Testing lights

Hey there everyone!

As most of you know by now, I was at Jerry Ghionis' seminar on Tuesday, and he taught this old dog some new tricks. As my class was shooting models on Thursday night, I was playing around with some tips that Jerry shared with us. As a wedding/event photographer, quite often I don't have the ability of using off camera flash. Due to moving around, drunk people, space, often times it's just not safe or reasonable to set a light on a stand. This first image of Matthew was taken using Jerry's helpful tip of just bouncing your "on camera" off a wall at 90 degrees from your subject, vs using a ceiling or a piece of tupperware. So of course I had to try it. And then I needed to test it at it's limits. You see, Matthew is standing on a sidewalk, and I bounced the light off a storefront 50 feet across the street. And it worked! My settings were ISO 1250, f/2.8, 1/50 sec, shot with my 5DMKII, 70-200 f/2.8IS, and the original 580EX.

Here is another shot using the same set-up with similar settings. Again, this isn't about the quality of the posing, this is about testing out a new technique.

I also worked with Virginia last night, again playing with some ideas I had. She was lit with a rechargable flash light I got at Home Depot for $20 similar to this...

For the next 2 shots, I added the 580EX hand held by Virginia's husband to add a little seperation. These were shot with a tungsten white balance also. Just going for something a little different, and to show that class that you don't need a bunch of lighting gear to get creative.

There will be a tutorial coming soon on Faded & Blurred soon about the technique used on the first image here.