As I promised in my 52 project here is a better explanation of how I took the photograph: Week 25. Valley Forge.  This is basically a demonstration of what a little wireless flash can do to improve your images.  The equipment that I used to create this image was a Canon 7d camera body, a Canon 24-70mm 2.8 lens, one Michelle (assistant/friend), and two Canon 580 EXII Flash units.  As I detailed in the original post I took this picture at Valley Forge in PA.

No Flash Used

To the left is one of the first pictures that I took of this scene.  When creating any artistic photograph it’s important to understand what you want the image to look like as a final product.  You need to know what you are trying to emphasize or highlight before you take a picture and then you have to figure out how you are going to do it.  I wanted to preserve the beautiful sunset as well as highlight the log hut in the foreground.   Since I was taking a picture of the sunset this means that I am basically shooting in the direction of my light source… the sun.  When you do this that means that everything in the foreground is going to be masked in shadows.  I know what you’re thinking, “If only there was another sun behind me to help illuminate the foreground..hmmm.”  Unfortunately we only have one sun so flashes will have to suffice for now.

Let me develop the problem a bit..  In order for me to capture the beautiful saturated colors of the sunset I have to pick a shutter speed, aperture, and iso combination that will create a much darker image thus underexposing the rest of the image that isn’t the sunset.  You can see how this looks in the above image.  Now this was a decision that I made, to expose for the sunset thus leaving the log hut, trees etc. darker than I would ideally like them to be.  With a camera it’s harder to have everything look like it does with your eyes.  Your brain can take many images of the scene in front of you and combine them together making it appear that everything is exposed correctly and in focus.  Your eyes adjust to the different objects in the picture whether they are darker or brighter and you have a nice mental image.  But with a camera you pretty much have to pick one object and expose your film/sensor for that object.  The above picture was shot at aperture 2.8, shutter speed 1/100 and and iso of 100.

If I was to take a picture exposing for the log hut, grass and trees it would look like the next image below titled: Exposed for Hut.

Exposed for Hut

The problem with this image is that since I changed my camera settings to expose for the foreground hut, I have washed out the beautiful sunset.  The only way that I could try to make it look more dramatic would be to edit it later in post processing.  But I avoid doing that as much as I can since I like to get it right when I take the picture from the start.  What I really want is to have the best of both worlds, the dark, saturated, dramatic sunset as well as the illuminated hut in the foreground.  Hello off camera flash units!

One of my favorite features of the Canon 7d is that it can wirelessly control and trigger Canon flashes with infrared pulses.  I use this wireless feature all the time.  The limitations are pretty apparent though since I have to keep a direct line of sight between the flashes and the camera as well as not get too far away.. but it will do until I decide to upgrade to some radio triggers.  Don’t get confused if your not a tech junkie like me.  All this means is that I can take my flashes that I would normally put on my camera and have someone hold them somewhere off camera.  I will do a post in the future emphasizing how off camera lighting is far superior to on camera lighting…  So when I realized that I would need to use some kind of flash to light up the hut I utilized my 2 flashes and the wireless control of my Canon 7d.

At this point in the creation of this image I had to decide how I was going to light this hut and the foreground.  I love being in control of my lighting and manipulating it as I see fit.  I started off by putting my friend Michelle directly in front of the hut camera left.  I told her to hold the flash up in the air and point it at the hut.  Then I took a test shot to see how much power I should give to the flash.  Since I shoot in manual I often use my flashes in manual mode as well.  The first shot was a little underpowered and the flash beam was a little too wide.  So I cranked up the power the whole way and had her zoom the light in so that more of it would reach the front of the hut.  After taking a second shot I was happy but I thought that the image might look better if I illuminated the right side of the hut and ground just a little bit as well.

Standing shot

So I took my other flash unit and set it in the grass to the right of the camera.  I set this to half power because I wanted it to be a very slight fill light and not overpower the rest of the image.  To the left is the first image that I took while I was standing titled: Standing shot.  This image and the one below it were taken with the following camera setting: ISO-100, shutter- 1/100, aperture- 3.5.

The photograph below is basically the exact same shot as the one above except that I had gotten down on the ground to take that picture. I wanted to include both angles in this post to illustrate how the simple act of lying on the ground to take a picture can add interest and give a different perspective to photos.

Taken from the ground

Personally I like the second one where I was on the ground but I think they’re both interesting shots.

In this post I have gone over some of my thought processes and techniques for creating images.  First you have to know what you want the final image to look like.  Then you have to figure out how you are going to make that happen.  For this image it meant using 2 flash units to light up the hut since I was exposing for the sunset in the background.  Then by just playing with camera and flash settings as well as light placement I was able to make a pretty neat image.  Enjoy!