Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! I'm looking forward to a new year more of all that is photography: catching loved ones in candid moments, learning new lighting techniques, testing out equipment, and collaborating with friends. Have a great year and keep taking photos!

Lighting A Room With Stationary Flashes

I like to complain about having to use on-camera flash to light people when I shoot indoors. Unfortunately, there is no alternative (that I'm willing to employ) if I'm shooting in a large indoor venue like a nightclub. But what if all my subjects are in one room? In a controlled and relatively static situation like that, David Hobby (The Strobist) describes a very cool alternative to lighting with on-camera flash. Here's David's technique in a nutshell: Get two flashes wireless controlled by the camera, put the two flashes on opposite corners of the room, and point them up at the ceiling. His setup provides even lighting to just about every inch of the room. You're now free to move about and take photos without flashing people directly in the face! Unfortunately, what looks good on paper doesn't always translate perfectly to the real world. Here's a diagram of my lighting setup and some original photos: Setup Original #1 Original #2 Original #3 Before I continue, let me set the stage. We were all in Mark's family room. The flash at the top right corner of the diagram is on a lightstand which is visible in the top right corner of Original #1. The second flash is in the top left corner of Photo #2. The second flash sat in a hollow part of the wall connecting the family room to the living room and hallway. Now onto the problems! Problem 1: Everything is too dark. As you can see in the last two photos, the room was not lit up as much as I wanted. I think a big reason was that much of the light from the second flash bled into the adjacent hallway and living room and therefore did not help illuminate the family room. So why didn't I increase the power of the flash? See below. Problem 2: Hot spot in the corners I really didn't like the hot spots in the corners of the room, especially near the first flash (see Original #1). I don't know how to correct it. I'm going to have to chew on this problem for awhile... In conclusion, despite my setup not working exactly as I planned, I'm happy with the results. When I think about how my friends would have looked had I blasted them with on-camera flash, I know I made the right choice by trying out David's technique. By the way, the intro photo at the top of the post looks pretty good, because I increased the exposure in Lightroom. Thank goodness for post-processing!

Get High To Get Wide

A few posts ago, I complained about not having a wide enough lens to capture a table full of food. I ended that post by writing that I should have stood on top of a chair and pointed my camera down in order to get the wide shot. That's exactly what I did when I took this photo at the SoCal holiday party. This photo isn't very good, but I love it when I actually listen to my own advice! :-)

Almost Catching A Perfect Moment

While shooting photos of Mark and his family on the balcony, more friends arrived! Since the flashes were already in place, I hustled the newcomers up to the balcony for some quickie shots. I was trying to take a photo of the setup for this blog before taking everything down when Mark told a joke. The result? Almost a great photo of Jane laughing and not a good shot of my setup. I'd call this the worst of both worlds. Dag nabbit!

Playing With Two Flashes

My buddy Mark has a balcony with a gorgeous view...and a flash. I was glad I lugged my off-camera lighting kit with me to Southern California, because now I had two flashes, a light stand, a shoot-through umbrella, and a tripod at my disposal. I sensed an opportunity for some photographic fun! I wanted to try adding a rim light to provide some drama. I did this by putting the first flash on the tripod at 9:00 camera left and angling it away from the camera. I shot the key light through the umbrella at 4:00 camera right on the light stand. Unfortunately, the camera left side of everyone's face was too dark (especially Mark's because of his infernal baseball cap!), so I turned the rim light into the fill light by moving it to 8:00 camera left. Looking back, I should have upped the power of the key light and moved it to 7:00 camera right to provide a bit more light on their faces instead of moving the rim light. Final lighting setup: I have to admit that I don't like how the photo turned out. It lacks "drama". I should have turned down the power of the left flash to increase the contrast between the right and left sides of their faces. Looking at this photo again, it actually looks like my "fill light" put out more light than the "key light". I really need to be more careful of the lighting ratios! Despite the disappointing result, I am very grateful to my friends for letting me use them as guinea pigs. I learned a lot and it sure beats taking photos of myself!

Autofocus vs. Toddler

Will AF ever be able to keep up with an energetic toddler like Kasey? I doubt it. During the holiday party in SoCal, I spent a lot of time in the family room shooting photos of Kasey and her parents. Whenever I got on the ground and crawled within 5 feet of her, Kasey would charge at the camera. Most of the time my AF gave up trying to lock focus, but I just kept shooting and hoping for the best. While I wish my AF could keep up with her, I sometimes got some cool unfocused shots of her that really conveyed the kinetic nature of this excited little girl.

Holiday Party in SoCal

Just over a week ago I went down to Southern California for a holiday party thrown by my college friends. There were lots of people and plenty of opportunities for me to experiment with my camera. As always, I made a lot of mistakes, but learned a lot too. I look forward to sharing all that with you during the next few days. You can see more photos from that weekend here.