The Complete Commercial Photographer

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So far we have covered many different ways you can use your flash on-camera such as bounce and diffused flash and hopefully you have mastered those. Now we will explore…

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Using the reflector card, or Flashbender, will work the same as on-camera, but here again, if you reach to arms length you can almost have a portrait quality light by…

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WIRELESS TRIGGERS FOR OFF-CAMERA FLASH The ability to use more than one flash unit allows you a whole new array of photographic lighting potential. You can do traditional portraits using…

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There are problems with optical slaves however. If you are using several flashes in a brightly lit area, the slaves may not ‘see’ the master flash fire due to the…

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3) Trigger the pre-flash first and then open the shutter to take the picture. This method works pretty well. What you do is, with all flash units setup and ready,…

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Dedicated Wireless Some of today’s state-of-the-art flash units come with wireless flash ability built in. Canon’s 430EXII and 580EXII and 600EX-RT are three of them while Nikon’s SB 900 and SB700…

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SETTING THE CHANNELS Both the MASTER and REMOTE must have the same channels set to each for them to communicate to each other.

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Radio Remotes Triggers There are numerous methods for triggering flash using wireless radio technology. There are a number of third party systems designed for wireless triggering and originally most were…

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This image was shot many years ago but uses my favorite ‘hide-the-flash’ technique.  It was an assignment for a corporate company and to highlight the woman in the middle, I…

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PORTRAITS WITH MULTIPLE FLASH Now that we have looked at how to trigger these flash units, let’s look at how to apply them to your subjects. You can use multiple…

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Portraits using Flash There is no difference between shooting portraits with studio strobes versus flash units as far as the approach to lighting. The advantage to flash is the compact…

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Rear Curtain – cont To enable rear curtain flash to work, you have to make adjustment either on the camera or flash and it depends on the make and model….

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USING REMOTE FLASH The next step beyond wireless flash is using wireless remotely by placing flash in more distant locations. This is putting light in out-of-the-way places to accent or…

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I was photographing a magazine story on a backcountry wilderness camp when I set up this photo after dusk. My idea was to show someone reading in the tent to…

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The client here was Jackson and Perkins, the mail order flower company. We chose the shade for the soft light and to avoid contrast in the scene. I placed the…

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These images show the before and after. No flash on the left and two wireless flashes used below. One placed behind the subject and the other on the right aimed…

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You can also get red-eye with a tele-extender and wildlife, just like shooting people, so moving the flash off-camera aids the situation. There are several manufactures that make these types…

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Here is a perfect example of moving with the subject. In this case I am neither stationary, nor panning left or right, rather walking backwards. I chose a shutter speed…

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In the case of this image, I again used the same technique. Down on the ground I pointed the camera and panned with the subject and the flash was also…

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For this photo, taken on a dark overcast day, I used a flash off camera slightly using a radio remote. I wanted to freeze him so I used a fast…

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More color tips There are some color techniques you cannot achieve with your AWB in camera and this photo is the perfect example. Prviously in this lesson I showed the…

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Get Creative! There is nothing more important in photography than continuing to explore and experiment.  That is exactly what I did when photographing my neighbor for fun. He stepped into…

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In the next photo I wanted to light this arch with colored flash. The first thing I did was shoot just the arch with a good sky and underexposed some,…

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