February 10th, 2010 Photo Blog 018 – La Perouse sunset shoot

Hey there,

Well what do you know, two posts in two days – must be some kind of miracle! Today I am sharing the results of my first try at shooting some sunset portraits with off camera flash. I had planned to have a go at using an underexposed sunset as my backdrop and my two flashes to cross light Sonia and that is pretty much how it went. I didn’t quite get the sunset I was expecting after a roasting 30+ degrees day in Sydney, with clouds completely drowning out any sun for the golden hour before sunset, but I quite liked the moody atmosphere the overcast skies helped to create anyway.

These shots were taken using a ratio of 2:1 or 4:1 between the main light and the fill. Again, I was too excited to really concentrate on making notes on the exact settings used for each shot but in essence it was a pretty standard setup. The main stepsI was trying to think about in the above shot were as follows:

1. Fix the aperture and ISO in manual mode, then use the shutter speed to underexpose the background.
2. Bring Sonia into the shot and stick a couple of flashes on her, starting off I think with 1/2 power on the main and 1/4 power on the fill.
3. Adjust the aperture to expose Sonia correctly
4. Re-adjust the shutter speed to bring the ambient back down to where I wanted it

The above shot ended up having the following EXIF:

Aperture: F9
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/160 sec
Focal length: 24mm

I could have brought the aperture down a stop to let me bring the power down on my flashes and save some battery power, but being in the heat of the moment I was just too excited to think about what I should be doing!

I did try backlighting a few shots and this was one of them. I don’t know how much of an effect it had, but the result was quite pleasing anyway

Sonia had the idea to try some jumping photos – here is a wide angle to show the simple setup I used to get the shot below:

Overall I am really pleased with these photos, I can’t wait until the next time when hopefully I will be a little bit more composed and think a bit more about what I’m doing!

I’ll be sure to post the results here whatever happens!