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Much better. I chose a much shallower picture than the one before and even had plenty of darkness to work with. All of the light seen was my own as there was no moon and it was nearly pitch-black. This allowed me to pick and choose what I wanted to show and what I wanted to subtract from the photo with shadow. Again, was easy enough. I had the portable studio up and down in no time at all and the photos made.

Easy, quick and painless environmental portrait. I had the EIC of CM-Life holding up my diffuser because I forgot my stand umbrella. So the pressure was on and I had only 10 minutes to shoot the picture. Could I have done it better? Absolutely. But would it have been a natural, environmental portrait? That much I cannot say, because I didn’t experiment like I normally do. That is my biggest regret with this project is not having the time nor the presence of mind to shoot experimentally. I think that impacted the final product because this is only a decent environmental portrait. Nothing special by any stretch of the imagination. AND, what’s more, is that I should’ve opened my aperture. This bugs me beyond belief. I really should’ve highlighted the environment more in an environmental portrait. Lesson learned.

With color, white balance goes only so far, yes. Knowing light, light sources, what color it will be in-camera, and being able to alter that (also with a flash), is important. I’m not very experienced with gels yet, so I do most of my color control in-camera with white balance and the remainder with what I’m bouncing my flash off of. Going for a warm look? Cloudy WB with a golden umbrella. Blue? Turn down the heat to 2500K and use silver, or grey brick. Soft, pure, white tones? Easy auto balance with a gentle flash off of a white umbrella or through a white diffuser. See, I’m getting there. Slowly.

    “This way, your good pictures will not be accidents.” I try so hard to have this not happen. Sometimes you can’t help it, the accidents just turn out. Others, I am shaping, carving, molding the photo with careful precision before even thinking about the shutter. Then, if it’s good, I’m replicating it. How did this turn out so good and why? So that when I do try it again, it’s even easier, more machine-like, than before. Good photography doesn’t have to be those perfect moments that only happen rarely – perfection is all around us, we have only to harness our skills to expound upon that perfection through the lens.

    According to Kent, I have broken many rules already. I use multi-exposure in sports action shots and not just art photography or art feature shots, because sports have sequence and can be shown as such. I use motion in portraits, because people move. That is a fact of life, we are life given movement. A little motion at the tips of a grin goes a long way to showing that perfect smile, and not just the canned, metallic taste of normal portraits. Breaking rules is kind of my thing. I love experimenting with my camera and finding out how to differently bend light than I had previously thought possible. I guess you could call that my guilty pleasure.

    “You can make the sun come back.” A quote from illustrious McNally, having an underexposed scene is what he shoots for so that he can have unlimited control of his photos by introducing HIS light. Yeah he gelled it again in this example, I’ve come to expect that, but everything is done with purpose, not just a guess. Purpose in lighting, purpose in exposure, purpose in color (and gel), and it’s THAT level of good that I aspire to be.

    Auto FP high-speed sync is, in fact, a life saver. Shooting in the daylight, getting nice and close to your subject and still being able to fill flash with golden sunlight in the background? Nonsense. It’s amazing, really, the amount of good photography that you can make fantastic just by adding light in an already lit setting. It doesn’t seem logical, the light is already there, but it’s not quite perfect coming from on high as the sun moves past one golden hour and towards another. How do you replicate golden hour photography at midday with “flat” light? More light, surprisingly.

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A fun assignment – I liked that there were no restrictions, only criteria. The extreme bounce was tough finding somewhere cool to shoot with a structure over 30’ away, but I digress. The family portraits I did the other day went fantastically, and this adorable child made for a better model than I ever could. I used the wide panel most of the time to catch my umbrella as much as possible since it was leaning on my bag that I would set up wherever I needed the umbrella (I really need an umbrella stand…), but otherwise I think the lighting was fantastic.

The multi-exposure was challenging, I saw it differently in my head so I eventually just had to pick a frame and run with it. The lighting was uneven in the alley that we chose – a street lamp behind me kept dying, then coming back on at various lumens and was impossible to predict. Being that I was messing with white balance, this unnecessarily complicated things. Hind sight – should’ve just found another alley.

The extreme bounce was interesting. I kept having to remind myself what I was going for and adjusting my angles to find something further away to bounce off of. I would love to try this with some sort of sculpture to play with shadows sometime.

This assignment wasn’t hard by any stretch of the imagination, just different from what I’m used to.

“Slap magenta on the lens, and you really clean things up, from shadows to highlights to skin tones.” Is this still a thing? Is this still relevant? I’ve never heard of anyone using magenta filters lately, as the white balancing in-camera gets stronger. It’s an interesting concept, however, as he states that the sunsets get only more magenta with the filter and the cityscape gets cleaned up, all the while keeping the subject clean. I doubt I’ll have a reason to buy a magenta ND filter in the near future, but I’ve been wrong before.

    The second time that he mentions zooming his strobe, he mentions zooming it to 105mm. This is interesting to me, in the sense that both examples that he provided and had discourse over were inherently different at different distances, etc. I know his strobe can zoom to 200mm, he said it earlier, so I can’t help but wonder if 105 is the magic number?

    “They are big sumbitches.” Single handedly the greatest textbook quote of all-time. What he describes here very, very vividly is a challenge for all photographers. Most still try a Hail Mary (or as he describes it, a frikkin’ Novena), and I have more than once done the same. Rarely do I end up turning in those photos. I just may try his method – strapping on a monopod and “flying.” Hopefully I can turn out something similar in regards to his beautifully moving mosh pit.

    He uses cloudy white balance often, an interesting use of white balance to make soft golden lighting. I really need to remember to manipulate this more often. In many of his portraits that he uses as examples in this chapter, it seems as if he could easily use cloudy white balance to give his subjects a nice golden glow and fill the rest with soft flash. And furthermore, Father Pre-Flash should lead us into Photography Nirvana. “There is hope.” I’m sold. He can be my Messiah.

    Can I just…? “On location, never go audible with your interior desperation…When it does work, I completely understand… For a few brief and shining moments, it means that you don’t have to be an angst-ridden puddle of insecurity at the camera. It positively makes you want to Riverdance!” This. This is exactly how I feel with portraits. It’s like an equation that I just don’t have all the pieces to. It’s like an unruly child that you just can’t seem to figure out how to make compliant. I am learning a good deal here, but I’m hoping that you can help me to elaborate. Taking beautiful pictures of people is somewhat important.