Wanted to share an off-camera flash technique for the photographer-blogstalkers out there…
I was asked to create a range of dramatic portraits of Frayne Lewis, President of OneSun Entertainment. The portraits needed to be shot in the recording studio environment. We shot in three indoor locations, all of them very dark and atmospheric, which is ideal for creating music, but not so great for creating portraits. Rather than bring huge lights into this very intimate setting (which would have to be dismantled and reassembled at each of the three locations), I decided to work with a single off-camera flash.
One benefit of shooting with a loose flash is that your assistant can reposition the flash very quickly, simply by moving closer or farther back, changing the angle, etc. It is a way to create exciting light in a short window of shooting time. Another key benefit is that the subject is not overwhelmed by lots of equipment, and tends to stay quite relaxed.
This technique is a simplified version of something I saw demonstrated live by the amazing Joe McNally. The idea is to turn your flash into a little portable softbox by shooting though a reflector. During Joe’s demo, he kept tweaking his angles, the flash output, the aperture… there was a constant thought process happening. Even for a technical master such as Joe, there was no “right” way to do it.
I used Lite Links to synch the camera and the flash. While I was adjusting the settings, I accidentally triggered the flash *before* the camera and captured the flash in the process of firing. This frame is a dud portrait, but a great shot of the set-up. Hope all you fellow photo geeks out there enjoy it!
– heidi
HERE’S THE SETUP:
HERE’S THE FINAL IMAGE:
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