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Are you new to flash photography? Here are two tutorial videos that introduce the basic equipment and how it works: Download Tutorial Videos
No matter where you are on your photographic journey, the fastest way to grow as a photographer is through shooting personal projects. Personal projects allow you to take the pressure off, slow down, and experiment in a way that you can’t normally do when shooting client work. Some of my favorite images always seem to come from these types of projects.
The photo set featured in this post was the result of a personal project collaboration with another photographer and videographer that live in my area. We work together often and refer customers to each other as we can. We enjoy working together and thought it would be fun to put together a personal project to build portfolio, experiment, and learn new things.
The couple in the photos is the brother and sister-in-law to my fellow photographers on this shoot. It was important to us to find an actual couple instead of just a male and female model. Although they’ve been married a few years, they still like being around each other (ha ha) and were comfortable in couple-style poses. If you keep your eyes open, it’s fairly easy to find someone who will be willing to be a model in exchange for free portraits of themselves. I’ve even approached complete strangers to ask for a portrait before. It’s fun to meet new people and it’s a great way to build up a portfolio while getting your name out there. Take down their contact info and send them your best shots from the shoot.
For this shoot we had a flower arrangement made and purchased a dress online. Here in Idaho, we are lucky to live within just 20-30 min of very pretty woods and meadows. We arrived at the location about an hour and half before sunset, and the sun had already fallen behind the mountains that surrounded the canyon we were in.
Because we were in the shadow of the mountains, the quality of light was very soft and cool with blue tones. We shot several poses in natural light and then I setup a strobe with softbox to experiment with mixing natural light and artificial light and to fill in some of the shadows on our couple.
Here is a short behind the scenes video I put on instagram. You can see I was taking some aerial shots with a DJI Inspire 1 drone. That’s the beauty of personal projects – you have time to try things you never could on a paid client shoot.
As for the strobe setup – I brought my Alien Bee B400 strobe, 32″ X 40″ softbox, and Vagabond mini lithium battery pack. Triggered the flash with two Pocket Wizard triggers. All of this equipment is listed here.
The key to natural-looking flash is to balance it with the existing natural light. Keeping the softbox positioned as close to the subject as possible will produce a softer fill light that will bring out details and lift shadows under the nose and eyes to a more pleasing value. For most of these shots I had the strobe on low power and positioned slightly higher than the couple and to the right or left just slightly.
I edited this series in Adobe Lightroom. Adjustments were very basic. First, I used the tone curve to achieve a matte look. (Here’s a tutorial and preset for that.) I finished the photos with slight color balance, contrast, and clarity slider adjustments. You can Download a Lightroom Preset based on the adjustments I made.
Personal projects are great. They have the power to help you improve your photography while helping you reinvigorate your creative process.
Are you new to flash photography? Here are two tutorial videos that introduce the basic equipment and how it works: Download Tutorial Videos