Fun With Flowers

I stopped trying to get fancy and cut my location stuff down to one thing at a time, well two if you count the sun. A light, or a reflector. Not both at the same time or two or three modifiers, but just one. I getting to where I can use one thing at a time and KNOW what the outcome is. That is re-assuring and gives me the confidence to explore what I can do instead of fighting just to do something. When that starts to be second nature then I can expand my set-up.

I'm getting to the point now where I can judge my exposure in a lot of situations. In the shots on the beach in the link above I took two test shots to make sure I liked it. One in Av mode to get the shutter speed for my ambient, and then on manual to make sure I liked my flash setting. After that I just compensated as the sun was going down and did headshots for the whole family. I felt like I KNEW what I was doing, and they felt like I KNEW what I was doing. My wife told me I really looked like I knew what I was doing to. I was fiddling with expressions and jokes, not grumbling with knobs and buttons.

Buying the pair of pocket wizards forced me to abandon the crutch of eTTL. Don't get me wrong, it's cool and I still use it. I just don't use it when I have time to think about what I'm doing. Grab shots at class reunions, birthdays, and wedding receptions I'm an eTTLing fool. I used to use a bracket for that too, but now I bounce everything with a stofen whenever possible.