Off-Camera Lighting

In an effort to continue to sharpen my photography skills I did some outdoor off-camera lighting shots last week.

Natural light portraits are great but there are occasions and situations when an off-camera light can make a photo that much better with little effort or give a whole different look.

I didn’t go out with the intent on writing this so this post may lack some example shots but here are some. I’m not going to win any awards with these shots so don’t hold your breath…

Now, with the above shots if I were using natural light and exposed the shots to brighten up their faces then the color of the sky wouldn’t have been this deep blue. It would have come out brighter and would have looked something more like the shot below(I wish I would have done an example shot at the time so you can see what it would have really looked like).

I’m not saying natural light is better than off-camera lighting or vice-versa but it just another option so I wanted to quickly show you the difference it could make.

Here’s an example of how I used off-camera light as a backlight to give a dramatic look at Joe and Beth’s wedding.

And here’s the little bad boy that I use.

It’s a Sunpak 120J that I bought on eBay b/c they don’t make it anymore triggered by Pocket Wizards.

And the little gold plate in the back is a piece of roof flashing from Home Depot. I learned this little trick from my friend Hyon Smith Photography and it works quite nicely. It bounces the light just enough toward the subject.

I’m still learning too but let me know if you have any questions. I’d be happy answer any questions or do future posts on the technical side of it all.