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Tangents

workshop view: Denver, CO

August 14, 2008

Denver was the start of the next series of workshops that I am presenting into the Fall of 2008, and I had to add a second date when the initial Denver workshop date sold out.  This was my first visit to Denver, and I found it a beautiful city which offered easy opportunities for us to go out and practice flash photography techniques out on the street with our two models. 

These two workshops were the first after I had revamped the material, basing it on the book that I had written on the subject of flash photography.  (The manuscript is at the publishers at the moment.)  These were also the first where I had restructured the workshop as a combination seminar presentation + practical sessions.

For me, the best part of the workshop is when the group goes out on the streets in the early evening, looking for settings in which to photograph our models.  Then there’s the chance to try out the techniques covered in the morning’s seminar presentation.

Thank you to everyone who attended.  I had a great time, and felt energised afterwards by your enthusiasm.  And a big thank you to Andrea and Aaron, our two models.

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The image at the top was from the evening session, where we played with colour correction filters on our speedlights.  We could then see the effect of using (or not using) gels on the speedlights had to (partly) correct for the artificial lighting on the streets.

Here is that topmost again, as well as a comparison image.  Our models were lit by on-camera flash that was bounced off a shop wall.

The first image (left) has the flash gelled for Tungsten by using a full CTS gel on the flash.  You will notice how the yellow/orange colour cast in the background scene is diminished by the filter (and using the camera on a Tungsten / Incandescent WB.)  The use of this gel  and then using the camera with that WB setting, turned the sky into a deep blue because of the resultant shift in colour balance.

The second image (right) was taken without a gel on the flash, and using Cloudy WB, and the difference in the background colours can clearly be seen.  (Both images had the WB slightly touched up as part of the normal RAW workflow.)

[ click on the images to see a larger version ]

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When we came across this interesting alley, I had everyone try out an interesting challenge – to bounce the light from their on-camera speedlights such that it appeared as if the light was coming from someplace behind our models.  This created a much more dramatic and moody effect than if we had bounced flash over our shoulders somewhere behind us.

The first image here was with flash.  The next image is simply to show how much flash there really was in the first image, and how low the ambient light was for the chosen camera settings.  (Note that I didn’t photoshop the image aside from some minor adjustments as part of my normal RAW workflow.  For a final version of that image, I would’ve cloned out the distracting sign behind them.)

 

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