My final post related to the DCC trip to the War Memorial Gardens brings me to the last scene I shot as the light levels were falling. I used HDR for my first photo, had a bit of good luck with my second, and killed the ambient for my third. For my final shot I again used my off camera flash, but this time rather than killing the ambient light I worked with it, using artificial light to create a mood.
I moved into the shade of a patch of woodland towards the back of the gardens and looked for a shot amongst the trees. Finding a couple of trees on their own, with a scattering of dry leaves at their base, I decided to see if I could use light here to craft an image. Again here the natural light was quite flat, but this time rather than kill it off entirely I controlled my exposure so that in the background, beyond the trees, the available evening light was adequately exposing the scene. Under the cover of the trees themselves this meant that the foreground was underexposed and so my two artificial light sources had some work to do.
First up I set about finding my camera angle, and decided to use the wall as a leading line running from the bottom left of the frame. That settled, I next set up my main light. This was an SB-800, with no modifier, but with a tungsten gel to warm it up, clamped to a tree at camera right, and throwing a wide spread of light on the tree that was to be my main subject. The effect of this light is to suggest a setting sun, although actually it is coming from the north east. There’s no way to know that from the final photo though (apart from me just telling you) since the light from the real sun is diffused through clouds and so the sun is creating no directional shadow of its own which would give away its position.
My second light is more subtle and is throwing just a hint of light across the leaves from its position on the ground at camera left. The effect of this light primarily is to add a little texture to the leaves by casting shadows from its oblique angle, while it also ever so slightly softens the shadow from the main light, particularly on the wall.
The main light is, if I recall correctly, firing at full power. The fill light is about 1/16th power. Both are triggered using the pop-up flash on the D300 in commander mode, which meant I had to be careful about the position of the sensor windows on both flashes to ensure they could both “see” the pop up flash, and so receive the infra-red signals telling them to fire. With nothing to really bounce light off outside, I was unsure how effective this system would be, but here, as in yesterday’s photograph of the rose bush, it worked well and allowed me to finish the outing with an image I was happy with.
Recent Comments