Balancing Act With Light

This isn't exactly a simple technique for photographers, but hey, film is cheap when you're using a digital camera, so give it a try. The important thing about shifting your camera into manual everything is it gives you control. Get out of program mode, get out of autofocus, and get your electronic flash on a cord, or even better, on wireless setting! Now you're cooking with gas. The lighting for your background is determined by the amount of light that's able to pass through your lens and the amount of time your shutter is open. Find a shutter speed and aperture that works to give your background sky the deep rich blue color you get in the 15 minutes after sunset! This will probably take a slow enough shutter speed to make quite a bit of motion blur in your shot. Now comes part B! Freeze your subject in the foreground with an instant of blinding light in their face. This technique uses manual exposure, manual shutter speed, and manual focus. The only thing on auto is your TTL flash, which should get the foreground lit right if you dial up the power using about +1 stop of flash compensation. Hard work to get it right, but worth the wait when you pull it off successfully. Oh, and this may sound weird to some of you, but if you trust in Jesus, and read his word, and pray over your camera gear that you can use it it a way that honors him, it makes a difference in your pictures, as well as in your life.

A full cut of CTO?

A full cut of CTO? What on earth is that, and why could I possibly need it? Whenever I go out on a shoot, I'm always thinking about how to take my photography to the next higher level.

When you go out shooting a portrait, are you concentrating a lot of your energy on making sure your pictures are sharply focused? For most of us, the answer is no. Sure, we put a certain amount of effort into making sure that the lens is focused, especially with new equipment, but after a while, focusing becomes second nature. Let's think beyond that. What's going on with the background, and with the light. It's outdoors, and it's about 3:30 in the afternoon, still a little too early for the golden light. The sunlight is behind our model Rosalyn's right shoulder. It's a day after a rainstorm. The grass is a gorgeous green and the skys are clear and blue. Due to some harsh sun backlighting her, it's clear that I'm going to need to add some light on Rosalyn's face, but if I just blast away with an electronic flash, the shot's going to look cold.

With a new Nikon, there are lots of times you can shoot without even thinking about white balance, but this was not one of those times. I wanted the look of warm sunlight on the model's face, and I wanted to do it without throwing off the natural color of the grass, the bricks and the sky. The trick: Place a Rosco Cinegel CTO (Color Temperature Orange) Jell over the flash and bump the flash power up about 2/3 stop. This gives the shot that afternoon sunlight look and the model's skin tones look warm. If I tried this shot without the jell and flash combination, adjusting white balance in photoshop, the results would not have been pretty. Getting it right at the moment you trip the shutter is the key. Visualize. Check your preview monitor and histogram. Fix what's not what you want, and keep shooting and checking. It works!

Dragging the Shutter

Showing action can be an important part of conveying the image your eye sees. Here Deano and the Dynamos, a Christian Music Ministry, are performing at one of the largest churches in Southern California. Deano's jumping and whirling and playing his guitar is so dynamic, it's hard to capture in a still image. In the closup of Deano, I wanted to caputure a sense of motion, so I selected aperture priority mode and set the camera at f-14. The technique of dragging the shutter, that is, intentionally choosing a slow shutter speed, can work with or without a flash, but often the best results come with a flash. If your camera has a flash option for "slow sync" and "rear curtain sync," try turning both of them on. This technique works best with a high powered electronic flash like the Nikon SB-800, but the real key to making it work is taking lots of shots to get the one "keeper" that will become your personal treasure.