Kelly checks the angles for his 2 off camera strobes during our 4th lesson - UT Campus
Very quickly Kelley has taken his 4th DSLR Photography Lesson with me (1st, 2nd, 3rd). Also, the streak of lessons on the University of Tampa campus continued today (follow me on Gowalla to confirm this). Though not without a few hiccups still, it is getting easier to setup Kelley with his two Nissin strobes and Canon 7D out on location, and get the 7D to trigger the two strobes remotely without using a dedicated trigger and receiver.
We also put into practice our "street model" practice to best effect today. In all we were able to get nine people to let us make their portrait today! I will be putting up a dedicated post on the street model methodology soon.
We continued to practice using manual settings to achieve the strobist results we wanted. However, we also witnessed how Aperture priority mode, with the exact same shutter speed, can produce a different exposure! There are still ghosts in machines in 2010.
A lot more attention was paid today to the setup and position of Kelley's two strobes in order to achieve the least amount of shadows on the person's face, as well as controlling the ambient light using shutter speed to show as much or little of the background that we wanted to. This skill proved necessary when photographing a person being backlit by two open windows. Increasing the shutter speed all the way to the max flash sync speed of 1/250th (max for a Canon 7D) allowed us to make a well exposed portrait subject and not blow out the windows behind the subject.
Kelley will be doing some traveling abroad in the next few weeks. His 7D will of course be traveling with him and I hope he practices the street model style in Amsterdam! I look forward to seeing his travel photographs! Have a good trip Kelley, see you when you get back.