I have used this photograph several times in the past to illustrate various aspects of flash photography in low light, so it might be time to discuss this image more thoroughly.
We'll also pull together a few other topics and see how it all comes together at this one point:
Dragging the shutter
Gelling your flash
Bounce flash technique
Direction of light
The advantage of using TTL flash
Working alongside a videographer
Read more inside...
Mixing the white balance of different light sources
While we would do well to gel our flash when working in a very warm or incandescent spectrum, (such as when shooting at a venue bathed in Tungsten light), the last few articles showed how we can use it to our advantage when using different light sources with different color balance. The effect can be quite dramatic.
The examples shown have been varied:
In the first example (with Bethany as our model), we looked at using random found available light as portrait lighting. With the next example, the effect was purposely sought Read more inside...
wedding portraits: finding something to bounce your flash off
One of the frequent questions that come up, is what to do when there is nothing to bounce your flash off. When working indoors and there are bounce-able surfaces around me, my first instinct is to use on-camera bounce flash. It is easy to use, and the results can look surprisingly good, especially if you consider the minimal effort that went into it. No extra gear to carry around and set up. But when there is nothing to bounce flash off, you have to adapt your technique ... Read more inside...
In teaching workshops on flash photography, I frequently encounter newer photographers who are overwhelmed by flash photography. Overwhelmed to the extent that they fear their flash, and would rather not deal with flash photography at all. Instead, they adopt the idea that they will only specialize in available light photography. Now, that kind of thinking is an artistic dead-end. As a photographer that aspires to truly being creative, you need to understand light, regardless of how it is supplied to us.
I do feel that flash photography is one of those Read more inside...
This portrait of musician, Josh Adams, was a fairly quick set-up. I deliberately chose an area in a large hotel conference room to shoot this. A bit of a challenge to see how quickly I could get a simple but dramatic portrait out of a 'nothing' scenario. Here's the pull-back shot that will show you the area, as well as the placement of the lights:
The light came from three speedlights, all controlled with the PocketWizard FlexTT5 transceivers. They in turn were controlled via an on-camera FlexTT5 (for Nikon), with an AC3 Zone Read more inside...
Light from a Beauty Dish has a distinctive look - an interesting combination of soft light with a pronounced fall-off to the edges. With a softbox there is a lot of scattering of the light, making it exactly that soft light source that it is named after. A softbox is therefore quite forgiving of how you position the light in relation to your subject. The beauty dish in comparison, used as a single light source, will give light that can be both dramatic and pleasing. (Not nearly as hard as video light or direct unmodified Read more inside...
Using images from a past workshop, I want to explain a simple concept with flash photography on location. In workshops and seminars I quite often describe the flash as 'riding on top of' the available light exposure. It's just another way of describing the usual technique of under-exposing the ambient light somewhat, and then using flash to give correct exposure. We can thereby control the final look of the image by controlling the direction of light from our flash.
By using flash like this, we can use the flash to 'clean up' the light in the Read more inside...
The advice for optimal camera settings for best image quality are usually:
- use the lowest possible ISO:
- at an aperture about 3 stops down from maximum (the widest) aperture;
- at a shutter speed fast enough to avoid camera shake and unintentional subject movement.
Taking this general advice at face value, means using the camera at its base ISO, which would either be 100 ISO or 200 ISO. However, while this advice is sound in theory, in practice this doesn't have direct consequence on my decision about my camera settings.
In terms of Read more inside...
Comparison between a softbox, a white shoot-through umbrella and a bounce umbrella
I've had several requests from readers of the Tangents blog about how the light from a softbox would differ from the light from an umbrella. Spurred on by that, and by my own curiosity, I met up a while ago with my favorite model, Anelisa, specifically to do comparison shots.
And here it is ... Read more inside...
