It is an epiphany for a photographer when he or she starts noticing the light. And in particular:
Primary questions:
- What is the light? One source or multiple sources?
- Which direction or directions is the light coming from?
Secondary questions:
- What colour or colours?
- How hard or soft?
Look at this picture of Saturday’s wedding:
I did the following:
Look for the flowers. Decide to aim the subjects away from the sun; for three reasons:
- You get a nice hair light.
- They do not squint.
- You get great shadows in front of the subjects!
Of course the subjects would now be dark, what with the sun behind them. So I would need a heck of a large reflector – or, as was the case here, a strobe with an umbrella, fired with a pocketwizard. I only had one strobe available (don’t ask: shortage of pocketwizard-strobe cables), but one strobe was enough.
Light is fun, as yesterday’s photo of the little girl also shows, right? My tip today: Always, always try to see where the light is.
I know your the master speedlighter 🙂 , but just so I fully understand. Strobe as in big big powerful light with batterypack or a speedlight
Strobe, big light, 400 Ws, with battery pack. If I used speedlights, I’d need three or four for this shot. Three should do it. Unmodified.
Based on a recent previous post, it looks like you are using Bowens strobes. Testing with a Bowens 500R and Canon 600 EX RT, the light from the Canon at full power was the same as from the Bowens set half way up the dial. On that basis, you should be able to do it with 2 speedlights, even if your strobe was set to full power.