Use A Dog Bone To Mount A Strobe On Any Trunk, Beam, Pole Or Branch

If you are doing a lot of outdoor shooting using hot shoe strobes, you need to find a way to place them in three dimensional space. Of course, the trivial way is to use a light stand. But if you shoot in anything other than an open space, photographer Chris Cameron has a nice tip to mount your strobe on any object you can wrap a strap around.

The idea is to use a strap and a 3D printed dog bone, the strap wraps around, say a tree trunk, while the bone provides an anchor for a small clamp.

You would need four components for this system:

• A strap, Chris is using straps from gotchastraps, but there are similar straps available from generic brands.
• A bone, you can order Chris’s model from Shapeways, or print one yourself.
• a nano clamp to attach to the bone.
• A mini ball head (you can buy both as a kit)
• and a cold shoe to mount the strobe to the ball head.

Then you mount a strobe in four steps:

1. Strap the tree and the bone together

2. Clamp the nano and the ball head to the bone

3. Mount your strobe to the cold shoe. This configuration is even strong enough to hold a swivel with an umbrella if mounted sideways

Now, making this system from scratch could be quite expensive, but if you’ve been strobing for a while there is a good change that the only thing you are missing is the bone.

[Strobist light (not a) stand trick]

P.S. you can also buy a readymade unit on Chris’s store.