Off-camera lighting with flash or video light.

After attending the Jerry Ghionis seminar last week, I have been really motivated to learn more about off-camera lighting.  For the most part, Cheridy and myself are natural light shooters which means that we shoot with whatever light is naturally present in the situation.  However, after attending this workshop and learning the value of knowing how to control off-camera light, I have been motivated to learn and practice some new techniques with off-camera flash and video light.  It may or may not be something that we use a lot, but it’s nice to have one more thing in the bag of tricks.

The picture below is an example of what I’m talking about.  This was shot on a typical Michigan winter day with a washed out overcast sky and evenly diffused light.  In most cases we like the predictability of that light and we know how we would shoot with it.  But if we wanted to create a really dramatic image, that type of light is difficult.  So for this shot, I used a technique where we underexpose the ambient light to make it go from washed out grey to a really moody and stormy look and then introduce an off-camera light to add some dramatic side lighting.   This is the type of dramatically lit photo that would be nearly impossible to achieve without some type of artificial light source.

I’m really looking forward to  playing with this technique more over the next few weeks.  It’s almost like rediscovering photography all over again. I’m so excited about playing with a lot of new concepts and new ideas and creating images in ways that our new and exciting for us.