a study in flash
vancouver bc
Last Saturday a small group of photogs–inccidently all Nikon shooters–met up to do a two hour photowalk in the Gastown area of Vancouver. Most of us first met during the Vancouver Worldwide Photowalk and having had so much fun, decided to get together again to shoot around the city. We meandered through the gritty parts of Gastown and found ourselves at Crab Park just before sunset. That’s when Simon pulled out his brand-spanking new Nikon SB900 Speedlite to a chorus of ooow’s and ahhh’s.
Flash photography is something that is completely alien to me at this point in my learning journey. I’ve experimented a little bit with it but that’s about all. Please excuse the composition of today’s image but it is really just there to illustrate our quick study in flash. On the left are black-eyed susan’s taken without a flash and on the right, with the Speedlite and the orange coloured gel. What a big difference the flash made in warming up the subject matter and creating an effect termed by Simon as our “fake sunset”.
We all enjoyed the time spent playing while learning, and the group has decided to try to meet up once a month with the objective of sharing our knowledge and tricks of the trade. I’ve also been thinking about the things I’d like to learn in 2010. With three more workshops scheduled for the rest of this year and into January, I need to plan what I’d like to do next year. I’ve decided that I want to focus a large part of my time on learning lighting. After all the Greek meaning of the word “photography” is to paint with light. At the moment I am thinking of taking a workshop on flash photography techniques with Neil van Niekerk and possibly Joe McNally’s workshop here in Vancouver. And of course I’ll be adding a few more books to my library!
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