Some C&C if you please...

Eirebear

Anyone whos noticed my posts in the Random Picture Thread will have picked up on the fact that im trying to pick up as much as i can in terms of lighting techniques in the studio etc.
Today i took delivery of a new remote flash trigger, so decided to get out and practice using some off camera flash outdoors.

Not entirely sure of the results, they have a quality which i very much like...but there is a few things irking me too such as the obvious need for a diffuser!

melekalikimaka

not too keen on the uber contrast look.... wouldnt mind seeing these with it turned down

chisel

Love the 3rd one - thats a great shot, lovely composition and you get away with the lack of diffuser very well. The others might work as part of a series, perhaps in a story board sort of way, but as standalone shots you're right, the flash looks too hard.

I'm finding flash very hard to get to grips with. Sometimes the results are stunning, sometimes godawful.

Eirebear

Cheers guys, its a fairly sharp learning curve alright.

Mele, i went out with the "Uber contrast" look firmly in my mind while shooting, personally i like it, but ill throw a couple up with it toned down at some point.

Chisel, its fairly hit and miss untill you master it i suppose, just like everything else in photography! Up untill recently i was fairly simplistic in my approach to photography but recently i seem to have upped my ideas a notch and i'm really enjoying experimenting with new (to me) ideas and techniques...i think its given my work an extra "edge".

heres a couple more if anyones interested.

Borderfox

I like the last two best, hard to put a finger on it but they have something that I really like.

Eirebear

Borderfox wrote: »

I like the last two best, hard to put a finger on it but they have something that I really like.

Cheers dude, for me (if it helps anyone in terms of the look i was going for) my personal favourites would be the first one the thrid one and the one of her sitting down.

oshead

Looking at this set, I'm left wondering, exactly what was your intention while taking these? Was it to highlight the clothes, the girl or simply to try out new triggers? The latter looks more likely.

A few things come to mind when looking at these. The color balance, her skin, it looks unnatural. As mentioned above, the shadows and general contrast of the images are very distracting. They look very harsh. Her eyes look dead in some of them. You should try and use a catch light were possible. Were these taking during the daytime? They look like they were. Why did you kill so much of the ambient? Surely this kind of photo relies as much on ambient light as it does on flash. You could've used the flash as a secondary light source while the ambient is the key. This would help with the general prettiness of the set and also help with remove that contrast too.

Eirebear

oshead wrote: »

Looking at this set, I'm left wondering, exactly what was your intention while taking these? Was it to highlight the clothes, the girl or simply to try out new triggers? The latter looks more likely.

A few things come to mind when looking at these. The color balance, her skin, it looks unnatural. As mentioned above, the shadows and general contrast of the images are very distracting. They look very harsh. Her eyes look dead in some of them. You should try and use a catch light were possible. Were these taking during the daytime? They look like they were. Why did you kill so much of the ambient? Surely this kind of photo relies as much on ambient light as it does on flash. You could've used the flash as a secondary light source while the ambient is the key. This would help with the general prettiness of the set and also help with remove that contrast too.

Cheers Oshead,

it was more about the girl that the clothes for starters...however a big facotr was also to try out the triggers as you rightly pointed out.

They were taken in the daytime, but underneath a very low underpass due to the fact it was peeing down. Any other day i would have just left it, but i was there, she was there...so we figured wed give it a go. So using the Ambient as key was going to be fairly tricky anyway without the need for quite long exposures etc.

Looking at them in the cold light of morning i do think ive maybe pushed them a little too far in processing also, ill need to take a look at that later.

Borderfox

There might no be enough ambient light to be able to balance with the flash, in darkness you have to drag the shutter a lot in high iso so it might not be ideal.

1 or 2 flashes?

Eirebear

Borderfox wrote: »

There might no be enough ambient light to be able to balance with the flash, in darkness you have to drag the shutter a lot in high iso so it might not be ideal.

1 or 2 flashes?

Just the one.