Outdoor Flash

On a recent workshop to Sedona, Arizona we were able to add to the already amazing quality of the late afternoon light with a simple, off-camera flash.

For the images with the cactus, the background was what initially got my attention. The next logical step was to search for a suitable foreground element. And in Sedona there's no shortage of great foregrounds.

The biggest technical issue was the blending of the dark cactus with the shadowed portion of the cliffs in the background. The solution was to light the cactus....but, front-lighting, with the flash on-camera, would be too flat. So, what we did here, was to put the flash up high and behind the thorn covered foreground. This created a very dramatic look, and the rim-lighting radically separated the 2 elements.

The second series of images was taken a few minutes later, at the same location.
So, the same type of challenges needed to be addressed. The background hills and sky were perfect....all that was needed was some light on the subject. We used the same off camera flash, but this time the light was placed off to my right, to add a nice shadow pattern to Mike's face. And, since the color temperature of both background ( ambient) and foreground (flash) didn't match, I placed a small Lee warming gel over the flash head, to warm up this light source.