day 257 - so tall

working a bit closer to the background today, results in a lighter background and higher risk of a weird shadow showing up. i really like the highlight on the left sleeve from the direct flash going past on it's way to the trigrip.

setup shot:

day 256 - big and bounce

yup, it's crazy face tuesday.

setup shot:

day 255 - one light three sources

one flash, a large umbrella, and two reflectors, one gold/silver, and one just white. i am liking mixing pictures with all these dark areas more and more these days. i don't think it's all that flattering, but it's a different type of mood.

setup shot:

day 254 - long throw reflected

this is doing the long throw thing with a reflector instead of a diffuser. so there's hard light, but with a bit of warm bounce to it, instead of just deep shadows. this could be a solid technique for use outside on a sunny day.

setup shot:

day 253 - menacingly well lit

exploring the gold-silver cover used with the softbox containing a gold gel. put some raw daylight balanced flash in the back there for contrast, and that's it.

setup shot:

day 252 - pirate face

yep, you can't tell with the greyscale conversion, but this is using a gold gel on the softbox. i'm really becoming a fan of it, it just makes caucasian skin tones look good. 

setup shot:

day 251 - long throw

got the idea for this shot from a kelby training video by joe mcnally. in the video joe talks about how he likes to sometimes set up a flash quite a distance from the subject, with a diffuser screen close to the subject to create that soft light. he says that this "marinates" the light, since a lot of the raw flash bounces around the room and mimics natural light more closely.

i realized that i almost always set up my flash and modifier really close to the subject.... in all the setups i've done i've never had the flash far away, and the diffuser close. so i gave it a try.

so for this one i've got the flash in the far corner of the room, maybe 15 feet away from me. and my 32" trigrip is maybe a foot and a half from my face. the flash is zoomed to 85mm (the max on an sb-28), and honl gridded to shadow the background a bit.

i think it came out pretty well. some random things i like about the setup:

1. that background gradient
2. my eye reflections
3. the possibility of adding a reflector camera left.

and some things i don't like:

1. having to walk to the flash to adjust it every time i move anything.

setup shot: