One of my endeavours for quite some time now has been to get a deeper understanding of off camera flash through wonderful sites such as Strobist.com as well as through workshops held by Shelton Muller.

I had the fortune during the week to get my hands on a copy of David Hobby’s (from Strobist.com) much acclaimed Strobist DVD series. Pouring through it just got me all excited to get out and try some off camera flashing! Well Sunday being such a nice day I decided to rope in my daughter to pose for some outdoor type shots.

Well, I was given all of about 2 minutes “face time” with my model. In messing around setting up the shot she had grown bored and I only managed to get a couple of keepers out of it all before Abby decided there was much more interesting things to do in the back yard. Prima donnas… I dunno…

For the photo geeks here’s the setup: Shot in my backyard during the afternoon with Abby standing in the shade. Camera left has a Nikon SB800 mounted on a stand with a shoot through umbrella plus a black backing on it sort of turning it into a softbox. It’s a bit more cumbersome than a standard shoot through but decided to try it out. Camera set to manual and metered for the sky – should have dropped the ambient by a couple of stops at this point but was trying to get everything else set up as well so missed that. SB800 is set to 1/4 power and fired by PocketWizard II’s.

I really like this type of lighting and the results show in this image when viewed in full at hi-res. It’s just a nice even light that gives the image a different feel. If I can plant the kids down long enough I’ll try some more otherwise i’ll try and rope in some willing models!

(ps there was a delay posting this due to computer issues… more on that soon!)

More ramblings soon…