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May 20, 2012
lighting for on-location photo sessions – pick your battles
When doing a photo session with a couple on location, I mix up the lighting often. With some photo sessions I may:
- shoot available light only;
- or I may decide with a photo session to use direct on-camera flash,
with some sequences available light only; or
- with some photo sessions I use off-camera flash with a softbox,
with some sequences just the available light.
Even in varying the way I may use the available light and flash, I still aim to have a consistent look to it all. My specific style has to be apparent. Or perhaps, in the way that I work, my style becomes apparent. The one way that I help make things easier for myself, and remain consistent, is that in working with the available light; or working with the available light and flash (both on-camera and off-camera) … I pick my battles. I don’t try and make *everything* work. Rather, I specifically choose where I pose a couple, or what I have as the background. All of this in relation to the existing light and my flash.
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April 11, 2012
photographing in bright sunlight – find the shade!
Hard sunlight must be one of the most difficult lighting scenarios to work under. But with a bit of thought, we can work around it and still easily get photos that look great. It’s a topic that we’ve touched on a number of times on the Tangents blog, (see related articles at the end here). The simplest approach for me though, is where I can, is to just not deal with the hard sunlight. I find shade.
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October 17, 2011
camera settings: 1/50 @ f8 @ 800 ISO … lens zoomed to 35mm; available light
shooting promotional photos for a band
Anyone who knows me well is probably very aware that my first true love is music. I live my life to a music soundtrack. There’s always music playing. Not the radio, but music of my own choice. I love music … however, my sense of rhythm isn’t all that it should’ve been for me to be a natural muso. But still, I love music. All of which meant that one few non-negotiable rules for my daughter was that she had to take music lessons. So she plays bari sax in the high-school’s Jazz band, and she’s also been taking guitar lessons for a few years now with a guitar teacher, Gerard.
All of which brings us to this photo session – promotional photos of Gerard’s band. That is Gerard (right) and Ed (center : piano) and Joe (left : guitar). I met up this weekend with them in Hoboken. Perfect for the urban feel to the photos. Hanging out with them for a few hours coming up with ideas and places for photos, was great fun. The camaraderie between them will be familiar to anyone who has ever played in a band. You connect. That all too short time I played tenor sax in a rock band back in South Africa circa 1999, just before we emigrated to the USA, was one of the best times in my life. But I digress. It was cool to hang out with these three musicians for the afternoon.
Here are some of my favorite images, with some details …
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July 22, 2011
off-camera flash – creating separation with back-lighting
Another image from the photo session with Bethany, when I was in San Francisco earlier this year. This interesting background is part of the lobby area of a San Francisco night-club. I knew the wooden panelling and subdued incandescent lighting would make an interesting background because of the repetitive pattern and glow. A slow shutter speed brought the background light in … and then I used flash to light her. I didn’t gel my flash – specifically so that the background light would go that warm. The pull-back shot will show the simplicity of the lighting …
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April 24, 2011
manual off-camera fill-flash, controlling the contrast
In using a softbox outdoors on location, we easily get beautiful soft light. When we work indoors however, where the flash dominates, then the results can look very contrasty. The reason for this is that outdoors, the available light acts like a fill light. This is especially true when we consider our available light in our overall result and balance our flash with the available light. With the softbox being the only light source, the light, while still soft, can be too contrasty for our liking. Still, that single softbox is a lot better than hard direct off-camera flash … but it can be improved with some fill light.
The photo above of Ulorin, our model at the recent workshop in San Francisco, was lit with the 24×24 Lastolite Ezybox softbox. But we did lift the shadows with some more off-camera fill flash, bounced into the room.
Here’s the short explanation and a longer, thorough explanation of how we went about it …
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November 19, 2010
shooting in bright sunlight with off-camera fill-flash
This adorable kid looked at the camera briefly because I was singing to him. Kids are devious little creatures. They know when you’re calling them and will purposely ignore you. So you have to be crafty too in getting their attention. Of course, you have to be ready for the moment … and shoot a lot. Sometimes that Decisive Moment is to be found in the edit.
The photo session was from 12 noon to 1pm. So the sun was high overhead. We’re often told that the sun directly overhead isn’t the best time to take photographs. While this isn’t as ideal as the fabled ‘Golden Hour’ – that time just before dusk and just after dawn – there are ways of working with hard sunlight and still get great images …
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June 10, 2010
To keep the sprawl of articles on the topic of off-camera flash together that exists on this site, I’ve created an additional page to the main flash photography pages, Simply titled, off-camera flash, it lists all the relevant articles. A snippet from the actual article will help it from being more easy for the eye to scan and find something relevant and of interest. I will keep adding future articles posted to the blog, and keep it as a handy resource.
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April 8, 2010
balancing flash with available light / ambient exposure
Since many of the questions I get on the Tangents blog relate to balancing flash with available light, I want to pull the replies together into a single article. A reference point again, instead of the replies scattered throughout this website.
The questions most often revolve around:
- exposure metering for available light ,
- exposure metering for TTL flash and ambient light,
- whether to use manual flash or TTL flash,
- flash exposure compensation (FEC),
- choice of aperture,
- maximum flash sync speed,
- metering for off-camera manual flash and ambient light
- choosing our settings to balance manual flash and ambient light,
- whether to drag the shutter, or not.
The answer to the questions about how to balance flash and ambient light, is often along the lines of “it depends”. It really depends on:
- the scenario you have, and
- what you want to achieve.
Now that all sounds quite vague. Being told that you can pretty much “do what you want”, doesn’t help if you don’t even quite know where to start. Most of the answers are in the linked articles there, and on this page on my Top 20 Flash Photography Tips.
But, let’s look at one specific image, and analyze what our options are, and see if we can make sense of it all …
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Filed under: exposure metering, flash photography, lighting, photo shoot, technique — Tags: exposure metering, flash photography, flash photography technique, flash photography techniques, flash photography tips, off-camera lighting for portraits, photography workshop — Neil vN @ 5:38 am
February 9, 2010
balancing flash and ambient exposure
This topic – balancing flash and ambient exposure – seems to one that many newer photographers struggle with. The big hurdle seems to be the basic starting point – how do you decide on the exposure for each?
I’d like to explore this topic a bit with this post. The trigger for this was a question that someone emailed me regarding an image in my book on flash photography. Instead of answering the question directly, I thought that a wider answer might be more illuminating. We’re still on that perpetual quest for more aha! moments. So let’s see where we head with this. (I’ll come back to the specific question and answer at the end of this.)
But why do we even want to add flash to a subject when the available light is soft?
The answer is that with flash we can control the direction and quality of light, and create a more dynamic image.
We don’t necessarily just use flash to avoid camera shake and / or poor exposure in low light. We use flash to create better light on our subject. We can ‘clean up’ the light that falls on our subject. Or to create more dynamic and interesting light. It’s about control. We decide. So where do we start?
The simplest approach for me, when I work in fairly flat and even ambient light, is to under-expose the ambient light by a certain amount. Then we add flash for correct exposure. So how much do we under-expose the ambient light by? Well, it depends. Usually a stop is good. Two stops can also work. If you’ve seen some of the images in fashion and music magazines where the subject is in a pool of light .. yet, the sunlit cityscape is darker, then that is because the photographer under-exposed the ambient light by 2-3 stops. Even in bright sunlight. So we have some leeway. That should ease some of the anxiety.
Under-exposing the ambient light by a stop, and then adding flash … is but one scenario, and one recipe. This approach won’t apply to every possible situation you might encounter .. but it’s a good starting point in grasping that Big Question – where do we even start in balancing flash and ambient light?
Let’s start of with an example where the previous method wouldn’t work:
settings: 1/125 @ f3.5 @ 800 ISO
lighting: Q-flash T5D-R, in TTL mode diffused by medium softbox to the right
(A speedlight in the softbox would’ve worked just as well here.)
Here’s the image without flash, just so we have a reference ..
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Filed under: exposure metering, flash photography, general photography, lighting, models — Tags: exposure metering, flash photography, flash photography technique, flash photography tips, lighting tutorial, off-camera lighting for portraits, photographic lighting — Neil vN @ 6:38 pm
October 27, 2009
[ click on the photo for a larger image ]
using off-camera flash on location
It was a busy weekend again, with a wedding and a portrait session on Sunday. From the photo session on Sunday, here’s my favorite image of the day. I just love the way the background appears in this photograph. The bokeh of this lens is just wonderful.
camera settings: 1/250th @ f4 @ 400 ISO
The camera used was the Nikon D3, (B&H), and the lens was the 70-200mm f2.8 VR , (B&H).
A telephoto zoom like this, or the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS, (B&H), is essential for this kind of portrait work.
That image is typical of the separation you can create between your subject and the background, by zooming tighter. Here I was zoomed to 170mm .. for no real reason than I liked the perspective at this point. I had a comfortable working distance in that he could listen and see any instructions I gave him on how to pose … yet the perspective is nice and tight.
Lighting is exactly as described on this previous post on off-camera lighting, where I used the Q-flash’s wireless TTL system. The Q-flash was held to my left, and at about 45 degrees to the boy, and diffused with a softbox.
My choice of settings was for the background exposure, and I was at maximum sync speed for a very specific reason. In using TTL flash, I was able to control my background exposure from my camera, by changing my aperture and ISO as needed .. while remaining at a high enough shutter speed.
And that’s it.
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