Hi this is Joe McNally for Adorama TV,
and in this segment I'm gonna talking about when to use a flash and
when not to.
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The picture over my shoulder
is from the Hindu festival known as Thaipusam,
and it's a frenzied religious festival. So I'm using a flash here
okay, I'm using a technique called flash and blur and that means that I'm shooting
at a very slow shutter speed
but I'm also freezing the action at least partially
via the use up a hotshoe flash or a speedlite.
Now you heard me just say when to use a flash, when not to use a flash,
you know people are always like oh wait I thought Joe McNally always use a flash?
Not the case okay, I observe light, in those quiet moments of light
occasionally present themselves. Not in this instance though.
I'm in the street and I'm photographing a frenzy and my response to that is to try
to indicate the nature of that frenzy
by using this technique again known as flash and blur.
So the process of
doing this is I'm hand holding the camera I'm in the mix of the street. The
the festival goers are all surrounding me okay,
and this one particular subject is right here and I'm approaching him with a
wide angle lens. The lens is zoomed to nineteen millimeters.
I have a trigger light or a master flash
a commander flash on my camera that's firing in this way and
my assistant is out there in the street with a paint poll, a Kasey poll adapter
and a speed light box. Now we've reference the Speedlite box before
it's a Lastolite product okay but there's a new iteration.
Historically all these boxes had a silver interior,
this is a new one which I help them design. It's just come out.
It's got a white interior the lights a little softer,
a little richer, a little creamier even for a small sizes soft box like this.
So that light as you can see in the picture is crossing from camera left
my assistant has the light up in here okay, the Speedlite box is right there.
It's going this way across the festival-goers face
and I'm firing away, I'm shooting at a 1/6th of a second at f/4.
I wouldn’t have a prayer of anything being sharp in this instance out on the street
unless
I used flash. Flash in this senario
is absolutely essential but there are other ways of going about this.
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When I reference other ways of going about things,
take a look at the picture over my shoulder now. It's a quiet moment.
Where this little baby is having his head shaved
for the trip up the mountain which is an important part in the festival.
A flash would destroy this picture. Ok I'm at the same
ISO as I was for my flash picture, ISO 800.
ISO 800 but I changed the lens up and now I become
an observer. A discrete observer using a long lens from the
edge of the action and quietly recording
the shaving of this little baby's head whose unbelievably cute.
His little expression spoke volumes to me, I was like
this is like amazing. In the midst of all this frenzy
here's this quiet moment okay, so this is
an observation where I am not part of the mix and I'm not drawing attention to
myself by using a flash.
In a situation like this here okay, I am
in the mix I am jumping out there. Think of this as a giant
you know dance festival at a wedding reception or something where you're just
jumping in there with all the
the celebrants and your moving around and the only way to sharpen that
to isolated it, to come back with a photograph is to use flash
and really be kind of aggressive about the way you are part of the scene.
In this much more discreet, available light,
quiet off to the side. Two different ways of looking at
the same event.
So in this segment
we showed two different approaches. One is a flash
off-camera approach running through a small speedlite box
and the other is a quiet approach using nothing but available light.
So two different ways right two different things to do
at the same location. This is Joe McNally for Adorama TV
talking about went to use flash and when not to use flash.
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