Take a Guess

Can you guess this household item? I was playing around with some creative off camera flash techniques. While it looks like the room was pitch black, it was actually normal day brightness. Some pretty cool effects can be achieved with a fast shutter speed (1/250), small aperture (f/16), and a tiny burst of diffused flash (1/128) from the back/side. With those camera settings the bright ambient light of the room is turned to black and the only light visible is from the flash illuminating the side of our mystery item.

Flash, Flowers, and Alcohol

I just got my new wireless flash triggers the other day and finally had a chance to play around with them. A lot of people hate the look of "flash" photography, and prefer natural light. This is probably because the built-in flash we have in our cameras shoots out a torpedo of harsh light directly at our subject. While this will do in a pinch, it usually looks terrible. On the other hand, when a flash is used off the camera and shot through a soft box, white umbrella, or other kind of diffuser, the result is a nice soft, natural looking light. Wireless flash triggers, which consist of a transmitter on the camera and a receiver on the flash, allow creative ways of doing this. I'm by no means an expert at this, but I'm having a great time learning!