Finally got a shot this week that I liked.  Nothing like waiting until the last minute.  In my defense, I shot two other setups this week for my project, but neither of them turned out good, so I kept trying.  Good thing I did because I really like this shot.

Josi can always turn the cuteness up to 11 when she wants to and tonight was no exception.

I wanted to play with some gels and adjusting my white balance since it’s been a while since I’ve had fun with it, plus I wanted to mess around more with the bokeh my 50mm f/1.8 can create, so I tried to cram it all into one shot – I think I did a pretty good job (I say that every week, don’t I?).

For this shot I dropped my white balance down to 3850K, which is getting into the blue realm of color temperature, and then brought Josi back up and added some warmth with a full CTO gel and a 1/2 CTO gel on top of that.  That was on my SB-800 in the Westcott Apollo 28″ softbox pretty close on camera left.

The nice thing about working at wide apertures like f/1.8 is that your flashes barely have to work so your recycle times are almost instant, which makes it much easier to capture the moments like this one.

For the rim/separation light I used the SB-600 bare zoomed to 85mm back camera right.  I also added a 1/2 and a 1/4 CTB gel – those along with the cool white balance helped to create that nice blue light.  I think the white fabric on the Apollo was picking up a little spill from the blue rim light and mixing it in some with the warm key light to give some slight coolness to her skin tones as well.  Pretty cool.  And I didn’t even plan that!

Here is the setup shot:

Another week done!  I’d really like to do a self portrait in a similar setup, but they are so hard to do at f/1.8 – getting the focusing locked in is so hard when you barely have inches to work with.  I’ll keep trying though and hopefully I’ll get a good one.  It took me 3 shoots this week to get a shot that I really liked and wanted to share, but if that’s what it takes then so be it.

Who knows what next week will bring…

First, as I mentioned in an earlier post, is that I ordered Joe McNally‘s new book, The Hot Shoe Diaries, which came in a few weeks ago.  This book rocks!  I read through all of it in a matter of days and I’m re-reading it now.  Joe is really a genius and I would give just about anything to be able to work with him, but since that is probably never going to happen, this book is the next best thing.  You get some great insight to how Joe thinks and works and his approach to taking great pictures.

I’ve also been enjoying Joe’s training videos over at Kelby Training.  He has some great videos that go along with some of the photos from The Hot Shoe Diaries, which is nice.  I signed up for a one-month membership and I’m trying to get through as much training as I can.  Lots of great stuff there.  Speaking of Kelby Training – Scott Kelby, along with Matt Kloskowski, have been doing a weekly web series for Nikon shooters called D-Town TV.  There are some great tips there and a good watch every week.

Ok, on to the shoots.

Back in the middle of March I headed to the park to do some nice casual portraits of my friend Mandy.  I was out shooting with my SB-800 and triggering via CLS (which is awesome).  I’m really trying to fully master a single light source, so this is my go-to light (until I can afford an SB-900).  I got several good shots from that shoot, but I wanted to share one of my favorites:

This was shot with the SB-800 through a white umbrella on camera right at 1/4 power at 1/200 at f/5.6.  Very nice, saturated background and a great exposure on Mandy.  The look and the wind really add some flavor.  Speaking of wind, that shit is dangerous (as you’ll find out later).  Knocked my stand over many times and messed up my umbrella and stand a little.  I really need to get me some sand bags.

Last weekend I drove down to Joplin, Missouri for a little photog/model group shoot which was pretty fun.  The day went pretty well – got some great shots, got some exercise climbing all over rocks and trees, got some sun (a little too much), met some new people.  Almost too good to be true.  The wind was pretty strong that day, so my lighting stuff took a few tumbles, but for the most part it did well, especially when I was shooting with no modifiers, just zoomed flash, like this shot:

That was just a single SB-800 zoomed to 105mm with a full CTO gel plus and extra 1/2 CTO gel.  The camera was set to Tungsten white balance to get the cool feel.  The sun was pretty bright most of the day so I was pretty much at max sync speed (or higher with Auto-FP) and smaller apertures.  This shot was done at 1/200 at f/8.  Working close these little flashes work great, even with the bright sun.

After everyone shot at the park for a few hours we headed over to The Falls in Joplin to do some bikini shoots with the weather being nice and all.  Unfortunately this is when things start to take a turn for the worse.  We got to the falls around 2:00 or 3:00pm, so the sun was straight overhead with no cloud coverage whatsoever, which means I’m shooting at 1/200 at f/16 on IS 100 (usually I shoot 200 since that’s what most Nikons are optimized for) to get anywhere close to a proper exposure.  Forget about Auto-FP sync at f/16 – it’s not going to happen with just one Speedlight (maybe if I had a tree of Speedlights like Joe McNally did in the desert (p.259 in Hot Shoe Diaries)).

So, I’ve got one of the models out on a rock in the water and I’m several feet back trying to shoot some full body shots, hoping my SB-800 at 105mm on full power can get out there and through a little fill into my subject.  Not happening.  And just to make sure it wasn’t going to happen, the wind picks up and pushes my light stand over – right into the water!  Granted it wasn’t very deep, but still, my SB-800 went face first right into the water…not good.  So, I run over and pull it out and immediately turn it off and take the batteries out.  While maintaining a calm exterior but screaming “Oh my god, my flash!” on the inside I went over and finished that series with the model.  The whole time I was being nice and calm on the outside and freaking out on the inside.

I take my flash up the car and let it start drying out, but I wasn’t done.  There were still models I wanted to work with and shots I wanted to try, so I had to keep going.  I pulled out the trusty old Nikon SB-24 and some Cactus triggers and went back down to the falls to finish up.  Glad I came back because I managed to get this shot:

This was done with the SB-24 zoomed to its max of 85mm at full power and my camera set to 1/200 at f/13.  I wish I could have gotten the background slightly underexposed, but with the sun like that I was happy to just get some decent pictures.  Always have a backup handy.

So, I got some good shots but I might have lost my SB-800, and I definitely wasn’t looking forward to shelling out $450 for an SB-900 (even though I really want one…that’s a lot of cash).  On Monday I went to the local camera shop and got like 50 silica gel packets and packed my SB-800 with them and through it in a ziploc bag hoping they would pull all of the moisture out.  I fired it up today and everything appears to be working fine.  I tried it on the hot shoe, as a remote, manual power, TTL, no hiccups.  Bullet dodged…for now.  Hopefully it doesn’t slowly deteriorate.

Long story short, flashes and water don’t mix!  Be careful with your equipment when working around water…

And, at least for me, they aren’t terribly hard to do.  To get some practice and work on my portfolio I recently shot one of my bosses’ daughter for her senior pics for really, really cheap compared to what a lot of seniors are paying these days.  So I took my camera (Canon Rebel XTI at the time), one flash (Vivitar 285HV) with stand and modifiers, my kit lens (18-55m f3.5-5.6) and the great little Canon 50mm f/1.8 (I need to get the equivalent of this lens for my D70s) and headed downtown with her and her mom for a few hours and the end result was some awesome pictures (well, I think they are awesome).

Here are a couple of my favorites from the shoot and a few details about them.

This one was done with the flash on camera right through an umbrella with a full CTO gel and my white balance set to Tungsten.  Such an awesome trick…I don’t know what I’d do without it.  I love how it warms one side of her, but quickly changes to a cool tint from the Tungsten WB as the light falls off across her face.  And with the sunglasses it kind of reminds me of a shot you’d see in Hollywood somewhere.

One of my photog friends showed me this alley one weekend when we were downtown scouting locations and I decided I just had to use it.  Unfortunately for me the sun wasn’t even close to shooting some light down this alley when we were doing the shoot.  No biggie, I can make my own sun.  I stuck my flash high and directly behind me on full power through an umbrella with a 1/2 (or maybe 3/4) CTO gel on it and viola!  Fake sun.  Very easy to do.  There were a few shots I did of her where I created the sun wherever I needed it.

This last one is probably my favorite from the whole shoot.  This was one of the poses she sent me that she liked so I decided to do my best to make it look good for her.  Again the setup on this one is so easy.  Flash through an umbrella on camera right, probably 1/4 or 1/2 power, slightly above and at the magical 45 degree angle.  That’s it.  So easy and look at the results.  I did soften this one up some and add the vignette for some effect, but overall it was a very easy image to create.

All of that with one light and some modifiers and diffusers.  That’s the Strobist way.  And for good reason – it works!  Easy and light to carry all around downtown with me and easy to setup and change when needed.  These senior pictures are much better than the ones I did for my brother back in August (these were taken in early November), but back then I was still learning flash, so most of his were just ambient light with a reflector.  One portable light makes so much difference.

If you haven’t taken the time to learn about off-camera lighting, now is the time to start.  It will change the way you think about photography, I promise!