Off-Camera-Flash

First Snow - 5 Minute Portrait

Today it snowed for the first time this year in Ottawa. I had some gear in the back seat of my car so we pulled over onto a side street on our way to Pho (the best thing to have on a wintery day) . We were starving so we didn't want to take long. I quickly threw a flash onto a stand and put a bag over it to keep it dry using the elastic from Katriina's hair to keep the bag on. I set the flash up behind Katriina to light the snow and used a low aperture to get the snow to make the snow light up in little balls of out of focus light (Bokeh).  

Playing in the Rain

Everyone hopes for a nice, sunny day on their big day but we all know the weather doesn't always cooperate with our plans. Rain or shine we want to be able to take great photos. Sunday proved to be grey and rainy here in Ottawa so we saw this as an opportunity to try some portraits in the rain. The idea was to really accentuate the raindrops and make them a key element of the photo. To do this I stuck a flash on a stand and put a freezer bag on it with an elastic to keep it dry. The flash was placed behind the subject and fired remotely from the camera to light the raindrops.

I think this worked out pretty well. You can see below the difference between shooting only with ambient light and than shooting with the flash back-lighting the raindrops. It really makes the photo pop.

No Flash - Ambient Light

Off Camera Flash - Backlit

Another one of Katriina.