Tuesday 19 August 2014

Work vs Art

I have just realised it has been over a week since I posted to my blog.

Work is getting in the way of my art.

How often does that happen? Too often.

So, I shall share a short snippet of what photography and art mean to me:

"Every moment that Mother Earth shares with me is Awe-Filled.
I stand before her beauty, stripped to the bones of my soul.
It is this naked moment I ache to capture, and share with you." 

Blessed be
Merran

Saturday 9 August 2014

To flash, or not to flash - that is the question

When working on the making of a photo, you need to assess the available light. 

Will the available light create an image that conveys the feeling that you had when you first conceived it?

Does the colour of the ambient light create the mood?

Can you work with the ambient light, or do you need to supplement it? Will you need gel filters for your flash to match the ambient light?

Or do you just want to kill the ambient light, and provide flash only?

That is what I decided to do for this image.





To capture this I used an optical slave on my SB23, and bounced the on camera flash (reduced to 1/128) off a chopping board behind the flower to trigger the SB23.


However, for the next image, I scoped out the shot ahead of time. I used the Photographers Ephemeris to find out when the sun would be in the right position to capture the shot. Time of year plays a part when you are making landscape shots. The sun rises in a different place every day. Late June, early July would have been best for this image, but I did not want to wait another 10-11 months to capture it.

So, we went out this morning, knowing just how to get to the spot I needed to make the photo. 

We headed out in sunshine, which turned into low cloud on the way.

Darn.

Still, we continued, just in case the sun peeped out through the cloud. And, as cloud cover is a huge diffuser, there was a chance that the clouds would thin enough to create the perfect shot. 

Sure enough, just as we packed up to leave after waiting for nearly 2 hours, the sun shone through and we captured this shot. 


Have a wonderful day.

Merran

ps - check out my website for more images framing-light.com

Tuesday 5 August 2014

Flash formulas

I just keep on learning new stuff!

Flash units have a GN number. You can use this to determine your aperture. If you divide the GN by the distance that the flash is from what you are photographing, it gives you your aperture.

GN numbers are in feet and also in meters, make sure you use the correct one!

Aperture controls the flash. The shutter speed controls the ambient light.

So, you set your shutter speed to how much light you want to show in the background, and then use the calculation to define the distance of subject from flash (GN/A). Too fast and the shutter will not fire in correct sync with your flash, and you get dark lines through your image. Set your aperture to suit.  You can set an SS to be as fast or as slow as your flash can handle. For modern flash units this is around 1/200 or some up to 1/320.

Use manual mode - it gives you more control. Set the flash to manual, and your in-camera flash to manual, but turn the camera flash down as low as you can, unless you want front on light.

This way you can turn your flash right down, and use an off camera flash to create what ever lighting effect you want.

Have fun!

Merran

Sunday 3 August 2014

Backlight

I continue to play with backlight - I really love the effect.

Finally I have created a selfie image I am happy with.

Using a torch for illumination, and with the assistance of my assistant, I focused on the spot I needed to be in, set the camera to timer mode, framed and focused, then set off the timer. My assistant held the torch.