Gone Shootin’

12/20/09 – Rebecca Getsfrid – Commercial Portrait Photographer in Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon

Got a call at half til noon this morning from some friends inviting me to come up and do some shooting of their shooting. With an empty schedule and nothing better to do at home, I obliged.

Having not worked with this kind of action before, I stumbled through my setups and never really got anything I was proud of. If I were to do it again, the action shots would be much more usable. It was a real learning experience.

Thankfully for us, no one’s time was wasted. Shooting of any sort is always fun, and I ended the session with some gun-lovin’ portraits.

LP120 front camera left.

LP120 front camera left.

On a more learning-y note, the two images above are a really good example of the kind of power you have with portable flash lighting, even something on the relatively low end of the powerscale like the LP120 hotshoe flash. The top image, I’m slightly overpowering the ambient to bring out that detail in the distant landscape. In the bottom image, the sky itself was a bit too dull gray, so I turned down the light, bumping up the ambient, to make it a bit more white in contrast to the subject.

Without portable flash lighting on my side, any attempt to change the ambient would also have forced a change on the subject. Not always a bad thing, but in these cases, I wanted the subjects properly exposed.