hi guys welcome or welcome back thanks so much for joining me today we're going to
go through how to take those beautiful off-camera flash big sky photographs of dogs
i feel like they're called a big sky but to be honest i don't actually know it's super sunny
today and we've got this beautiful blue sky behind us that we're going to use to basically make some
stunning photographs and we're going to be using all of the theory that we went through in the off
camera flash for beginners 101 part 1 and part 2 to go through this by the way if you've not
pressed the subscribe button yet i really think you should do that because i might enrich your
life so for this kind of work you're going to need a camera probably with a wide-angle lens
we're going to be using the sony a7r3 with a sigma r 20mm 1.4 lens but genuinely you can use a
kit lens for this it doesn't need to be anything special you want to have a flash whether that is a
speed light or a strobe either or to be honest but you will find especially in like midday sun like
we've got here that you might need large power like high wattage so these are 600 watt godox ad600
pro strobes which are wireless which is great so cordless outside which is fab we're going to
be using a softbox but again you can kind of use anything we're going to be probably pushing over
the camera's sync speed so we will enable high speed sync but again you don't have to you just
need to work out your light so using the theory that we did in the previous videos if you haven't
watched them i really would suggest you do because i'm not going to touch on any of the basics
today really what we're going to do is we're going to set our ambient exposure and then
we're going to set our flash exposure and then we're going to shoot probably a few dogs because
why not i like using the food for these because you can get them really close to the camera
as the photographer you feed them the food and then they're really engaged and into the
conversation just as an fyi i am going to be using ttl for this session but we are going
to be using a manual mode on the camera so the camera is going to be fully manual setup
so that i've got full control over my ambient exposure and then the flash is going to basically
work out how much it needs to fire and it's also important tonight for this that we're going to
have the flash super close to the subject's face so if they're not desensitized to flash you need
to desensitize them to the flash before you start setting up these shots because it's going to be
we're all really close together so if you've got a nervous dog it's not going to work very well
we're looking at ambient exposure here so i'm kind of on my you know reasonably normal-ish settings
i'm going to drop my iso down to iso 100 and then i can pull back my aperture a little bit and
probably push my shutter speed a touch now what i'm wanting to achieve with the screen that we
can see here is an under exposure of the ambient light but we still want to be able to see it
if we can't see the scene we've got a problem so we want to change our settings now do you see why
we need to be on a high speed sync here because if we're trying to overpower midday sun we're gonna
have to push our aperture all the way up and still then at that point i'd want a little bit more so
we can go the other way leave our aperture down a little bit for some separation not that low and
still get an underexposed background there so that is a good ambient exposure and i will just note
right now that if you've got a sony mirrorless camera or any other mirrorless camera all the
settings on your camera are really important to making sure that this is easy to do for you so go
ahead and look at the blog post in the description where i'll go through some other little settings
that you might want to be aware of so this camera is fully set up before this type of work i have
that dialed in and saved on a custom mode so basically it sets all the settings in the camera
it just makes it so much easier so when you've got your ambient settings all dialed in and you're
happy with those then it's time to go ahead and look at adding the flash so we've got our trigger
sat on the camera now so they're both on the same channel i've got it set to ttl so they're both
talking to each other it is on high speed sync so they're both on high speed sync and i'm gonna
over expose so i'm gonna put the ttl compensation at plus one so it's going to technically over
expose what it thinks it should be by one stop that might be a little bit hot at times
but i think that's gonna probably give us the best exposure in my opinion it gives this style of work
the power that it needs so we've got our ambient exposure dialed in now we've got our
flash exposure technically dialed in now with our ttl so all that's left really is to get a model
and start shooting what you want to do for this kind of a shot is get really really low
down so you want to be right on the floor so that you've got some interesting scale
looking up at the subject tends to work well we're gonna use bryt fuzz because she's teeny tiny
and then she'll be able to get a good shot bryt is fully desensitized to the flash so for the
person who is controlling the flash it's important to instruct them to have the basically so that the
flash is in front of the eyes of the subject so if the subject starts to look off to one side
then they need to move the flash so that they're moving around to that side as well because it
tends to make a better shot and it'll give you both your catch lights in the eyes the person
who's controlling the flash as well it's important for them to angle the flash so say this was the
subject we would have the light slightly tilting down kind of um so it's slightly above the subject
if that makes sense but not too high so because b is so small the light's gonna be really really
low but we'll bring a bigger dog out later on and show you the difference you can't have the peanut
butter we'll have snacks first right dan are you ready i'm ready dan's ready let me get
the snacks beanie you're on these snacks so you want to put your subject out front either in a
standard sit or down whatever you want to do and they can stay on lead for this as well so we're
going to put beanie down wait dan's going to bring his light over the top at beanie down good wait
so beanie's in a down higher down higher i'll focus and then we shoot good girl
beanie have a break hey everybody hey grandpa how are you doing hey look i've got snacks so
i don't know if anybody's met finn yet this is finn finn is a um old boy now he's an
old romanian rescue dog he's had a really tough life and he's my little best friend
he's basically a granddad he does whatever the heck he wants he does no tricks and he likes food
it's about summary isn't it for a down good boy so finn is also okay with lights but it did take
him a long time are you ready fit what's this oh and wide legs like legs wide legs
ready what's this this good boy what's this on my finger
ready so that's kind of all there is to it it's just a case of making sure that you've
got the dog interacting with the camera or with something and looking at your composition don't
chop off pause and just have fun because that's what this style of work is all about that's a wrap