We were walking up to the Hudson River and the light was glaring, too hazy to make out much and with little natural fill. The surroundings offered little in the way of background or texture and overall it was a disaster of a place to shoot at that moment in time.

Perfect. I wanted to show the workshop folks how you can visualize an image and make it yours even if the background, and the light, sucks.

This shot was taken in the available light a few moments later. I had forgotten to take the pic with my camera of the scene as it was with no additional light. I think you can see the very bad light and hazy background / blown out sky that the set provided. The use of the speedlight to create the effect is a rather easy one. Just keep in mind that the f-stop exposure will be based on the speedlight, and the ambient will be controlled by the shutter speed.

I had Briana come to the railing. It was a piece of background that could be used for its angular lines and something for her to react with. The backlight was brutal so I decided to underexpose the background by two stops. A meter reading told me that f-11 at 1/125 would be the exposure for a dead looking shot with correct exposure. Ick.

I chose to underexpose by two stops so I used the shutter speed to 1/250 for one stop under and then to f-16 for the second stop under exposure. f-16 at 1/250 is two stops under f-11 at 1/125.

We brought the speedlight in close and zoomed it to wide angle. Since I already knew where the strobe would be placed to give me f-11 at 1/8 power, I simply changed to 1/4 power and had f-16. I wanted to make a more interesting shot than to have the flash right on her, so I had Bill aim it away from her just a bit. The result:

As you can see, the light becomes the interesting thing about the image and the underexposed background looks kinda cool. The hazy, crappy light is replaced by a more contrasty city and gritty looking clouds.

I backed up with the wide angle and got lower so I could isolate Briana from the wild sky. The sun was above her head and the resulting flare ended up being pretty cool. I now had the light moved to be as nearly on axis of the camera as possible. This eliminated sidelight shadows and more fully illuminated her face and arms. Even though the strobe was zoomed out a bit, it was still so close to Briana that it seems almost snooted… a beam of light. Notice the deep shadows coming from Briana’s shoes forward. That shows that at the bottom of the image, the sun was still more powerful than the strobe.

I realized that fighting the flare would ultimately be a losing proposition even though I kind of liked the image, so I had Briana place herself with the shadow of her head covering my lens. Since she was looking down, it was an easy task for her to make sure she was shadowing my lens. By that action, the sun was placed directly behind her head. Bill came in close with the strobe and we made a few more images.

The shot looked pretty good but I wanted a bit better placement of the light so I had Bill lower the light a bit and we took another shot. That is what I wanted to do. Create a shot in really bad light and turn the bad light into at least interesting backlight.

The next time you have a location that simply looks pretty bad, try doing something with your speedlight to make it a more interesting location. By lowering the ambient light and using your strobe to light the subject, you create a moody, dramatic image with lots of depth.

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