The photo that I posted of my friend Christy, lit by the lights lights surrounding the mirrored dressing table, was a co-incidental part of the photo shoot in the studio. It was a spontaneous thing. But when we got together for this photo session, I had other ideas that I actually wanted to try - something more dramatic, and using a new image projection kit that uses a gobo and a fresnel lens to focus the effect.
With a previous photo session with Jessica Joy, we had used the Light-Blaster to give an unexpected pattern to the background, Read more inside...
Flash photography: applying the Sunny 16 Rule & Flash Guide Number
In essence, if you know the GN of your flash, then you could use (bare) off-camera flash to match the sunlight, without even metering!
There is a super-useful shortcut built into those two simple values: Sunny 16, and the Guide Number.
Now, I am pretty sure that when you hear mention of the Guide Number of a flash, you're most likely switching off already, thinking that it is just an arcane list of numbers - different apertures against different power settings. But hang in there - this is very useful stuff Read more inside...
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...
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...
