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). Where I can though, the simplest approach for me though, is where I can, is to just not deal with the hard sunlight. I find shade.
This maternity portrait session of Amy was taken on a bright day, and I wanted to avoid her squinting in Read more inside...
Getting the most power from your flash / speedlite / speedlight
This might be obvious, but the most power (or light) that you're going to get from your flash, is at full output in manual. Then the flash dumps everything it has. Full power. You could of course zoom your flash-head a little tighter and get more power / range, but essentially, you're at the limit.
This is useful to know when you're balancing flash with bright sunlight. With this portrait of Shawna, out on the Las Vegas strip, I wanted that sun-flare look ... but I also wanted to balance the super-bright background Read more inside...
Flash photography tip: Find your background, then your settings
With flash photography on location, we nearly always start off by figuring out what we want to do in relation to our available light. We might just need fill-flash, or or flash might need to do the "heavy lifting" and expose correctly for our subject in relation to the available light. When we have our subject in (relative) shade, and need to figure out our flash exposure, we also need to decide exactly what our background is.
It usually works best to be specific about our background ... and how we position ourselves Read more inside...
This portrait of an unusual model, Ulorin Vex, was truly simple in its execution - most of the work was done by Ulorin Vex with her outfit and her striking looks. Then, the composition and choice of background was the hotel room with this stripy wall paper. I thought the bold yellow and green stripes would complement her bright red outfit, without competing. Then the lighting - off-camera bounce flash - was simplicity itself. I had a speedlight that I bounced off a white surface to create a large light source for flattering, soft light. But it took me a few Read more inside...
Canon wireless e-TTL flash triggers / radio transmitters
A bridal portrait (taken during one of the photo sessions arranged by the Hudson Valley Click), where it is easy to see the advantage of using off-camera lighting.
The strong back-lighting is used as a way to highlight the background and have the rim-lighting etch our model against the background. Of course, having her turn her back to the sun also helps with not having our model squinting in the bright light. We immediately avoid unflattering hard light on her face. But we then do need to add off-camera lighting of some Read more inside...
During this engagement photo session with a couple, Ashley and Michael, we roamed around the campus grounds of the university where they had met. In the one part of the grounds, there was this clump of trees, planted in a small rectangle with two seats. Since it was so dark there under the trees, they wondered who'd ever go and sit there. It just didn't look appetizing. Then I though ... hmmm, with some off-camera flash from behind, we can really make this place look like something. Read more inside...
off-camera flash – creating separation with back-lighting (model: Bethany)
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 Read more inside...
This image of Amy, one of our models at a workshop, is a fairly straight-forward portrait using off-camera flash in TTL mode. And it is ideal for an overview again of how easy the ambient & flash exposure metering is. The basic approach with this on-location portrait is to expose for the ambient light in the background, making sure our subject is somewhat under-exposed ... and then to add off-camera flash with a softbox. The first question that came up was - how did I meter for the ambient light?
Read more inside...
Multiple off-camera flash - gelling your flash for effect
All the light you see in this photo, is from two speedlights. The blue color in the background is because I gelled my one flash. While that might give you the idea that I gelled the background flash with a blue gel, what I actually did, was gel my main flash with two 1/2 CTS gels (affiliate). That's all I had with me, but I wanted those hard cold blue tones to the background.
A single 1/2 CTS gel would take the flash to 3700K. Adding a 2nd gel didn't take it as far as a full CTS would've, but closer to 3350K, going Read more inside...
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 Read more inside...
