Tangents

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Directional light from your on-camera flash

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Directional light from your on-camera bounce flash

Most often when photographers start using their flashguns out of the directly-forward position, they move the flash head to point 45’ or 90’ upward. The idea here is to bounce flash off the ceiling. Even though this is an improvement in most cases over using the flashgun pointing directly forward, this is also most often not ideal. We can improve on this. If we consider how studio lights are set up, we’ll rarely see a light source directly overhead of our subject. Top lighting just isn’t as flattering as light coming in from an  Read more inside...

Photography: Finding the light

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Photography: Finding the light

I've been so inspired by the various photographers at seminars and magazine articles, telling everyone to just look for the light and to find the light. So many photographers just use available light, and make the rest of us who aren't blessed with perfect light like they have in la-la-land, feel so inadequate. It is our failing as photographers if we can't find the light and use it properly. I felt I had to rise up to this and push myself as a photographer, and just look for the light.  It is there to be found! Inspired like that, I approached  Read more inside...

Using the histogram to determine exposure

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How to use the camera's histogram for exposure metering

Histograms display the relative levels of the darker to brighter tones. As the histogram stands, it isn't of much direct use to us, since the tonality of the scene that was captured will dictate what the histogram shows us .. without a direct indication of whether exposure is correct. Some will say that a histogram should have an even bell-shaped curve, but this is too simplistic.   A light toned subject against a white wall will show a much different histogram that a dark toned subject against a dark wall .. even though the  Read more inside...

Flash photography & Fireworks

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Photographing fireworks, using flash

Generally, you wouldn't use flash to photography fireworks. But when you have someone in the foreground, then it becomes useful to have your subject lit up with flash, to balance them with the background (the fireworks display.) Photographing people with fireworks in the background, is just an application of the technique known as dragging the shutter. I had the couple in an area where there wasn't much ambient light, so that I could light them mostly with flash. The strobe was a Quantum T2 with an umbrella, used in manual. My flash exposure  Read more inside...

Bounce flash photography: Problem-solving by improvising

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Bounce flash photography: Problem solving with improvised lighting

I received an email from Dr. Joel Studin in April '06, where he asked for help in setting up photographic lighting in his examination room at his offices. Dr. Studin is a renowned cosmetic surgeon based in Long Island, NY and he needs to do specific 'before' and 'after' photographs of his patients for his records. But there was a problem - despite guidelines from the plastic surgery society on standardizing photography, the results weren't consistent, and just didn't look good. Fortunately, I was able to help  Read more inside...