On assignment:: an easter Party

This assignment of photographing at an easter party was a much easier situation than the earlier birthday party. The party was divided in to two main areas: a well lit living room with a skylight, and a dark basement with wood paneled walls. To begin with, the obvious solution was to take pictures in the well lit living room.

The photo is taken with a tabletop lightstand and a flash in ttl mode bounced off the ceiling complementing the light from the skylight and window. All in all, a very soft even light. There is an obvious change in light on the back wall, but was not visible in either shot.



When the subject stands, this produces a different type of image altogether. The difference of light on the back wall is now obvious, and would have been easy to eliminate simply by placing something between the flash stand and the subject so all the light would have been directed upward. Another option would have been a glass of water, beer bottle or plant or something which would have cast an interesting shadow instead of just a line. This is where the ability to envision the light from the flash would have come in handy. Eventually this blog will have fewer blooper reels, but at this point they are still educational. You should keep beer bottles handy.

With the light coming from perpendicular to the camera angle, the light is both hard and soft at the same time, falling off from the contours of the subjects face as it mixes with the ambient light. This technique is similar to the picture of the Chinese gymnast in the McNally book.



The above probably could have been taken with just ambient light, but the flash was already rigged up and triggered by the exposure. From here, the light is basically the same direction as the ambient light and really just serves as fill light.

It was however impossible to avoid taking photos in the basement altogether. This picture is badly underexposed, as I was hand holding the flash off camera. This was caused by two factors, which is why it is necessary to think like the camera. First, the camera was in center weighted (not spot) metering, so the camera will calculate an average light for the area surrounding the center of the photo. The white basket probably skewed this to trick the camera into thinking it was already bright, which is what the camera should think. However, as the operator we should know to adjust for this, most easily with an EV compensation.

While the basement was very dark, it was small enough that it could have been lit effectively with a flash. The problem I encountered was that I brought my camera with the 50mm f1.4 lens, which I prefer for indoor shooting, but the wide angle really would have been more effective to let me get closer to the subject while holding the flash.

If I had more time, I could have taken a test shot and would have moved the flash closer to the subject. But because of the spontaneous nature of the action, that was not possible. Also, I was unable to take a group picture because there was insufficient room without a wide angle lens. Another factor to consider is that without a wide angle lens, all the people with wide angle lenses will effectively be standing between you and the photo you want to take, even if you do have sufficient distance.