The Flash Bus Tour
Sunday, April 10 Last week, I attended the 2011 Flash Bus Tour in New York City. It was my first ever photography/lighting workshop and, well, it was awesome. We spent the whole day learning from lighting masters David Hobby and Joe McNally by watching live demos, engaging in discussion and asking lots of questions.
The day started with David Hobby on manual flash. David explained that light should be addative and layered. David's session focused on the four main components for lighting a scene.
- Ambient
- Fill
- Key
- Accent
Now, I am completely oversimplfying but here's what I learned about shooing manual flash. When you are taking a photo, avoid the temptation to just blast your subject with light from your on-camera flash. It will give you all kinds of harsh shadows making the photo look flat and one-dimentional. The trick is to consider each of the four main components of lighting. I'll briefly explain each one.
Ambient
First you must assess and control your ambiet light to find the exposure that sets the right mood. At this point, your subject will be uncomfortably dark and that's ok. This is where you set your camera's shutter speed, aperature and ISO.
Fill
Next you introduce your fill light to reveal some detail in the shadows. The fill light becomes your 'safety net' as it prevents your shadows from getting any darker when you add your key light.
Key
Your key light is the main light on the subject (e.g., bare flash, umbrella, softbox). This will bring out the detail of your subject. Adjust your fill light as necessary.
Accent
Finally, add your accent(s). The accent light can be a hair light to provide some separation or you can throw some light across your backrground to add dimention.
The fill, key and accent lights are all adjusted manually from the flash. You do not need to adjust your camera's settings. If you do, you will shift the fill, key and accent lights up or down the brigntness range together as one group.
I've been following David Hobby's strobist blog for quite a while now. I've learned alot from his lighting tutorials, photography assignments and reader comments. As a learning professional, I think his strobist blog represents one of the best uses of web 2.0 technology and collaborative learning. I find his style, humor and ability to keep my attention refreshing.
Here is David Hobby during the session explaining how he used a chinese lantern and a speedlight as a key light in the photo on screen.
The afternoon session was spent with Joe McNally on TTL (through the lens) flash photography. TTL refers to the camera's ability to measure light levels in a scene through the lens of the camera. Joe has a great book called The Moment it Clicks. It's a good read with great pictures.
Basically, in TTL mode the flash fires a pre-flash so the camera can evaluate the scene to detemine the 'proper exposure'. Immeditely after the camera evaluates the scene, the real flash is fired to light the scene. This sequence happens so fast that it's hard to notice unless you put your camera in second curtain sync with a long exposure. Go ahead and try it!
For me, TTL seems more complicated than manual flash but I can appreciate it's purpose. I need to experiment more with TTL.
Here is Joe McNally demonstraiting the impact of changing the exposure compensation settings.
The workshop was a great experience. I had fun, met some great people and had lunch at Fraunces Tavern. It just doesnt get any better than that!
I plan to apply the techniques I learned at the workshop to my own photography so stay tuned for some new photos.
Photography 
