Learning to Light in Progress

I was lucky enough to have two of my high school acquaintances volunteer to model for me today so that I could play around with some off camera lighting.

I recently got several comments about how shadows were more or less ruining my natural light shots. This shoot was an attempt to work at that. So I'm going to cover some of the shots and analyze them myself to see what I can get from the day - if you have anything to add be sure to leave a comment either here or on my flickr.

Flash


Natural Light


Personally, I like the shadows in the natural light one. They seem to add some depth and feeling to the photograph. However, there is also something to be said for the flash-enhanced picture as well - the relative lack of shadows creates a more perfect look to the subjects complexion (in my mind, anyway).

If I could go back and shoot this exact picture again, I think I would drop the flash exposure a stop being the ambient. Here they were more or less perfectly balanced. Dropping the flash would have relieved the harshness of the shadows in the natural light picture, but still allowed for some depth.

Flash


Don't have a natural light picture to compare this to, as this was pretty much an all flash-lit picture (the ambient was pretty low). The lighting overall is decent, I think, but I would have liked to relieve the shadows beneath her chin and from her hair. A second light to camera right would have fixed that, although a reflector could do the job just as well I believe (as one person already commented in my flickr). I think a reflector definitely needs to be my next camera-related purchase. I'm seeing it becoming more or less a necessity if I'm going to be using only one flash.

Flash


I had the flash on them in this one, but you can't see it. Note to self - research proper methods for overpowering and balancing flash in direct sunlight.

That's all for now folks. I'll edit this post to include more from today once I have them edited.