to 1828, preserved in a style that truly represents the way these cabins looked. Russell wore a knit wool sweater and looked just right for the shoot.

I had Russell sit at a desk beside a window, lit with the natural window light and some candle light from the candles on the table. This was just right for lighting up Russell as the subject but I wanted to incorporate more of the cabin so I switched to a landscape orientation and placed a Profoto C1 Plus in the room behind him. This light was set quite low and warm, fired using the Profoto Camera app which allows raw shooting. The Platypod allowed me to get low to the table and sit at the seat opposite while shooting, giving a straight on perspective whilst leaving enough space for me to comfortably move around and keep the camera in place. This would not have been possible with such ease if I’d been using a conventional tripod and having such a compact and effective platform to shoot from really goes a long way to completing a mobile photography setup.

The image was completed with post-processing in Adobe Lightroom Mobile, meaning that everything was done on iPhone from start to finish, including firing the flash and processing the final image. Mobile photography has developed from strength to strength in recent years and I predict it will soon be indistinguishable from traditional photography.

This location is the basecamp from which my exclusive, upcoming series of workshops will operate. I’ve arranged a special opportunity for those of you in the Platypod family to take 5% off the price using the discount code PLATYPOD5, so if you’re interested in a Lofoten Islands Viking Photography Workshop with a Viking model, reindeer paddock visit, northern lights chasing, and the experience of staying in a traditional rorbuer, go check it out (idavewilliams.com/training)

To view more of Russell's work click here to visit his Instagram page. To view more of Dave's work click here to visit his Instagram page.

Visit the Platypod store to check out all the new sales to boost your creativity. Click Here  

If you have a final image and BTS that you’d like to share and potentially be featured on our blog (newsletter or social media pages), please contact us via service@platypod.com.