Hey there, were in the Southern California on the gorgeous day in the winter, this is our winter in Southern California. We’re about to photograph a little girl who is a little dreaming girl who is just started doing some modeling, and mom is looking for some portfolio pieces and I‘m going to do some shooting with them over the n ext few weeks.

What we’ll do today is work with the couple of different flash units of our portable light sources outdoors. We’ve got a noontime of day straight up, the sun is straight up, we’ve got harsh shadows, we’ve got highlights and shadows everywhere, but this is the time of day that we have available to shoot, so we have to shoot. And that happens, we can’t always pick the time of day.

The first thing that we’ll do is work with the portable flash which is Profoto 600B which is battery packed. We’ll work that off camera with an umbrella and we’ll talk about how we expose for that flash versus the ambience exposure and then we’ll also work with the Nikon SB-800 directly on camera. And we’ll use that as well as a light source so we can follow around with this child around the park if you want to do, and we’ll talk about again about the exposure between the flash and the ambience. And that’s the challenge, the challenge is how do you control the two and make the exposure what you want. So we’ll talk about that quite a bit today.

[Demonstration]

What a great day for this. So, usually on something like this I am more in trying to pick the right background despite of anything else, if I don’t want to work with flash outdoor, I can usually control the light on my subject with that as long as we can find a background that kind of works.

Actually, I think I‘m going to move over this table and I might just set her as a small as she is and I’m going to set her up on that table. I want to set you a bright up here on the table, and right there. Just turn around and sit here. You can just sit there. There you go, good. You’ve got to sit up really straight and you have to look really pretty, but you have to relax a little bit. We can put the light up high enough right here, we’ll just go right down there, like that. That’s probably the best direction to lighter from, so we’re going to try that and see how that works.

A good starting position for placing light sources for portraits; is at about 45 degrees between the camera and the light. Let’s just take a test and see what it looks like. What numbers it on now Loy, minus two? Once you go ahead and put on minus 4. Okay, let’s do it again.

This freeze frame clearly shows the position of the flash routed to my camera and the subject. It can also give you feel of how the umbrella’s light can become a fill light, or the main light depending on what you want the photograph to look like.

Great, let’s try that. Let me see what does it look like.

Okay Jacqueline let me take a look at you. Let me see what you look like. I’m going to have to move my camera a little bit. Jacqueline, I am just going to let you –can you turn a little more that way, like you legs and everything, we’re just going to twist you this way. That’s nice, yeah that’s fine. Look at her, hey Jacqueline can you just twist to me just a little bit this way, just turn a little bit this way. The other way, I want to twist your shoulders to me a little bit. That is it.

After looking at the results, I‘ve decided to reposition the light to the opposite side. Do not make a mistake of locking yourself down into one position when you are shooting outdoors. We’ll just try that again. Now that is looking better.

We’ve completely changed the look of a shot by making very minor changes to a light or the camera’s position. Okay, hang in there Jacqueline. Okay so, let us turn, anytime she smiles I’m just going to take it.

Okay my dear are you ready. Let’s take a look at you, can you turn your head this way a little bit, that is it, perfect. That was beautiful. I am just changing my shutter speed here, I’m varying the background but she stays the same. Can you put you feet up here and bend your knees and just kind of put your arms around your knees, over here like that.

Let shoot a couple of here real quickly without the flash, but you can see the light on her face is pretty descent in this area, but when the flash fires it completely smooths the skin and it really adds so much sort of drama to the picture. A little bit smile on this one, that is it. Great! What a cutie, that is it! Look at me, that is it. Nice, good, good.

Okay, let us move you, let’s rearrange a little bit guys.