….what you do not light.
Here is a shot of impromptu model George, who was on the course:
David Honl and I lit George from the side with a single 430EX flash using a Traveller 8 softbox, during the”Advanced Flash” workshop Dave helped me teach Saturday in Toronto.
This shot illustrates the “it’s more important to think about what you do not light” principle you often hear me mention.
The following shot illustrates another principle: “light from the sides, fill from the front”. Here, we are lighting George with two 430EX speedlights, each with a 1/4″ grid, from the side. Another gridded speedlight is aiming at the background, and a final speedlight, in a Traveller 8 softbox, is aimed at his face.
We used manual flash for all these shots, and the flashes were connected to pocketwizards via Flashzebra cables.
Since we are using only flash (ambient plays no role), the settings are the standard 100 ISO, f/8, 1/125th second.
All these shots can be set up in just a couple of minutes, as Dave is explaining here to some of the students in this packed workshop:
If you were one of those students, I hope you’ll add some comments here about what you found most useful or most fun. I know many of you read this blog daily!
Today’s class with you and David Honl was yet another enthusiastic and thought provoking session. Although this is my second flash course (and 5th or 6th course with you), I constantly find new and useful tips to use in my everyday shoots. Something as simple as the FEL pre-flash to avoid the inevitable and untimely ‘blinkers’, or the multiple ways of using snoots, flags, gobos and grids (sounds like a Harry Potter movie) to enhance my creative side – there is always something to make me come back for more. Thank-you to you and David for a most enjoyable Saturday afternoon. See you next time. Richard