Lighting & Post-Processing

At the beginning of October, I went to Mexico to participate in Don Giannatti’s “Learn to Light” workshop.  During this trip, we got to experiment with various lighting devices. One of them, I fell in love with – the SpeedlightPro Beauty Dish.

I got to shoot with Megan on Sunday morning – we had seen this amazing arch in the middle of the dessert and thought it would be a great element to use in the shoot. We have previously played with using small strobes and eliminating them from the shot by shooting two images. This is one of those types of shots – it is a combination of two images – one with the model and all the elements present, the second using a light to give great exposure on the model to balance the lighting throughout the image. Without the additional lighting, the photographer is stuck with either an overexposed sky and properly exposed model, or underexposed model and properly exposed sky. This technique gives the best of both!

Don holding the Beauty Dish close to Megan.

Megan looking just fabulous with the light balanced on her and in the sky.

The lighting was done using the Speedlight Pro Beauty Dish and Canon 580EXII at full power – triggered by pocket wizards. The sky was darkened by using a 1/200th sec shutter speed and exposure for the shot was at f/16 (ISO 100).

Just one example of how a photographer can use all the tools available, including a small speedlight in the place of large studio style strobes for balancing against the morning sun.