The penultimate set of workshops for 2008 was held this week in Florida with a series of just two workshops - one in Miami Beach and the other in St. Petersburg. What a difference going from cold and rainy New Jersey to Miami Beach!
Part of the workshop program in the evening (where weather and location permits), is to go out and improvise and find various surfaces and objects to bounce flash off, like we were able to in Miami Beach. Using the available light from the city locations and combining it with careful use of bounce flash, surprisingly good results can be achieved.
One of things that seem to surprise workshop attendees is that you don’t always need a very specific area like a wall to bounce flash off. Quite often you get great results still by bouncing flash into a very large room or hall, or like the example above, where I bounced my flash behind me off some random architecture – or what became the catch-phrase for the evening – ‘random shit’.
In this pull-back image you can see the structure that I bounced flash off, directly in front of the models – those white pillars and overhang and pole.
And just to show the difference that adding flash made, here is the available-light-only image:
As a side-note: I’ve made some changes to the equipment I bring to the workshops in order to streamline things a little bit more.
Thank you to everyone who attended, and made both workshops enjoyable events.
Here is a review of the workshop by Debra Weisheit.
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Dear Neil,
Beautiful pictures.
Would you mind telling us what are the flash settings (power rate)used on the first photos? Noticed that you didn’t have a solid wall to bounce at, so wonder if you had to raised the power rate to get the correct exposure you normally do with a wall. By experience, you should be able to get the correct power rating in the first shot, but for beginner like us, what starting point would you recommend us to try with?
Also do you correct your white balance in post processing? If yes do you mind show us the shot right out of the camera before any post processing?
You have a wonderful blogs, please keep it going….. keep up the great work!!
Tks,
Sam
Comment by Yap Tsok Sam — November 14, 2008 @ 11:17 pm
Comment by Neil — November 15, 2008 @ 12:28 am
Here is the original image, converted directly from the RAW file with no adjustments. (Done via Canon’s DPP software, so it mimics the camera’s image settings.)
… and you’ll see it isn’t too far from the image I posted above.
The only post-processing I did was to change the WB from the original Cloudy setting, to Daylight WB and that looked good enough. I also bumped up the Exposure by 0.17 stops to make it a touch brighter. And that’s it.
Neil vN
Comment by Neil — November 15, 2008 @ 12:44 am
Thanks Neil, I learned so much, {when I focused}! You were so good about helping me focus too… Can’t wait to put all my new knowledge into practice.
Comment by Lizney Sievert — November 16, 2008 @ 10:12 am
Hi Neil,
the structure you used for bounce reminded me of a recent shot i took at an event in which i bounced off of an archway/trelis(spelling?) the shot turned out much better than i expected with such an odd bounce source. it’s not the greatest shot but it should hopefully show the better light, and please excuse darkness as it seems imageshack did that. my shot actually captured more ambient than what is shown through imageshack.
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/9850/dsc00872tb8.jpg
Comment by Brett — November 16, 2008 @ 3:20 pm
Dear Neil,
Tks for the reply. It makes so much clearer to me now.
Tks again, and would definitely check out your site from time to time, cos it never disappoint me and i can never stop learning from you…
brgds,
Sam
Comment by Yap Tsok Sam — November 18, 2008 @ 5:38 am
Wish I could have had the resources to attend this as I live in Miami…. One of my uncles is Peter Gregg and I’ve learned a lot from him and he recommended your site and I’ve learned a lot from it as well…. Maybe next time!!
Comment by Paul — November 20, 2008 @ 4:13 pm