Eric Hamilton – Celebrity / DJ / Nightlife Photographer

Posts Tagged ‘flash’

Get Your Flash off Your Camera

There are many ways to do that. For the basics, head over to the Strobist.com. Nikon shooters can use Nikon CLS. You’ll need SB-600, 800, 900 flashes and a D80 or better. Check your manual for “commander mode”.

Canon and other shooters, there are a range of external solutions, ranging from Cactus V2 triggers to PocketWizards. Each solution really needs its own tutorial, so I won’t go into setup details here.

Shoot With An Assistant

Many wedding photographers employ assistants who do everything from help keep track of important guests to holding reflectors for posed portraits. Why shouldn’t you have an assistant at a nightlife event? I am very grateful for the dedicated help of Tania on this shoot. She held the second flash, which let me capture multiple light angles. Most of the edge highlights above were lit by Tania, standing behind and to one side of the subject. In some cases, she provided the off-axis key light that helped me light part of the subject’s face, instead of even all-over lighting you get from the camera angle. The band photos are good examples of that technique. Tania lit most of those from camera left while I shot from the right side of the stage.

Use Multiple Light Sources

In most of these shots, I used two flashes – a key light (a flash that I held in my left hand), and a second flash held by an assistant (see above). In several shots, the ambient light also contributed in some ways to the subject exposure. You can see hints of that in some of the blurrier photos. I was using long shutter speeds to let some of the ambient light into the exposure. Employing multiple light angles serves to create more three dimensional images, which is why these photos tend to pop a little more than the average point-and-shoot shot. Multiple light angles sculpt and define curves, angles, and dimensions, adding loads of depth to a photograph.

When you drag the shutter long enough to create a color wash in the background, you can even flatten the background while your flashes sculpt the image in the foreground. This creates separation by placing your 3d-looking subject on a flat-looking backdrop. Talk about POP…

Drag the Shutter

I’ve said it many times before – when you’re out in a club, it’s fun to capture the colored lighting all around you. In these shots, the washes of red, orange, yellow, and blue are only visible because of the slow shutter speeds, ranging anywhere from 1/25th to a full second in length. This technique is called dragging the shutter. When you’re shooting with flash, think of the flash as the key light – your primary exposure. You control that with the flash power and aperture. Your background exposure comes from ambient light, and you control that with shutter speed.

With really long shutter speeds, you can even create light paintings by dragging the shutter and moving the camera while there are light sources in the frame. See the light streaks in a few of the DJ photos here for examples.