011 - Shooting Outdoor Portraits During the Day with a Flash (Speedlite)

“Introducing lights into your scene is one of the easiest ways to separate yourself from 90% of all other photographers.”

— Unknown

Let's take a look at how to create some dynamic and awesome family portraits by taking our flash (speedlite) outside! Taking your inside lights, outside during the day opens an entire new world of possibilities.

"Introducing lights into your scene is one of the easiest ways to separate yourself from 90% of all other photographers." I read that somewhere and it's stuck with me. I'm proud of myself for reaching this level of understanding. I'm overlowing that I can share this with you.

Thank you.

Camera - GH4 | Cactus V6 Flash Transmitter | Cactus rf60 flash

010 - Portrait Challenge - Recreate a Famous Photograph or Scene

I challenged myself to recreate a photograph or scene from a movie. I searched for famous self portrait photography and ran accross the Life Magazine amazing photo by Andreas Feininger, 1941.

First, let's take a look at the background. Notice the tight hard shadow lines moving in a diagonal behind Andreas.

Then, we notice there is another light lighting his head / face. You can see that the shadow is pushing his glasses down, so we know the light is directly above him. 

But the interesting thing is that, the front of the camera is in shadow, just like his right had. So that tells us that there is some sort of modifier on the light above him as well.

We used DIY barn doors, attached to our canister shop lights (See episode 009 to see exactly how we did that, it's easy and you can do it.) to modify and shape the light.

I had an old film camera my mom gave me about a year ago, this would be perfect for me to hold as my camera.

009 - How to Add Barn Doors to Canaster Shop Lights

Barn doors are panels that attach to a lamp or light. These barn door pannels allow the ability to manipulate, shape, and curve, light and shadows. This fun video is an easy to follow guide on how to take control of the light by adding heat resistant cardboard barn doors to your canister shop lights.

Let's do this!