Ryan McCullen of Hubert Builders boards up the window frames of 22 9th Street in Columbia, Mo. The space, which was previously the headquarters of the local Obama for America campaign, is now being renovated for a planned women's boutique.

“Fill flash.”  It’s a term familiar to pretty much everyone.  The only thing that makes it more interesting is when you decide to take the flash off of the camera and place it on a stand.  This frees up the photographer to place the light where it should be, not where the camera is positioned.  For wildlife photographed with a 500mm lens, placing the flash on axis makes a lot of sense–on a cloudy day just dial down the flash to -2 or -3 EV (via ETTL), put a Better Beamer on there, and call it a day.

For this assignment I was working with less space than I would have liked, and what began as a completely open storefront was actually being boarded up by the construction worker, Ryan McCullen.  I really wanted a second light: one inside (behind him) to work in tandem with the flash that I had with me.  Of course, before he boarded up the windows, I had two lights (the sun, hopefully operating at full power…).

I triggered the flash on the light stand with some “Poverty Wizards”–the cheap radio remotes from Hong Kong that are all over eBay.  I do own a Canon remote trigger, but it is based on infrared line-of-sight, and in bright sun it simply doesn’t work.  If I could afford Pocket Wizards…some day.  Until then, the cheap eBay remotes seem to be working!

With a little help from the fill light slider in Lightroom, the image opens up pretty nicely, and the juxtaposition between McCullen working away and the motley crew of people hanging out on the street–”We’re All Vampires” does amuse me.

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Tags: Advanced Techniques, light, lighting, lit, photojournalism, strobe, Strobist
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Nikon D300 w/ 24-70 f/2.8 and SB-900 triggered by CLS. Exposed 1/250 sec. @ f/14, ISO 250

For the past few days I’ve been peering over at the other side of the fence to see what Nikon has to offer with regard to off-camera lighting. I had heard about CLS–the Creative Lighting System–for some time, but few here at Mizzou seem to be using it. Finally, I just decided to check it out for myself, so I borrowed a D300 and an SB900 Speedlight and discovered how ridiculously easy it is to control the flash unit from the camera in either fully-manual or ETTL modes. From the perspective of a Canon user, it’s just sick.

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Tags: architecture, CLS, Creative Lighting System, light, lighting, lit, Nikon, strobe, Strobist, wireless flash
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The concept of the “beauty dish” came up today in my Advanced Techniques class at MU.  Two examples that immediately jumped to mind, both linked from David Hobby’s Strobist blog.

The first was a People magazine photo spread from 2007 that featured ten celebrities without the use of retouching–digital or otherwise.  Instead, studio techniques were employed to ensure that these celebrities would not look like mere mortals.  Just the same, I’d rather see clever studio work to get the result “in camera” than to see a photograph in a magazine that features only a few “original” pixels.  Strobist points to a PopPhoto blog that (roughly) explains how the images were created.

Secondly, I thought of a portrait of a Navy SEAL by photographer Morgan Silk.  The setup for the photograph was a beauty dish, a reflector, and two smaller lights for some rim lighting in back.  It’s explained at F Stop, with some really nice diagrams.  Ironically, and unfortunately, I think just as much post-production retouching went into the photo as would normally have happened with the photos of the ten celebs.  Funny old world.  The addition of the sky is just overkill, but the lighting on the face, especially, is interesting (and simple).

Finally, if you want to make your own beauty dish, there is a tutorial at Light and Pixels.

Tags: Advanced Techniques, beauty dish, lighting, portraits, Strobist
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