H A S H W I N Photography

Last weekend it was another  outdoor portrait session with my usual adorable models.  Location: backyard.  The timing was also perfect, an hour before sunset. This gives the opportunity to use the flash while there is still enough light to shoot without one at a wide aperture (around f/2.8) . Well, you could do it during a bright midday too, at lower apertures, if the strobes are powerful enough. A couple of 600Ws novatrons could do the job i guess, but haven’t tried it.  For the evening, just 1 strobe was all i needed. (and one reflector for some shots)

Here’s how to set the exposure for the shot.

1. Set your camera to Av mode (aperture priority) and take a sample shot.  (f/2.8 – 3.5 gives a good bokeh).
2. Now dial down the exp by 1, 1.5 or 2 stops depending on how dark you like the background.
3. You can do step 2 by either going to manual (M mode)  and reducing the shutter speed or by staying in Av mode and using the exposure compensation dial.
4. Now, its time to adjust the flash settings. This may require a few trial and error shots unless you use a light meter. Once you are happy with the light on the subject, just shoot on..
5. You can also use a reflector to fill in. (For a reflector, the silver shades used for car dashboards work just as well as professional ones !)

Here are some sample images from yesterday.

The next shot is the same one as above, but i changed the grass color.

a few in monochrome,

This last shot, the exposure for the background was dialed down further…

here is a ‘setup shot’

Photographing glass objects is pretty interesting. A major difference is you don’t have to focus the lights on the objects,  but at the background (this is with no liquids in the glass). Of course that is not a hard and fast rule. Like with any lighting setups, you can play with the positions, angles and intensities of the light to get different effects. All of these shots are right out of the camera with just a little bit of contrast processing.

The following were used for this setup:

• 2 flashes
• color gels
• black background
• white base
• cybersync remote trigger (can also use a wired remote…)

Here are some of the shots and their corresponding setup shots:

wine glass with blue and red gels

This is the setup for the above shot:

wine glass shot setup

The flash on the left has a red gel and the one on the right has a blue gel. The cybersync trigger is connected to the left flash and the right side flash is an optical slave.

A couple of  shots using the above setup but without the gels and the glass at the rear:

wine glass with white background

wine glass with white background

some more…

wine glass (blue gel in front of glass and red gel on background)

wine glass

and the setup for the above shots…

wine glass setup shot

the setup shot from another angle.

wine glass setup - from a different angle

more shots to follow…

here is one with water in the glass.

wine glass with water

First attempt at water drop photography.

My initial readings about water drop photography lead me to believe that a complex circuitry that triggers at the exact moment the water drop hits the water surface needs to be connected to the camera etc…  This was a big discouragement, until i read a post on strobist. This post by Gavin Hoey outlined an amazingly simple procedure to get some great water drop shots.

One thing i found very critical is the rate of the water drops. too slow, too many wasted shots. too fast, the patterns are not very appealing.

Here are some of the shots from the first attempt

next couple of things to try

• different liquids (oil, milk)
• multiple simultaneous drops
• glass bowl with different colored papers in the base

Here are some shots of the setup

The umbrella itself has no significance to the setup. just used it to suspend the ziploc bag

The flashes need to be placed behind the water drops. With the above placement, i saw the light from the flash hit the water drop directly as well

One more thing i realized is that this camera angle is too steep. A lower angle will probably yield more interesting patters.

Using two flashes gives an opportunity to use different gels for more dramatic effects.