Sometimes Ya Gotta Do What Ya Gotta Do

Yesterday, without much notice, I was called to quickly shoot a young lady for one of my regular clients. All I had with me was a camera, my light meter, and a Speedlite.

That's not the way I prefer to shoot interior, pretty girl stuff. It wouldn't have been as bad if I had some way to fire my Speedlite off-camera, a la the Strobist. But that wasn't the case. I didn't even have my Stroboframe with me so the Speedlite would have to remain on the camera's hot shoe and in the same axis as the lens. I'm neither a photo-journalist nor a paparazzi so shooting this way ain't exactly de riguer for JimmyD. I'm a pretty girl shooter, not a pro with on-camera lighting or a snapshot-taking simp!

I'm sure many of you have been confronted with similar situations, i.e., where you've been stuck shooting with an on-camera strobe. (I'm not referring to something like a ring flash, but a simple, hot-shoe-mounted, strobe.) When you've needed to do so, have the words, "point-and-shoot" come to mind? Yesterday, they certainly popped into mine.

As I wrote in this update's title, "sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do." Oh well! I was there, so was the girl, and some pictures needed to be snapped. Here's a few tips that I think--if you're not aware of them already--might help reduce the snapshot-ish-ness of your images:

1. Have a really cute and pretty girl as your subject. Okay, that's not always the way it's gonna go but, when it does, a hot, sexy, chick will overpower the less-than-desirable lighting approach.

2. Although this wasn't possible for me yesterday, see if there's a way to utilize window light as your main source of illumination. Window-lit shots can be extremely cool. If needed, you can bounce some of your strobe's light off a wall or the ceiling for fill, rather than using it as your main light. If you have a reflector handy, that can be utilized as well.

3. Don't shoot in auto-mode or any of the creative modes! Stay in charge of your exposure. Keep your camera in manual mode. Use a light meter or bracket with the help of the histogram. Again, stay in charge of the exposure! With my Canon 550EX Speedlite, I can shoot in manual mode and let the Speedlite decide how much light to deliver to adequately expose per *MY* shutter, aperture, and ISO choices. Doing so will help provide consistency in your exposures. When shooting in the ETTL auto-modes, the automatically-decided exposures are easily led astray and sometimes ends up all over the map.

4. Don't point the strobe directly at the subject. Bounce the light off the ceiling or a wall. Try to angle your strobe in a way that allows most of the light (ideally, 80% of it) to bounce and diffuse off a wall or the ceiling, and a bit of it to illuminate more directly. Light scatters. A slight angle of the strobe, towards the subject, will allow some of that light to scatter where you want it to scatter, that is, towards the subject. Be mindful of the color of the walls or the ceiling if you're using either as a reflector. These surfaces can effect your color, e.g., light bounced off a green-painted wall is not going to look so great on skin tones. You'll probably need to do a custom white balance when colors on the wall or ceiling might effect the color in your images.

The pretty girl in the pic is Naudia. Canon 5D w/28-135 IS USM zoom and a Canon 550EX Speedlite. ISO 200, f/5.6 @ 1/60th.