Neil November 24th, 2008
Environment is one of your greatest tools as a photographer….
Without flash, as above – or with flash as below….if you’re mind is on the right frequency, you should be tuned into how to use that environment to your compositional advantage.
Flash – or added light – has the opportunity to transform an average shady building – into a night time scene where a fairy is running between the trees….
This is not a complicated setup – the flash is about 10 meters away from the bricks, elevated on stand into the tree leaves. The Nikon sb-something-or-other shoe flash is popping at 1/4 power, I’ve lowered my camera ISO to darken the ambient as much as possible within the shutter range for flash 1/250th of a second.
Exposure Explained:
- Ambient exposure is 1/250th a second @ f2.8 - ISO 200
- Flash altered reality is 11/250th a second @f4 – ISO 100
By dropping my ISO and increasing my aperture, I darkened the overall exposure of the scene by 2 stops. That is enough to allow the light to make it’s mark – however strong you make the power settings on your flash unit will determine the contrast in the scene.
When you work with your flash off of your camera – the exposure values don’t change as you move closer to the subject or farther away. Once you’ve freed yourself – take every advantage to work the envionment fully.
Listen to your shadows!
The shadows set the mood of your image.
Aiming your flash unit through the tree leaves gives you interesting and naturalized shadow shapes in your image. So even though you are using an unnatural light source you have given it natural elements that help with the design and composition of your photo. Draw your inspiration from these natural elements and build yourself a photo that exceed expectations!
As you’re listening to your shadows and you want to add that vintage golden distressed look buy and download the Golden Touch Texture Set from the create cart:
How well you listen and blend the natural elements and capture their essence defines your success:
Neil July 18th, 2008
My thanks go out to the Professional Photographers of Ontario for hosting a wonderful half day workshop for their members with me as their speaker at the Ashbridges Bay Yacht club in Toronto.
I was able to present to the group a motivational lecture, an on-location shoot, and an image review and quick post processing example after dinner. However to extend your experience, I’m going to provide you with some original Canon 1Ds raw files shot that day to try your hand at lab color mode post processing, as well as altering the mood of the photo with a lighting overlay image you can download from the Create Cart:
Have a brand new free texture from me as you check out from the cart – there are a few more free ones and several sets of high resolution texture and lighting files if you are interested.
Now on to the full raw file downloads:
Download Test file one (13mb Canon CR2 raw file): Blue background accentuated by a tungsten gelled main flash, if you weren’t there you can download this screen cast movie file to learn to process your files for rich and vibrant blues : or view this post page on photoshop manipulating the blue in images. This image would be a fun one to try out the texture – if you try it – post a link in the comments to your blog page, flickr page, or other way to see your results. In this image we use the principles of Make Light Real:
- provide a clear subject – by making the subject brighter than the background
- create compelling color and contrast – by altering the flash color temperature with a gel to warm it
- compose the unexpected – I waited until the boat was in the right place to add the added ‘story line’ to the photo
Download Test file two (13mb Canon CR2 raw file): another gelled image of the model on the rock, this is would be a great candidate for the lighting overlay you downloaded from above.
Download Test file three (13mb Canon CR2 raw file): a strong test of balancing the very dark nigerian model with the bright summer sky on the lakefront.
Have your fun with these images and post your versions to the comments and I’ll do my photoshop edits and post back in about a week.
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