A little Strobism

I have recently returned from holiday with the family, back in Cornwall. (You don't go to Cornwall for years ... then two trips there come along at once!)

I won't be showing very many of the pictures that I took there on this blog, but one thing I was practising with my son, Peter, was using with flash, outdoors and off camera. While we were away, Peter and I made quite a number of pictures taking the general approach of finding an interesting background and setting exposure that would under-expose it by about 2/3 to 1 stop. Then an SB900 flash was used to provide light for the subject, the flash held away from the camera and controlled either by the pop-up flash on the D300 (Nikon's creative lighting system) or by a radio trigger.

Here are a couple of examples, taken on the beach at Widemouth Bay, around sunset. The first one is by Peter -- a self-portrait with the shutter triggered by a wireless remote (you can get the impression of it held his hand), with the camera on a tripod. The flash was held by me (voice activated lighting stand) and was triggered by the D300 pop-up flash.

Peter -- self-portrait

The second one again is of Peter, but this time I pressed the button. This time the flash was triggered using a radio trigger, and I held both the shutter remote and the flash.

Peter -- with wet feet

I like the way these two came out -- adding some controlled lighting to a situation like this really brings out a lot of interest in the picture.