Off the wall and off the ceiling, one light on ST-E2. -1 stop.
January, 2010 Archives
Nabil is a full time artist. He specializes in portraiture. He runs a stall at Sumbangsih Mulia. I knew Nabil from my early days in teaching. “He’s one talented fella!” I thought to myself at the time. Years went by and our paths crossed again at an art exhibition at the Sheraton. I had learnt that he had start a little portraiture business and that he was honing his talent with one of our country’s gifted, Marsidi Omar.
Nabil’s work has been feature countless number of times in our local newspapers. Enterprising young man he is. I am sure there are more talented young people like himself out there.
Last December I hailed him over FB and I asked him if he would like to have his portrait made (instead of making them) and he agreed to it. I finally GOMA and went down to his booth.
His portfolio of work can be found on his blog and his other blog.
A big thank you to my human light stand and consultant, Sharrife who held the softbox in place.
One way to keep Isaac still long enough to get any pics is to give him something to do. This time it was the keyboards. The 100×70 softbox is placed on camera right slightly facing back into the camera. I was dragging the shutter a bit for these ones.
Today was Nathan’s first day kindergarten. As parents we worry about our children not waking up, not wanting to go to school, not cooperating. So we assure them its ok. Give them excuses like ‘ we’re taking you to see animals at school’.
So we got him out of bed, took him to school, promised him animals. The teacher took him to the garden. I snuck off to work.
When I left him I wondered if he’d be ok. Would he cry? Would I get a phone call from his school?
The time came to pick him up. He came out of school looking rather sad. I thought to myself. Oh no. He hated school. He cried. He’s upset.
Then he looked up at me and said, “Papa, there are no animals in the garden……”
For those who have a copy of Joe McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries, time to take it out and read it again. Today I was trying to get my ambient light to balance with the light coming from my softbox. I didn’t want a background that was too dark nor I wanted a light from the softbox that was too hot. Firstly I tried to get my camera settings to as close as I could get to ambient lighting without sacrificing camera shake. Then I set my flash power to something that would just kick a bit of fill in and I was greatly rewarded for that when the boys come into range.
I’ve been shooting a lot of manual mode off camera with manual flash settings with my radio triggers and tonight I’ve gone back to my ST-E2 and ETTL and I’m loving it. I don’t need to worry too much about compensations, f-stops and flash power. It was as if it was a point, forget and shoot. After saying that, it is still useful to know what your lights are doing and how you would control it.
In an interior environment it is pretty easy to make things work. But when you are on location with the light changing all the time its a nightmare. I think that’s where ETTL from the ST-E2 shine (no pun intended). However, when you don’t have any walls to bounce your signals across to your flash, its not going to happen either. What’s the solution. ETTL radio triggers.
My version of Zack Arias’ GOYA…Get Off My A&$ and do something. Sometimes it is hard to find that momentum to go forth and shoot. We tend to blame it on the weather, the sun, the sea, the sand, mosquitoes.
Anyway this is Nathan playing with his toys he got at Christmas at Tungku Beach.
If there was one pic to sum up 2009..
