![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/models\/shawna\/NVN_7700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
WPPI 2012 took place during the past week – as always, a crazy-hectic and exciting event. I once again presented a Master Class at WPPI. But I also took time to present a private mini-workshop to the first 3 people that signed up. We went over a condensed version of my full-day workshop, covering most of the material in the 4-hr long mini-workshop. Like last year, I called on my favorite model in Las Vegas, Shawna<\/a><\/strong>. Actually, she has since moved to L.A. but she was quite happy to make the trip back to Las Vegas to be our model.<\/p>\n The start of the practical part of the flash photography workshop<\/a> is always on-camera bounce flash<\/a>. For this article, I thought I’d use some of the demo photos, to show that there is a consistent technique here. \u00a0A consistent approach that guarantees at least a successful basic portrait with nice light and a pleasant background.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The pull-back shot to show where we were shooting during this part of the mini-workshop – my hotel room. Nothing extraordinary there. \u00a0But by eliminating everything you don’t want in the frame, and choosing a specific background, a simple flattering portrait is easily achieved.<\/p>\n 1. Find your background<\/strong><\/p>\n One thing I’m particular about, is that my background should be complementary, or non-intrusive.\u00a0A fast telephoto zoom is an indispensable lens for me in compressing the perspective when shooting a portrait.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. Base your ambient exposure on your background,<\/strong> I wanted the background to not blow out (via over-exposure), or be too dark. So I metered for the background, zero-ing my exposure meter in my camera, while looking at just the background. \u00a0The turquoise tint here is due to the green-ish tint to the windows of the MGM hotel.<\/p>\n 3. add light to your subject – in this case, on-camera bounce flash<\/strong><\/p>\n If I hadn’t based my exposure specifically off the background, but chose random settings, the TTL flash exposure would still give me correct exposure for my subject. \u00a0This is important to realize – TTL flash exposure will follow your camera settings<\/a>.<\/p>\n 1\/80 @ f3.2 @ 800 ISO<\/p>\n Back to the final image –\u00a0having metered for the background, I set my camera to: For the light, I used on-camera bounce flash, which I flagged with the black foamie thing<\/a>\u00a0(BFT) to give me short lighting<\/a>.<\/p>\n Just to make a note about the background again – I framed tightly, and I crouched slightly, so I could avoid the bland rooftop areas which were industrial looking, and not attractive. So I specifically framed Shawna against the out-of-focus fake-New-York skyline there in Las Vegas. The colors and shapes aren’t intrusive, and helps in giving the final photograph even more color.<\/p>\n There isn’t much more to add about the flash photography itself since I used TTL flash. The TTL exposure mode, as controlled by the camera & speedlight, helps considerably in making flash photography easy where I can concentrate on the final image. If there had been under- or over-ecposure, I would simply have adjusted my Flash Exposure Compensation up or down.<\/p>\n There it is – a consistent approach that gives me a basic portrait that always works. A good starting point.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bounce flash portrait – a consistent technique WPPI 2012 took place during the past week – as always, a crazy-hectic and exciting event. I once again presented a Master Class at WPPI. But I also took time to present a private mini-workshop to the first 3 people that signed up. We went over a condensed Read more inside…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[203,111,15,24,442],"tags":[890,881],"yst_prominent_words":[1134,1845,1844,4474,1842,13178,1416,1199,1847,3530,1851,13177,13176,1415,4188,1878,1853,4988],"class_list":{"0":"post-10102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-black-foamie-thing","8":"category-bounce-flash-photography","9":"category-flash-photography","10":"category-models","11":"category-shawna","12":"tag-black-foamie-thing","13":"tag-bounce-flash-photography","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10102"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51691,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10102\/revisions\/51691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10102"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/models\/shawna\/_tangents\/NVN_7702-900.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n
\nassuming your subject is under-exposed, and you can pick up the exposure of your subject via additional light such as flash.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/models\/shawna\/_tangents\/NVN_7699-900.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/models\/shawna\/_tangents\/NVN_7698.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n1\/250 @ f4 @ 800 ISO … and the TTL flash exposure adjusted for the change in settings to still give me correct flash exposure.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nRelated articles<\/h2>\n
\n
On-camera flash modifier – the black foamie thing<\/h2>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/flash\/bft\/bft_sq.jpg\")
<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\tI use the black foamie thing (BFT) as a truly inexpensive flash modifier to flag my on-camera flash to give me lighting indoors that truly look nothing like on-camera flash.The piece of foam<\/strong><\/a> (Amazon<\/em>), can be ordered via this link. I cut the sheet into smaller pieces.
The BFT is held in position by two hair bands<\/strong><\/a> (Amazon<\/em>), and the BFT is usually placed on the under-side<\/strong> of the flash-head.
The linked articles will give clearer instruction, especially the video clip on using the black foamie thing<\/a>.\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/p>\n