Bryan Peterson Photography School by Bryan Peterson

Author:Bryan Peterson [Peterson, Bryan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Published: 2021-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

CANON 7D

CANON 24–70MM LENS

F/22 FOR 1/4 SECOND

ISO 200

CLOUDY WB WITH CANON SPEEDLITE 430EX FLASH

NIKON D300

NIKKOR 12–24MM LENS

F/22 FOR 1/4 SECOND

ISO 200

CLOUDY WB WITH NIKON SB-900 FLASH

“ Here’s an image pairing of my own to show you how a flash can be used to kill the ambient light and create a solid black backdrop. When I caught sight of this bright yellow bearded iris, try as I might, I couldn’t isolate the flower from its background, even when shooting at f/4 with my 70–300mm lens at a 300mm focal length. The background was visually flat, with no real opportunity to render out-of-focus tones, and the soft overcast light didn’t offer any opportunities to isolate the flower via contrast. You can see my first disappointing attempt on this page. It was then that I realized that I could, in fact, isolate the flower by illuminating it with the aid of my flash—my miniature sun. If I selected a shutter speed fast enough to kill (meaning severely underexpose) the ambient light, the sole illumination would come from the flash.

Setting my camera on a tripod, I attached my flash to the camera’s hot shoe using a TTL cord and set it to TTL Mode. Since depth of field was not an issue, I chose a “Who cares?” aperture of f/8. My camera indicated that 1/15 sec. would give me a correct exposure, but since I wanted to kill the ambient light, I underexposed by 4 stops, choosing 1/250 sec. All that remained was to check the flash range for my flash-to-subject distance. I held the flash about four feet directly above the iris to eliminate any risk of the flash extending beyond it to light up other nearby plants, however faintly, and voilà, the flower was now isolated from the background, as if someone had draped black fabric behind it (see this page).”

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