My first workshop

I had quite a busy day of photography yesterday, integrated into (a first for me) a day of teaching.  A few people in the camera club had, over the past six months or so, asked me if I’d consider doing a course on flash photography so it took until now, but yesterday the inaugural “Taking Control of Flash Photography” took place in the environs of the NCI.  It was a long day, that required a fair bit of preparation on my part, but a fair bit of ‘winging it’ too – particularly when, in the afternoon, it was time to put some of the theory from the morning into practice.  First up, we worked up a quick corporate portrait lit using two off camera flashes.

This was about the only shot that I had given any thought to in advance of the course – my idea was to hide a flash behind the screen of the laptop, bounce it off a piece of white paper over the screen, so that it light the subject’s face and upper body, and with the flash gelled blue my hope was that it would mimic the light coming from the screen.  The idea was to illustrate to the group a few principles in action at once – triggering off camera flash, controlling the ambient and flash exposures, using gels for creative (as opposed to corrective) purposes, hiding a light in the frame, and creating motivated light – in short, light that makes sense to the viewer.

I had envisaged it as a one light shot, and had two concerns before I shot a single frame.  Firstly, would I be able to control the ambient light given that it was quite bright outside and we were near some big windows.  And secondly, would I be able to get the flash bouncing off the laptop screen to throw only the little bit of hint of light that I wanted – I was afraid that even at low power the flash this close to the subject would be too overpowering.

Now both those concerns were complementary – if I had too much ambient light and too much flash light that’s not the most difficult thing to solve – close down aperture and you’ll reduce the impact of both at the same time.

In order to check the ambient light, I went straight to my max sync speed of 1/250s, an aperture of f/5.6 which is about where I wanted to be in terms of depth of field, and my default ISO of 200.  With the flash off, my ambient-only exposure was as follows.

So no real concerns about that being too bright then.  I didn’t want to do a flash-only portrait, so I wanted to allow ambient light into the frame.  Knowing from this first frame that I could get it as dark as this, I knew I’d be able to add it back to the scene just by controlling my shutter speed, and so do so without affecting my flash exposure in any way.  With that settled, I set about working out my desired flash exposure.

My concern here was that 1/128th power at my chosen aperture and ISO would be too much light for the subtle effect  I was after.  A quick check with the ambient exposure still as above and the flash at 1/128th power gave me this frame.

You can see that I had no cause for concern in relation to my flash being too overpowering even at its lowest power setting.  But I was still getting some flash exposure registering in the frame, so somewhere between 1/128th power and full power I’d find the sweetspot I was after.

Keeping everything the same I increased the flash power, first by two stops and then, after another quick test frame, by another stop to 1/16th power. The flash exposure was about where I wanted it by then so I also started to allow ambient light back into the frame by slowing down the shutter speed.  At 1/40s, with the flash power now at 1/16th and ISO and aperture as before, things were looking good.

There were two outstanding issues, neither of which I had foreseen before we started this quick photoshoot.  And it was quick – first frame to last was less than 10 minutes, and that included time for me to show the group of 12 what I was getting on the camera (I couldn’t shoot tethered as that’s my laptop in the frame!) and explaining my thought processes.  The first outstanding issue was the reflection in the glasses, but I wasn’t too concerned by that in this case – if anything I thought it enhanced the sense of the light coming from the laptop screen.  I could have fixed it by asking the subject to alter the angle of her glasses, or move her head slightly, or by moving the screen a little.

The more significant issue for me was the fall-off of ambient light from right to left.  This made sense – the ambient light was coming from windows at camera right.  I wanted to balance it more, to keep the background lighting relatively even, so I employed another participant on the course to hold a softbox with a second flash firing through it.  This I started at 1/16th power, and that ended up being just about right.  It is just out of frame at camera left, and lighting the background, but not the subject.

I had to take a couple of shots to tweak how the softbox was angled so as to avoid reflections in the metal and frosted glass, but eventually I took my final frame, repeated here again.

Paul Timon, whose name has featured here before after I attended a course on studio lighting that he gave – the camera club is good that way, with people sharing knowledge as much as possible – was getting his own back by attending this course (and I beat my own target of teaching him one thing he didn’t know by a factor of three) and he took a setup shot as I was shooting those final few frames, so it shows you where the lights are.

Setup shot by Paul Timon

If you look closely you’ll see one bare flash gelled blue on the keyboard of the laptop, and the second flash is in the softbox being held at the rear of this frame.  The flash on my camera is just acting as a trigger. And the flash on the couch is on the subject’s camera and is just sitting there switched off.

If I wasn’t watching the clock – I wanted to do a few shots outside and get back to the classroom within an hour – I could have done more with this image.   The camera on the couch ended up in the frame accidentally, but I decided to leave it there as one of the subject’s roles at work is as a photographer so it was appropriate.  Having decided to leave it there, I could have worked a third light into the scene to throw a hint of light on the camera.  But in this case, with time going against me and the next shot calling, I had to move on.