Using an off camera flash.

I've been practicing lately using a flashgun mounted on a light stand or hand held and here are a few photo's from to today.





Here are a couple more, I put a snoot on the flash to create a circle of light on the model.





This is a lot of fun and using the snoot took a lot of testing and fiddling with.  Trying to figure out how to aim it was the most difficult part of the task then getting exposure and flash setting down was next.

Something else I learned is the position of my flash commander in relation to the flash gun has the effect of the flash not firing.  When I put the light behind me, it didn't fire so I had to move next to or behind it to make it work.

It's an IR commander and I imagine a radio commander would have performed better.

My wife's friend, Misty, liked the levitation photo's I did with Lauren so she wanted to try it.  Here's what I got.









Misty was a great model and up to trying different things.  Her work shoes prevented her from jumping very high, but she's up to trying it again with better shoes.  Her clothes were a bit loose and showed too much movement, do she's going to wear something a bit heavier to cut that down.  The photo's did turn out alright because it was a windy day.

I was watching Digital Rev TV on YouTube last week and saw a video about Levitation.  I think Kai, the announcer is very funny and it was fun to watch him demonstrate how to photograph people to look like they're levitating.  He posted a link to his inspiration for trying it, an oriental camera girl.  

After looking for a model for a week to give this a try I finally got my oldest daughter to come over and we spent an hour taking pictures (I was taking the photo's, she was jumping all over the place.)  I wanted a fast shutter (1/1000) so I fiddled with the aperture and ISO until I got something I liked then had her start jumping around.  

After taking 149 photo's we finally got five we really liked.

There's a friend of my wife's who wants to model these poses and when she can get some time off I'll be shooting her.