Let's Go Flash Somebody!

Or this entry could be called, "Know What Your Flash Can Do!" How well do you know your equipment? If you tell somebody that's writing you a check at the end of the day what you can do, you better be able to do it. How powerful is your flash? How much do you lose with different modifiers? Well today I found out exactly what I can do with my Alien Bees AB800. I set up my flash in a dark room, I marked off five feet and stood there with my light meter. I can usually get my flash to within five feet of my subject. If not I just need to remember the Inverse Square Law. (more on that some other day) At full power my AB800 puts out f.32 at five feet with no modifier on it. With a shoot through umbrella, f.16 and with my Paul C. Buff beauty dish, f.22 with or without the sock diffuser on it. Well f.22 is my magic number. In the above shot, I set my exposure to f.18 with a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second to expose the sky the way I wanted it to look. Then I set my flash to get proper exposure on the model. That's asking a lot from a flash. It takes a lot of power for the model not to be a dark blob. Just look at that sun...it's BRIGHT! A speedlight won't do it. I know that I can get f.22 out of my flash with the dish on it as long as it's within 5 feet of the model so f.18 was no problem.

A Diversified Portfolio

My outlook on photography is a lot like investing. You have to have a diversified portfolio. I recently became a photographer for a swimsuit magazine, and as much as I would like to think that I am gonna be jet setting all over the world taking pics of the planet's hottest women on the most beautiful beaches. It's just not gonna happen that way. The magazine is published quarterly, I am gonna have 6 pics in each issue if I am lucky........man they are gonna have to pay me some serious bucks per image for me to live off that. So here is where the diversification comes into play. My main gig with photography is stock. I take images that companies buy through my agency to use for advertising. That's what this image of Heather is for. I also do senior pics, family portraits, and I will do a wedding here and there throughout the year. I am currently working on a couple of articles for a garden magazine. It takes a lot of little income streams to make a living with a camera, at least it does where I live with the economy like it is.  So you see, my life as a photographer is not that glamorous, heck it's not really glamorous at all, but I love what I do and I feel complete when I have a camera in my hand. On my next post, we are gonna get real technical, and boring, but I think new photographers will benefit from it. So, stay tuned.

New Gig!

This is Krista, a model and friend. No you can not have her number.

Life throws you some funny curves sometimes. Last week I joined the Swimsuit Illustrated Magazine team as a photographer. I will be covering the state of Florida, trying to help up and coming models get some exposure. I will also be featuring swimsuits from Florida based designers. This works out great for me in more ways than one. Of course it's not gonna be like a day in the salt mine, photographing some of the most beautiful young women in Florida, but I can really use the exposure too. Swimsuit Magazine is a global publication that's published quarterly. My work is gonna be seen by hundreds of thousands of people instead of maybe a few hundred or so by just working local stuff here in Brevard County. I've been published before, but never anything like this. So I'm on my way to get some more sunscreen and maybe a new pair of flip flops on my way to the office, uh, I mean beach. Oh yeah, I really am gonna try real hard to blog more regularly. I promise.