Thinking outside the Box – Inside the trees
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.
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:
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