Scarf in the Park, Now with umbrellas {30 Photoshot Speedlight Challenge #4}

The speedlighters handbook would call this a "hero shot"

I still managed to get a clean shot a little later in the evening, even after I've mostly lost the light.

I have a new light modifier setup. I bought myself a Yongnuo wireless flash trigger. It was a steal at $32 on Amazon. It was a steal especially since I thought the only alternative was a $300 pocketwizard setup. Okay, I also bought myself some umbrellas, a westcott softbox, and a light stand. I only have one speedlight! I might as well make it count. All that really justified the flash trigger because optical triggering WOULD NOT FLY with that big 'ol softbox in the way.

Click More to see more photos from this set.

I think my photos are definitely getting better. The lighting in these photos are more dramatic and dynamic. It looks more effortless, even though I have a big ominous lighting setup just outside of every frame. Every photo uses a umbrella on a light stand unless otherwise noted.

Photoshop does not fix poor exposures! This photo had low lighting that I tried to correct with levels in photoshop. The effect is still lovely, but the color and the lighting contrast don't pop like they do in some of the other photos.

I am really learning about how I prefer to set my flash. All these photos use a 1/8th power at 50mm. That isn't revolutionary, I know, but I used to go all over the place with it before I found an exposure I knew what to do with. I actually used to just set it at the lowest, 1/128 and have a really long shutter speed to let in all that ambient light I am used to seeing. Now I just jack up the ISO when I can't get enough ambient light at the fast shutter speeds I need to account for the big flash.

I think the lighting in this photo is perfect. Everything is correctly exposed, with the model nose pointed at the light with just enough softness wrapping around his face. Both the model, the sky, and the field in the background is illuminated.

The light source above is just off the top right corner of the shot. I like the Rembrandt lighting in this shot, with a triangle of light visible on the cheek opposite the light source.

I had the color correction in the wrong mode. I had it set to auto mode but the camera doesn't know there is going to be a flash. I had to set it to flash mode automatically. Notably, this is the only photo that used the softbox instead of the umbrella.

Despite the transparency, I think this is the best photo from the set.

I upped the shutterspeed in an attempt to decrease the blur of of the moving objects and so we can lose the transparency.. but we also lost but some of the light. Notice how much less bright everything is.

In Summary...
I think my photos are getting better. Some of those hero shots look like something I would see in Runners World (the only magazine I subscribe to!). I am going to have to get better at using that softbox because I did not like the resulting images I got. I think the umbrella throws light in a very predictable way and I just don't know how to harness the light from my softbox yet. That being said, I am glad I graduated from that blasted beauty dish that only diffused light in one tiny place and made harsh glass cutting shadows.

The 30 Photoshoot speedlight challenge is a Self Challenge where I attempt to learn as much as I can about single source lighting before I graduate to adding a second source to my kit! The reward of course is a second speedlight. I do my best to be reflective about my experiences to make them as instructive as possible. Read more about the 30 photoshoot challenge and follow my journey by clicking on the links below.