Travelling Light

One of the biggest frustrations of being a photographer when traveling is often being at the mercy of others around when and where and for how long you can stop. This is particularly true when you’re traveling for work, not fun. And the frustration only grows when the landscape you’re passing through is visually spectacular.

The key to any good picture, and definitely true to landscape photography, is the need to move yourself into a position to make the most of a scene. Is that tree better placed on the left or the right? Should I get in close and use a wide angle, or stand off and zoom? If I wait here another five minutes, is the sun going to break through and hit that particular part of my composition and make it take off? Photography is the art of scribing light. You need to be in the perfect position, and the perfect moment.

And that perfect position and perfect moment is almost never through a car window. Or a car windshield. Or, for that matter, an airplane seat.

I’ve sadly had to score my fair share of shots from car windows. I hate it. They are always sub-standard to what I would like, or the vision I have for the scene, and unless you’re very fortunate, there’s almost invariable motion blur, particularly in the foreground. On my most recent trip through north-western Ethiopia, it was doubly painful. Not only was the landscape glorious, but the lighting was spectacular. It was variable and changing, we were on the road early and late as the light turned golden, and you really would have struggled to find more dramatic combinations of scenery and sunlight at times. I just wanted out of that vehicle and to be taking my sweet time framing up the shots I wanted to take.

Alas, there are only so many times you can ask the driver to stop and your colleagues to wait patiently in the car while you grab your snaps.

And the toilet-break excuse has a ceiling.

Sometimes you just make do with what you’ve got, however, and in this case, several of this little series of light-captures were snapped from the moving vehicle, the others grabbed during brief moments when we were stopped at the side of the road. Not my favourite option, and given the quality of the light, I wish I could have positioned myself better- there were some epic opportunities. But thems the breaks. Here’s what I got out of them though, and I quite like how some of them turned out. As much luck as anything. One of these days I hope to be out on the road myself here, able to stop whenever I feel like it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these ones.

Photos:

1. The Golden Hour: Morning haze gathers in folds of the landscape lit by a morning sun just on the Amhara side of the border with Benishangul-Gumuz
Note: If you click on this image, I’ve included the link to a larger size of this image which is worth linking through to- the small frame doesn’t capture the landscape well.

2. Traveling Light: Shooting straight into the sun, hanging out of the side window of the Land Cruiser

3. Out of the Burning Dawn: A man walks along a road at sunrise not far from Chagni, in SW Amhara Region; shot through the car windshield into full sun.
Note: Same for this one- click through for larger image.

4. A tree, captured out of the side window of the truck, stands silhouetted against the overexposed sky, smoke and dust from the road swirling at its roots

5. Metalled road west of Chagni, Amhara Region, at dawn

6. A painted truck, caught with the rising sun ahead of it, through the windshield of our four-by-four

7. Truck headlights at dusk in Mandura Woreda, Benishangul-Gumuz

8. Smoke and clouds blend at dusk above a burning rubbish tip on the outskirts of Bahir Dar

In Passing

I’m not a fan of photographs from windows- any windows- as a rule, but when you’re in the field you spend so much time in four-by-fours (see Field Visit Bingo) that sometimes, you have no choice.

Shots from car windows tend to be bland and blurry. It’s a rule of thumb in landscape photography that you don’t take a landscape from where you are, but you move into the landscape to take the photo. Very rarely do the elements line up to give you the right composition- and when they do, they’re usually shooting by so fast that if you’re late by a tenth of a second you miss the moment, and if the shutter speed isn’t high enough, they blur right out. It’s rare to get a sharp image- although by shooting more forwards and less sideways, you reduce the movement of the landscape relative to yourself.

For me, the above image, snapped from a speeding Land Cruiser several hours out of Nairobi, isn’t perfect- but it somehow works for all its imperfections. There’s no hiding what it is- a photo taken hanging out of a car window: the location of the cyclists and the little corner of road make that clear. The foreground is blurred, and the cyclists moreso. The rear tyre of the second cyclist has been clipped by the edge of the frame, and there’s even a little lens-flare catching against the low sun.

But I love the elements. It was a gorgeous sunset, and the sky and terrain were both full of drama. The cyclists- one in a football shirt- are typical of the area and tell their own story about place. And I actually think their blur adds something to the image, a sense of moving towards a brighter horizon. For all its quirks, I was pleased with how this shot turned out.

A Study in Baobabs and African Skies

I love Baobab Trees. Their bulbous trunks and gnarled, clawing limbs make such a stark profile in a landscape often dominated by low scrub and dry grasses. They have an odd, distorted sort of form, and even the way their name comes off the lips- round and taut and satisfying- seems to reflect their tub-like demeanour. They’re such a feature of so many African landscapes, they’re deeply evocative to me.

I took this little series that follows out of a moving car window in southern Kenya. It’s a general no-no for me in photography, but sometimes, especially on field visits where you spend so much time in running up and down the countryside in a vehicle, you don’t have much option.

We were lucky enough to have a moody skyscape to provide as a backdrop, so I exposed for the sky and let the trees stand in silhouette. This had the added advantage of requiring a faster shutter-speed, reducing the foreground blur. Two rules of thumb, if you have to take pictures from a car window: First, the faster the shutter speed, obviously, the lower the blur- so try and maximise this. Second, due to the relative motion of the landscape past the car, objects nearest the car (e.g. pedestrians) will blur more than those further away (e.g. mountains), so try and ensure that the object you’re shooting at isn’t right outside the car window, and if possible cut out the objects closer to the car in favour of those further away.

As the sun went behind the clouds towards the end of the afternoon, the effect was beautiful, with beams of light breaking out across the sky. It was a memorable drive, and while I would much have preferred to stop every few minutes to take proper photos of the glorious landscape, at least I have a few visual mementos of a trip across one of my favourite countries in the world.

The trees are, to the best of my knowledge, Adansonia Digitata.

Where in the World was Morealtitude?

I admit it: I really haven’t been all that busy this year from a travel perspective, so I don’t really have much of an excuse for not blogging. I’ve only had a handful of trips away from home and the family, and those have all been moderate in length. However it’s still been a pretty interesting year so far, and it ain’t over yet. Here’s a little photographic synopsis:

We started the year with a trip on the Murray River in Echuca, with good friends of ours who own a boat and a couple of wakeboards. At that time of year, the river is warm (but muddy) and reasonably crowded, but if you get out during the hottest part of the day, most people are cowering indoors and you can get some beautiful runs in. This is T doing his stuff.

A work trip to South Africa was followed by a long weekend trekking the bays and clifflines of glorious Wilson’s Prom, on Victoria’s southern coast.

From there, I had myself another work trip, this one out to Kenya, followed by a detour into South Sudan. That was pretty much the last time you really heard from me on this blog, here, here and here…

On my way back, I joined the family in Thailand for a bit of a well-needed break from the southern hemisphere winter, where we pretty much threw Magic into the pool and let her splash around for ten days while we slept. It was a very nice pool though…

I had a couple of trips cancelled after that, so I spent a considerable amount of time hanging out in Australia with the family, which was actually lovely and refreshing. I also hung out at pirate-themed parties…

…and aquariums…

My latest work trip took me to the US, where I was able to swing past Arizona to visit friends

Then to our training base in the backwoods of the Florida panhandle

Before wrapping it all up in Savannah, GA, with a visit with more friends, and a bit of time on the beach.

I’ve got more adventures coming up, but I’ll fill you in on them as the time draws near. Which shouldn’t be too long now, God willing.

In the meantime, I’ve more photos to share from my collection this year which I hope you’ll enjoy, and before long hope to have this blog back up to full steam again.

Peace out

-MA

Photos:

1. Clouds above Atlanta

2. Wakeboarding in Echuca, VIC

3. T lays down some spray

4. Fairy Cove, Wilson’s Prom, VIC

5. Kilimanjaro & Kenyan hill-country

6. Resort Living, Phuket, Thailand

7. X marks the birthday party, arrr

8. Viewers at the Melbourne Aquarium

9. Saguaro cactus, Pheonix, AZ

10. Sunlight catching in pine forest, northern Florida

11. Dune grass beneath a moody sky, Tybee Island, GA

A Short Year in Photos

The year isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. But by the dearth of fresh photos going up on this blog you could be forgiven for thinking I’ve hung up my lenses and called it a day. In fact, by the dearth of fresh anything going up on this blog you could be forgiven for thinking I’ve hung up my keyboard, too.

Happily, neither one is the case.

I have, however, been a little overwhelmed with the inconvenience that is real life, and it’s taken me a little time to get through a backlog of photos for processing, and eventually, writing some of them up. I’m hoping to remedy my general neglect of this site recently over the next few weeks. Which I’ve said before. But I do actually have a little free time coming my way. So, maybe…

At any rate, as a taster here are a few of my favourite pictures from the last ten months or so, from a few different spots round the globe. Some of these locations I might flesh out a little more as time goes on, but for now, I hope you like this little collection of images.

Top: A muggy and overcast day on Tybee Beach, Savannah, GA. Overexposed in-camera and processed for low colour and emphasizing highlights focuses on the texture and an almost dreamlike view of the ocean. Shot using shallow depth of field means the foreground is soft while the waves beyond are in sharper relief.

Above: A baobab tree rises from rusty soils and a  flowering ground creeper in fields outside a village in rural South-East Kenya. I was struck by the lovely contrast between the spray of white flowers (actually weeds), the red ground and the blue sky- all nicely lit on a fresh morning. Baobabs make for a fantastic photographic subject- stark, dramatic and instantly recognizable.

Above: Rounded rocks on a beach at Wilson’s Prom, on the southern coast of Australia, give testament to millenia of weathering at the hands of the relentless ocean. Shot in overcast light and exposing to darken the sky with some differential exposure in post-processing has kept the rocks in low contrast, emphasising their smooth shape and texture, and emphasising form over colour in the muted palette. Wilson’s Prom remains one of the prettiest corners of Victoria in my playbook.

Above: Downtown Phoenix, seen from the air coming in to land, with the high-rise central business district just off-centre and Chase Field, home of the Diamondbacks, off to the right. The way the grid of small streets and roads lead in converging lines take the eye through downtown and on to the hills in the background, and the effect makes this one of the only shots I’ve taken from a plane window that I actually like.

Above: Trentham Falls, outside Daylesford, Victoria, Australia, as viewed from behind the falls themselves. Hand-held at slightly long exposure has given the falling water a slightly silky texture. Among the challenges of taking this image were the issue of shooting from a darkened vantage against a lighter sky and trying not to allow much of the image to burn out. Additionally, several plebs managed to find themselves in the frame, so I removed their pesky presence in post-processing to give the image a more serene look. I actually had to wait up here for a good six or seven minutes for a couple of kids to step out of the frame at bottom, where they had been chucking big rocks into the water. Overall I like the quiet scene and the relatively soft palette of greens and earthy tones.

Above: Highway bridge, Savannah, GA. You don’t generally get many good shots through a car windshield, but this spur-of-the-moment snap-shot (I use the term to refer to how quickly it had to be lined up and taken, not the camera it was taken on) works for me. Again the lines of the bridge struts give a great sense of motion, leading the eye into a contrasty late-afternoon sky, and a broad horizon giving the feeling of wide open spaces. It’s a shot that captures movement and an enjoyable juxtaposition of dramatic engineering and natural beauty.

Above: The sun sets directly over an intersection on a steamy panhandle night near Altha, FL. The warm tones and striking position of the sun are nicely led to by the wires of the phone lines, and I like the faint splash of reflection coming off the road.

The Start of the Journey

The title’s not quite true. I started my journey as a photographer a little earlier than this. In fact, the tiddy little point-and-shoot I was given at about age 10 gave me my first real taste of photographic exploration. That, and growing up with my parents’ slide-shows of Afghanistan and Bangladesh in the 1970s.

And my real foray into photography started when I was 20 and got myself a cheesy little waterproof Minolta APS camera- one of those ones where you could flick a button and the photo went from being Normal to Widescreen to Panoramic. It sounded cool, but in fact it was a horrible gimmick that simply gave instructions to the printer to crop the same negative proportionally- so that a Panoramic image gave the same quality as if you’d taken your regular negative, blown it up, and trimmed off the top and bottom into a wide rectangle. Plus the actual film quality was low, too, so you ended up with poor images across the board.

My adventures with this camera included hiking and scree-skiing in the Canadian Rockies, and subsequently, trips to Turkana district in Kenya, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and the Thailand-Myanmar border region. I saw lots of beautiful things, tried my darnedest to capture them- and failed quite comprehensively.

My father, however, did have the grace to observe that what I was seeing with my eye was far beyond the capacity of the camera to actually capture, so on the back of that, my grandfather dug out his old Canon T-70, a streamlined 35mm SLR from the early 1980s. He hadn’t touched the thing for the better part of 10 years, and we weren’t even that sure how well it would work, but there was a roll of film in the back, and replacing the batteries, I went off and did some shooting around his farm in the Lake District.

With that first roll of film (that had been sitting there since about 1990), I went for a walk around sunset and caught a show of the sun going down behind a tree at the bottom of the property. The sun was just dipping beyond the crag on the horizon. The tree itself had lost a main bough in a windstorm the year before, and had a curious emptiness about it, framing the sun. I took my shots, wound off the film, and dropped it in to get developed.

The image I got back was the one at the top of this post. In fact, I took three shots of that tree and the setting sun. I don’t know whether it was some trick of the old film, or whether the developer had a creative bent, but all three images came back beautifully coloured, with warm hues and thick saturated tones. I was thrilled. In fact, looking back, I wonder if those shots hadn’t worked so well, whether I would have retained the same drive to go and take more, or whether I wouldn’t have seen the camera as just a glorified version of my earlier apparatuses and given up.

Regardless, from then on, I went out of my way to practice my photography whenever I could. The T-70 was light enough that I could cart it around. I had two lenses with it- a wider zoom lens that ran from 35-70mm, and a telephoto zoom lens out to 300mm. I already understood shutter-speed and ISO, and went on to teach myself how to balance them with aperture to make the most of available light, how to shoot contre-jour, how to use filters (I got myself a ream of cokin gels which I would slot over the lens for all manner of kooky effects), and how to match subjects with appropriate lenses. Among much more.

I shot a lot. In hindsight, it’s a wonder anybody got into photography before digital came along. This was in 2002, just as digital cameras were starting to spread across the market, but I had a notion to teach myself photography on an analogue SLR first, to get the skills down, before jumping onto digital. The cost was prohibitive. On a trip to New Zealand at the end of 2002, I shot 25 rolls of film- all of which had to be purchased, and all of which had to be subsequently developed. And needless to say, a goodly chunk of those (as with any photo shoot) weren’t that great. But that’s all part of the learning process. And luckily, a few worked.

Early on in the piece, I was very into contre-jour photography- that is, shooting against the light. I liked the drama of capturing the sun, the contrast of silhouettes, the colours of dusk and dawn. The second shot of this piece I took down on the south coast of England (I was living in the UK at the time). The dramatic rock formations of the coastline made for an interesting foreground shape, while the wisp of cirrus cloud obscured the sun just enough to allow me to shoot against it without annihilating the film. The polarizer added a surreal hue that overall makes the photo look like it was shot at night-time, and the way the sun lights the cloud-wisp makes it look more like a falling star than a sunny afternoon. I enjoyed the effect.

The last photo here I took back on my grandparents’ farm a few months after I first got the camera. It was winter, and the sun was setting early, probably not long past four in the afternoon. They were grazing sheep in the paddock, and standing by the gate at the bottom of the home acre with my 300mm zoom, I caught sight of one woolly wonder atop a rise in the field. A little positioning put her directly between the sun and I, and I shot. The sharp focus (lucky) coupled with the fast shutter speed (courtesy of the streaming light) gave the silhouette such crisp detail- right down to the blades of grass beneath the hooves, and the locks of wool hanging from the beast’s flank. I was well chuffed.

I took loads more photos during this time, but exploring some of my old scanned archives, these are a couple I thought I’d pull out and share.

Laters.

Sunset Drifting

A fisherman poles his canoe, or pinasse, down the Niger River at sunset.  Not even ten minutes from the heart of Niger’s capital, Niamey, the feeling along the riverbanks is of a time far older and simpler than the quaint, bustling Sahelian town.  During the painfully brief rainy season, the Niger- West Africa’s longest river- floods to over a kilometre wide here in the city, with a steady, weighty flow behind it.  During the crippling dry season, which lasts from October until June, the river all but dries up, and herders drive their cattle across the bed, and it’s narrow enough that you can cross all but a channel a dozen metres wide without getting your feet wet.

This author has, in fact, been silly enough to swim across the Niger while its waters are not in flood.  And, hippos notwithstanding, quite enjoyed the experience.

This shot was one of my favourite to come out of my time in Niger, and captured the serene beauty of the river which, in turn, turns Niamey from a dry and dusty outpost on the edge of the desert, into a restful and characterful watering hole in the midst of a land wracked with poverty and desolation.  Watching the sun set over the Niger River, cold beading beer in hand, was one of a handful of simple pleasures in that country where simple pleasures were few and far between- making them all the more precious when they came.

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Take Another Look at the Sky

I have to confess I didn’t really start paying much attention to the sky until I started taking photographs.  Now I can’t get enough of it.

As a landscape photographer- and even taking portraits- what the sky is doing is paramount to the end result of your photograph.  Once upon a time I figured blue skies (ideally ramped with a nice polarizing filter) were the bees knees when it came to taking a nice scenery shot.  I’ve since learned that the variety of clouds you can get- especially on a sunny day- is delightful and can add depth, texture and contrast to a photograph, and make the difference between a postcardy-type of holiday snap, and a truly stand-out image you’d like to hang on your wall.  Best of all is when cloud formations line up to mirror part of your landscape or draw the eye to your point of focus.

Sometimes, the sky itself can be a fascinating enough subject.  The array of cloud formations and styles is quite literally endless and changes every few seconds with the wind and the changing light- it is quite simply impossible to take two photos of the sky that are identical, and for that the potential is infinite.

Other times it’s nice to frame a little something against the sky just to add a dash of interest, as I’ve done with a couple of these shots.  It really depends what’s available, and what adds to an image rather than distracting from the cloudforms.

Of course, shooting clouds at sunset is reminiscent of fish and barrels.  As light passing through ever-thickening atmosphere is variously refracted into prismatic shades of the visual electromagnetic spectrum, the painting on the sky is invariably magical, and some of my most satisfying outdoors shots have been taken at dawn or dusk.

This is just a little sampler of some of the sky-focused images I’ve taken over the last couple of years.  Lots more to come, I assure you.

Photo Descriptions:

1. Cumulus clouds build up on a steamy summer’s afternoon outside Pretoria, South Africa.  It stormed later.

2. Dawn cloudscape in the South Australian outback, along the Oodnadatta Track.

3. Is that the Cat in the Hat?  Wispy formation hangs over Melbourne’s Central Business District.

4. Gumtree sky: A variety of cloudforms drift over Victoria’s Yarra Ranges near Warburton.

5. Skytrain: Clouds hang behind a crossing sign marking the abandoned Old Ghan railway line across South Australia’s outback near the Oodnadatta Track.

6. Suburban dystopia: Clouds blur above a power line, one of zillions in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.  Shot with a neutral density filter (ND8) to give several seconds’ worth of exposure in broad daylight, hence the apparent motion in the sky.

7 & 8. Stormy monsoonal clouds soak up setting sunrays over the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo.

9. Speckles of fluffy cloud spot a rich blue sky behind a Brisbane apartment tower.

10. The twin towers of Melbourne’s Bolte Bridge are backlit against a sunset cloudscape.

11. A stream of condensed exhaust pours from a factory stack in Melbourne’s industrial westlands near Williamstown.

12. Rich hues dance in the fading light of Sri Lanka’s monsoon season.

Moments in Space and Time #5: Niger River

Sunsets in Niamey were predictably beautiful, particularly in the months following the rainy season before so much dust obscured the atmosphere that the sun could lose itself in the haze. The near-desert air, tinged with sand particles, and cloud-free in the absence of reliable moisture, gave warm orange dusks while the sun itself showed its true colours as an orb of burning gas melting into the horizon.

The Niger River runs north-south through the city, with the bulk of Niamey on the east bank, from where several vantage points gave stunning aspects of the sun going down behind the river itself. From atop the hill on which was perched the Grande Hotel, we would sit with dew-drops wrapped around our cold beers and nibble on barbecued meat on an open poolside deck watching the sun slip behind a low rise of plateau-like hills a few miles away. Better still, from our favourite little hideaway the Diamangou, an old riverboat-turned-restaurant moored on the eastern bank away from the city centre, we would feel the slow gait of the moored craft beneath us as we enjoyed leisurely drinks beneath strings of fairy lights, watching fishermen pole past in their little pirogues and batting at persistent mosquitoes.

This photo was taken in September 2005, during an evening where most of our team had gathered in Niamey. Myself and several colleagues had spent most of our time in the border town of Maradi, close to Nigeria, which was where a large portion of our famine-relief activities were happening. Maradi was a hot, dusty and frenetic town, with little by way of entertainment and less by way of charm. By contrast, Niamey had excitements such as shops, restaurants and freshly-baked french bread that didn’t have the taste and texture of gritty dough.

The fisherman in this picture presumably came from the nearby village, and spent a few minutes moving up and down the bank close to the riverboat, pushing the canoe along with his pole. I took a few shots of him, but this was by far my favourite, shot just as he framed himself in pose, balanced with the backlight of the sun setting. The quiet lap of slow-moving water against the boat, the plop of the pole in the water, the sound of voices drifting through the bushes from the nearby village, soft conversation and buzzing insects all leant the place an exotic peace. The air was warm, the beer was chilled, and the company was good. While there were a lot of times from Niger I would choose never to revisit, this particular riverside moment is one I continue to cherish.

A Word on Flash Portraiture

I seem to have found myself writing a few posts about how to take particular types of photos lately.  I don’t think that’s necessarily because I feel I have a vast amount of photographic wisdom to share.  I’m a hack photographer, and am neither professional (as judged by the paucity of my photo sales) nor a teacher- though I am happy to share what little bits of knowledge I pick up along the way as I feel my way through the art-form.  Mostly I think I write these things for myself so I can remember as I learn.  After all, one of the joys of photography is pushing limits and trying new things.

I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I aspire to be able to take really nice natural portraits.  Candid, intimate portraits that capture a mood or a fleeting expression are my favourite, but it’s a challenge for me not just from the technical side (which is learnable) but also from the point of view of connecting with your subject, which is a vastly different discipline.  None the less, since buying myself an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, I’ve been spending more time taking photos of people where I can, and hopefully learning.

Even more challenging is flash photography.  I’ve never done a photography course, so save what I learn from reading the odd tutorial or a bit of advice from a flickr friend, I’m basically self-taught.  Flash adds a whole new dimension to the skills and knowledge I already have, and it’s a bit of a learning-curve.  But the other night, out with friends Mads and Pam in the Yarra Valley, we decided to do a bit of a photo session in the backlight of a setting sun.  I’m generally a natural-light kind of guy.  Shooting against the light means that the camera will (if left to itself) expose for the far-brighter background and darken the foreground into shadow.  Using flash is the only way to counteract this unless you want to wash out all colour from the background (which will usually not be possible anyway as the light from behind will be so strong).

I am certainly not comfortable with flash portraiture.  It couples two fields that are still very new for me.  Luckily I had two willing, gracious and fun-loving friends who were happy to alternatively goof off and listen to my periodic instructions as I worked the 5D.  I should point out that as with all my shots, I shoot fully manual, which means I chose the aperture, shutter-speed and ISO, rather than let the camera decide the levels for me.  I find this a much more effective way of getting the shots I want.

The basics of flash are pretty simple.  A flash of light obeys basic principles of physics.  It travels in a straight line.  And it obeys an inverse-square law relating to its intensity- that is, double the distance (x2) from the flash means that the light’s intensity is one quarter (1/4 or 1/2(2) ) what it was at the first point.  If I could insert diagrams at this point, I would, because it’s a lot easier to understand diagramattically than verbally.

As always, the exposure of a shot is governed by the balance of shutter speed and aperture, with ISO now thrown into the mix (but in the case of this shoot we’ll ignore it).  What’s really crucial to understand about flash photography is that the flash takes place so quickly (in the order of 1/10,000th of a second) that no matter what you do with your shutter speed, it’s not going to have any discernable impact on how the flash affects your picture.  If your shot has too much flash at 1/100th of a second, changing your shutter speed to 1/2000th of a second will not darken the flash effect (but, crucially, it will darken anything not affected by the flash, like the background).

Thus controlling flash on a subject comes down to changes in the aperture value.  And also, as per the above-mentioned comment about laws of physics, the distance of the subject from the flashgun when it’s fired.  So to get the desired light intensity from the flash on a subject, you open or close your aperture to let more or less light in, or you can move closer to or further back from your subject (or a balance of the two).  You can then add your shutter-speed into the mix to define how light or dark you want the non-flash-lit elements of the shot (e.g. the background).

For the shoot with Mads and Pam, I wanted the girls lit by flash, but I wanted to capture the beautiful red hues in the sunset sky behind them.  I should point out that this was a real outdoor shoot- although the halo the flash sometimes causes makes the girls look superimposed onto the background, they’re standing outside on a hillside in the valley.  I should also point out that there’s nothing subtle about my flash photography.  I’m using a single flashgun mounted into the hotshoe on my camera.  I’m not a strobist, and I wasn’t even using any bounce techniques.  Because really, I’m just finding my way.

And because this is new to me, to start with things were pretty trial-and-error.  In the spirit of learning, I’m going to do something that I don’t usually do, which is share some of the out-takes from the shoot- which, incidentally, are straight from the camera and haven’t been in any way touched-up in post-processing.  Be kind.  In this first shot, you can see that the flash is far too fierce and is bouncing off the girls’ faces, making them glow white and washing out features.  So either my aperture was too wide, or I was too close.  The background is okay so I probably wouldn’t need to touch the shutter-speed up too much.

This next shot I had backed right up.  Mads and Pam were doing a bit of a dance routine in front of the sunset and I had both stepped back a little and had stopped the camera right down to about f/11 which cut out almost all of the flash.  They’re still lit, but very dimly, and they’re just not standing out in the darkness.

This last shot (and probably my favourite of the shoot) the light is nicely balanced.  I’ve got the distance and aperture values balanced about where I want them, and the background is underexposed with a high shutter-speed value to capture the rich red tones in the sky following the sunset, while there’s enough light on the two girls to see them, but not so much that their features are bleached out.  It’s a nice combination (I think) of a lovely subject (the girls) both communicating with the camera, standing out against the colours of the sky, and I was really happy with how it came together.

I should point out that having nice equipment is a beautiul thing.  As well as my Canon EOS 5D, which is a dream to work with, the EF 85mm f/1.8 USM is a gorgeous, gorgeous portrait lens- close and intimate, with a wonderful depth of field when you need it, and incredible optical sharpness.  Vying with my ultra-wide 16-35 as lens-of-the-moment right now.

And of course I would be remiss if I didn’t give a big thanks to both Mads and Pam with putting up with my antics…  you guys were a hoot to shoot!  Looking forward to the next time. 

A few more fun ones we got that night: