First outdoor OCF

My daughter's 8th grade formal is in a couple weeks and her Mother and her friend's Mother have asked me to do an outdoor shoot. We have a memory garden at Church I thought we would use - I have never shot outdoors before with OCF

I was thinking set up my octbox and PCBuff PLM for the bench to take some seated shots and then use my 2 Beauty dishes for the standing shots - this way I can move back and forth between the two settings quickly, with 8-10 girls I don't think timing will permit shooting all seated then all standing some girls will arrive earlier than others.

These are my questions
1. With my Selection of available modifiers is this the best set up or should I pair them differently

2. Which modifier would be best as main v fill in each setting (I have both the 22 in PCB white and silver BD)

3. I do have a Variable ND filter, I would like to keep DOF fairly shallow - the area is shaded well, likelihood of needing to use this?

4. The setting "memory garden" - I think it fine, my wife and the Mothers I know ell think it fine, 2 of our close Pastor friends think it is a great use of the memory garden, My concern is will some of the Mothers I do not know well(at all) find it in poor taste and if they do what should my response be(other than my instinctive response "go away then")

Sorry to ramble on

For a vast majority of my outdoor shoots, I use a single off-camera light as my main light, and the ambient light is my fill light and, if the sun is poking through, my hair/accent light as well. I look for a shady spot where the sun is behind and to the side of my subject. I meter the background scene for the camera settings I want for the background, keeping the shutter speed under sync speed, and then I like to underexpose the background by about 1 stop. There are a number of ways to do this, but say you want to shoot at f8, and a shutter speed of 1/250 at ISO 100 are the proper camera settings to underexpose the ambient by 1 stop. Then set your main light to expose the subject at f8, and they will pop from the background. As far as modifiers on your light, I wouldn't use the PLM unless there's absolutely no wind because it becomes a sail in the wind. The octabox with a front diffuser will produce a nice soft light and will withstand some wind (I'd still use sandbags on the stand), and a beauty dish will work best in the wind but might not be the best for full-length shots. I'm assuming you're shooting them one at a time or in small groups and not all together, right?

And if you're doubting that one light can do the job, I shot these a little over a week ago outside with one light, either with just a reflector on the light or through a PLM (no wind that day).

sdipirro wrote in post #16883903
For a vast majority of my outdoor shoots, I use a single off-camera light as my main light, and the ambient light is my fill light and, if the sun is poking through, my hair/accent light as well. I look for a shady spot where the sun is behind and to the side of my subject. I meter the background scene for the camera settings I want for the background, keeping the shutter speed under sync speed, and then I like to underexpose the background by about 1 stop. There are a number of ways to do this, but say you want to shoot at f8, and a shutter speed of 1/250 at ISO 100 are the proper camera settings to underexpose the ambient by 1 stop. Then set your main light to expose the subject at f8, and they will pop from the background. As far as modifiers on your light, I wouldn't use the PLM unless there's absolutely no wind because it becomes a sail in the wind. The octabox with a front diffuser will produce a nice soft light and will withstand some wind (I'd still use sandbags on the stand), and a beauty dish will work best in the wind but might not be the best for full-length shots. I'm assuming you're shooting them one at a time or in small groups and not all together, right?

All of this times 2. A lot of people think you need to shoot at f2.8 to get background separation, but if you can slightly underexpose the ambient and light the subject you get a nice separation that way.

Yep, solos and a few twosomes, threesomes. Thanks for the advice!!!