Hi I’m Doug McKinlay and you are watching AdoramaTV.
For this episode we look at three pictures
when a use of flash was necessary in order to get a shot. Now I know said in the past that
I work alone.
I don’t use assistants to carry soft boxes or reflectors. I carry everything I need
either in a backpack camera bag or shoulder bag. I also work to tight deadlines,
fast turnaround times and as such I need to be really aware of
when to use a flash and when not to use flash.
AdoramaTV presents
Stay Focused with Doug McKinlay.
So I picked this image because I think presents a lot of problems we deal with all the time.
Midday sun, tropical latitudes,
bright backgrounds, dark skin tones and of course
never ever enough time. So I was on a travel assignment
for the Times in London in Mombassa in Kenya, now Kenya had been hit pretty hard
recently by the unrest and the tourism industry was quite damaged.
So I was sent down there to do a little piece on
how it was coming back. Now we're on Diani Beach here
in the north side of Mombasa and I approach this guy. I love the way that he
was..
he was very friendly to start with and the beaches lined with..
people are selling trinkets and little souvenir shops. I just love the way he is
in his
traditional Masai dress. So when I approached him I start talking with him
a little bit first before I even lifted the camera
and once I was comfortable with him and he was comfortable with me, then I asked if I could
take this photograph.
Of corse then he said yes, that's fine. Now
when I look at this image the problems that I'm presented with especially
really is that's his skin tones quite dark and the overhead sun,
right above his head. So I’m going to get really bad shadows in and around his eyes, under his
chin.
You can see little bit under his nose even still. Now the only way I can mitigate
this is use a bit of fill flash.
So I've got my flash mounted on my camera,
because I’m up against time here too. I back the power off
on the the output of the flash down to 1/16th. It’s just enough
to sort of fill up the holes and bring his face
back into proper exposure and at the same time not blowing out the backgrounds.
So the numbers in the camera for this picture
were a 50mm, f/1.4 lens on a Canon 5D Mark III
with ISO 100 because it's nice and bright.
With f/4, because I want to get a little bit
blur in the background here and a shutter speed of 1/1000th. It
really snapped it shut.
So the creative use of flash is really only limited to your
imagination.
There fantastic tools. A while back
I was a commission to shoot pictures for a book on Marrakesh in Morocco for Lonely
Planet publications.
It was frenetically busy, busy job. I was in country for about three to four weeks,
working up to 18 hours a day. I was pretty tired actually,
but every now and then I managed to get into a spot where I was taking pictures
but it was a little less
crazy. Now for this image I'm in a supper club
in Marrakesh where we've gone belly dancers and T dancers. Now getting this
image
there was a few little problems that presented themselves that I had to overcome.
So what I wanted to achieve was something more than the usual.
These women were incredibly frenetic. Lots of
energy and I wanted to try and portray that with my pictures.
Rather than just your usual dull flash to subject, to camera
shot. I wanted to use a technique, rear curtain sync
and help bring that energy into the frame. So first things first,
get in position. So I managed to get a chair right next to the performance area.
Next I chose my lens. In this case it was a 16-35mm, f/2.8 short zoom lens.
Now I’ve said I don't use assistance. Doesn’t mean that I can't
find the help of somebody that happens to be sitting beside me. Now I attach my flash
to the camera via a along sync cord,
a 2 meter long cord and then the man beside me was kind enough to hold the flash
in the right position as I instructed for me to take my shots.
Now the method we're using is rear curtain sync.
How this works is, your using a longer exposure,
in this case it was about a 2 second exposure and the flash will fire
just as the shutter starts to close on that two seconds.
This is what gives us this funny effect here. It gives the picture it's energy, makes it much,
much more interesting than just a straight
shot from flash, to subject, to camera. I find these kind of pictures
actually quite relaxing after long hard days of running around in the heat
sweating into my camera strap,
I can sit back and just relax.
For this picture all I wanted was an evenly lit
image featuring this man's great face and the cowel surrounding him.
His eyes are really blue and really stood out, really grabbed my attention.
Now we're up in the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan
and this man and his colleagues are camel drivers
going through the valley. We’re sitting in a tea hut having a quick refreshment when I
notice this guy and through my interpreter, slash driver
we get chatting with him and he agrees for the price of a cup of tea
to have his picture taken. Now the problem I was presented with were
shadows and lack of light. Now the lack light was
because his colleagues were all standing around us blocking out any kind of sun.
Also there was a bit of shadow under his eyes
and his left shoulder was lost in shadow. I wanted to bring that out
a little bit. Instead of hitting him with a full on flash
what I did was I swivelled the head of the flash
backwards and had my driver who's standing behind me holdup an
A4 piece a paper and I bounced the light off of that back onto his face
acting as a rudimentary reflector. Now when you're in the field you
use whatever you can to try and get the picture done. So the technical
information
for this picture is as follows: I'm using a 50mm, f/1.4 lens
set at f/4 to get myself some background blur. The shutter speed
at 1/200th of a second. The ISO is it 200.
On the flash we got the flash powered down to about quarter of the output
with a sync speed at 1,250. Now your shoe mounted flash is a fantastic tool.
I know can be a bit intimidating for us but with practice
it's something you never gonna wanna go anywhere without.
So that’s it from me. I’m Doug McKinlay for AdoramaTV.
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