Death Valley Nite Portrait
After getting the final shots of the desert sunset at the Mesquite Dunes, it's still not too late for a portrait session, before heading to the only restaurant in town.
Although, when it seems like there's just not enough light left.....there is! And, with a tripod, long shutter speeds and off-camera flash units handy, it's pretty amazing what you might come up with.
There's always a willing subject or two along at our classes, and this evening's model was the lovely and talented.... Samara.
The main light here is an umbrella mounted to a lightweight 8 foot stand, with the brilliant usage of my second camera as ballast, hanging on the stand. You'd think that in the sand dunes, a sand bag would be the proper tool. No wind was blowing this evening so it worked fine.
The second light, which was acting as a kick, or separation source, was placed behind Samara, and off to camera right, with no modification..just the basic, on camera light, this time being held by a human stand...a 5 foot ten-inch model. ( her face is intentionally blocked by the flash unit, as part of her arrangement with the Witness Protection Program)
The metering is pretty straight forward, here. Before even thinking about the flash units, I simply metered, in-camera for the ambient light. And, at iso 400, the reading at f/5.6 was 2 seconds. So, the camera was manually set for those exact settings.
Now, we simply turned on the umbrella source, did a couple test pops, with the external meter, and set the power manually on the flash unit, to get a reading of 5.6. Same deal for the kick light....except, since I didn't want this light to be quite as dominant, we set it up at one stop under the main, and got this reading set at f/4.
As time moved on, and we made a couple minor tweaks to her hair, etc....the ambient light continued to slowly dim....resulting in a need for a slightly longer shutter speed of 3 seconds....but, the flash units remained constant, so we kept the aperture at 5.6. And, for no reason whatsoever, I turned off the kick light for the close-up.
Gear-wise: the lights were triggered by the Elinchrom Skyports. The flash units are both the newest model of the Metz on-camera units, which are amazingly accurate with TTL exposure...
Although, when it seems like there's just not enough light left.....there is! And, with a tripod, long shutter speeds and off-camera flash units handy, it's pretty amazing what you might come up with.
There's always a willing subject or two along at our classes, and this evening's model was the lovely and talented.... Samara.
The main light here is an umbrella mounted to a lightweight 8 foot stand, with the brilliant usage of my second camera as ballast, hanging on the stand. You'd think that in the sand dunes, a sand bag would be the proper tool. No wind was blowing this evening so it worked fine.
The second light, which was acting as a kick, or separation source, was placed behind Samara, and off to camera right, with no modification..just the basic, on camera light, this time being held by a human stand...a 5 foot ten-inch model. ( her face is intentionally blocked by the flash unit, as part of her arrangement with the Witness Protection Program)
The metering is pretty straight forward, here. Before even thinking about the flash units, I simply metered, in-camera for the ambient light. And, at iso 400, the reading at f/5.6 was 2 seconds. So, the camera was manually set for those exact settings.
Now, we simply turned on the umbrella source, did a couple test pops, with the external meter, and set the power manually on the flash unit, to get a reading of 5.6. Same deal for the kick light....except, since I didn't want this light to be quite as dominant, we set it up at one stop under the main, and got this reading set at f/4.
As time moved on, and we made a couple minor tweaks to her hair, etc....the ambient light continued to slowly dim....resulting in a need for a slightly longer shutter speed of 3 seconds....but, the flash units remained constant, so we kept the aperture at 5.6. And, for no reason whatsoever, I turned off the kick light for the close-up.
Gear-wise: the lights were triggered by the Elinchrom Skyports. The flash units are both the newest model of the Metz on-camera units, which are amazingly accurate with TTL exposure...
posted by Don Gale at
9:38 AM
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