Thursday, July 2, 2009

Saturday in the Park

This past weekend, the Bay Area Photo Club held one of our monthly field trips, this time shooting informal portraits at a local park. Since we started taking photos around 7:00 p.m. to get the best light and cooler temperatures, most photographers used off-camera speedlights to add a little pop to the images. The photo above is of Celeste, a coworker of mine, and her daughter. Celeste, her sister Colleen, and Celeste's daughter were gracious and patient enough with us to let themselves be our test subjects for about an hour - a big thank you to them.
It seems like almost every time I work with my flash I learn a thing or two. Instead of throwing it on the hotshoe and shooting TTL, it's really amazing the power of those small units when used creatively and efficiently. The image above was lit with a Nikon SB800 shot through a small softbox high and off-camera left at 1/8 power; exposed at 1/125 sec at f/4 in manual mode.

3 comments:

  1. Nice exposure and good use of depth of field to isolate them against the background. You captured the "moment" of their interaction too.

    Good job Steve.

    DHaass

    ReplyDelete
  2. A moment shot--done extremely well.

    Without the information that you supplied, no one would know that this was part of a photo-shoot and that you used flash. You lit the photo perfectly. Using f/4 gave you enough depth of field to make them sharp and yet keep the background that nice soft blur. Really fine management of your equipment.

    The very best part of this photo is that you have gotten me wondering: what tall tale is she telling her mother?

    Fine work.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love this moment you captured between my sister and niece. It's precious. The depth of field was very effectively put to use and the light is well done. I enjoyed getting to work with you all and hope to learn more about off-camera lighting.

    ReplyDelete