Photo Blog 021 – Cronulla Beach Portraits
After a little while away from my camera I finally got a chance to get out and snap some more portraits last weekend. We have at last found and settled into a new flat in Sutherland which makes Cronulla our new local beach, so off we trotted with a camera and a couple of strobes down to the northern end of the beach to see what we could do.
Sonia @ Cronulla Beach
These photos are a mixture of one and two flash setups whilst using the sun as the back or rim light. The session was mainly an experiment to see how far I could push my 2 little Cactus flashes in overpowering the ambient light from the high noon sun. Given that my 5D Mark 2′s only synch’s with the flash at a speed of 1/200s or slower, could the flashes produce enough light to light the subject with my ISO and Aperture closed down enough to underexpose the ambient?
One flash worked quite well, but when I added the second it just gave me that little bit of leeway with my camera settings. I pushed the aperture all the way down to f22 for some shots and still had enough light on Sonia to make the picture.
I am a big fan of the technique a lot of small flash photographers use which is to underexpose the background by one to two stops whilst exposing the subject correctly using the strobes, these shots are my best attempt at this so far.
Sonia @ Cronulla Beach
I’ve read a bit about how setting your shutter speed faster than the full flash sync speed can actually be used creatively. Setting my camera to 1/250s has the effect of darkening the bottom of my frame, as if I was using a gradiated neutral density filter. In the above image, I turned the camera so that the darkened edge was on the left side helping to keep the light from the flash focused on Sonia. The sand in the bottom left portion of the image is darkened which kinda creates a spotlight effect on my model.
Sonia @ Cronulla Beach
White balance was another creative consideration. I was using an orange 1/2 CTO gel on my flash in the above shot to warm up the light it produced to try to match the daylight ambient. You can tell the difference in the colour of the light on Sonia’s face between the above shot and the one below which was using two flashes and no CTO gel.
Sonia @ Cronulla Beach
This shot uses another technique i’ve been keen to try out since I read about it online – and that is to close your aperture way down (high f number) to get that starburst effect on a light source, such as the sun. f16 was enough to give me these streaks you can see emanating from the sun here. Using a bigger aperture would have made the sun just look like a big overexposed blob.
I also like the separation between Sonia and her backgroud that was created by backlighting her with the sun. She was also being cross-lit by a flash either side of the camera to light her properly. Without these flashes she would have pretty much have been a silhouette.
Sonia @ Cronulla Beach
The main thing that could have been better in this series of shots is the softness of the light. I was not able to diffuse my flashes for two reasons – 1: I would have lost too much light by shooting through the umbrella’s and wouldn’t have got the exposures I was looking for… and 2: It was too darn windy! They would have taken off, with all my gear attached.
Due to this all three of my light sources (the sun and 2 bare flashes) were very hard, creating harsh shadows. Still, this was an experimental day so I guess I can’t have it all right?
Lighting Set-up
I always like to stand back and take a set-up shot when I’m outside with my flashes. I dunno why, it’s just kinda fun I suppose!
If we are to take anything from this kind of setup shot, we could see it as an example of how the light-to-subject distance is what affects the exposure, regardless of the light-to-camera or camera-to-subject distance. I could be inches from Sonia’s face, or 20 meters away with a telephoto lens and the exposure would be the same.
Not sure what’s next on the agenda, but you can be sure that you will be able to read about what ever it is on this blog!
Til next time folks…
