Models: Amy, Jariah & Brittney

Make Up & Hair: Jessica Peris

BTS gun: Michael Watson

Set & Location: Danny Theuma.

 

I use flash a lot for my photography, regardless of the location or the (ambient) lighting condition.

Check out how I lit this above image further down.

For me, more important than the quality of light (as so many people refer to without really giving a good definition of it) details are the key for a great photograph.

Details, literally in any sens of the term:

– details of the point of interest

– details of the foreground, background or lack of it (bokeh)

– details or the quality of details (contrast)

As we all know, our eyes can see more (dynamic range, contrast…) than a sensor in a digital camera, be it SLR or Medium Format.

When I take a picture, I use flash mainly to ‘reduce’ the contrast between deep shadow and bright highlights. Note that I said ‘reduce’ because what I try to do is to make the (all) details of a scene visible in a photograph, within the limited dynamic range of the sensor.

Also note that to distinguish details at different tonal ranges, we need some levels of contrast between pixels. HDR images are very contrasty all by having lighter shadows and darker highlights..

Here is a particular setup that I used for a far away shoot, AmBeR. It was back in time when I created a series of shoot giving each of them a colour theme. We are today talking about AmBeR.

As shown in the picture below, you can see that when I have control on the lights (yeah, it was in the middle of a harsh sun day), I faced limitations because of the background I chose to shoot against. The car.

As illustrated, I used two lights for my setup, one as main light on camera right and a bare bulb light for extra wrap, with the sun in the back of the models (shadows on the grass). You can also see our BTS man, Michael Watson, in action with the behind the scene video that I hope will be put up very soon.
As mentioned, I used flash in almost 90% of my photography but always try to make it look natural i.e. as your eyes would see the scene.My keylight in this setup is mainly used as fill maintaining the shadows created by the sun as in real life.

Flash photography is more than putting a light on a stick. You need to be able to know where to put the light and more importantly control the ratio to not create the common error of double shadow (especially the shadow between the model and the natural source of light)

You can see on the grass that even my two lights fire to properly expose the models, the sun still has the most power and the rim light created by the sun is obvious on Brittney’s legs.

With the same principle of maintaining the ambient and balancing artificial light, I lit this scene with the same two lights and maintain the ambient light through the skylight above and behind Jariah’s left and a fluro tube behind on her right.

I provide 1-on-1 flash photography workshop.

Feel free to contact me to book your session.

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