About a month ago I wrote a post about shooting baby closeups. Just a quick reminder – my friend asked me to shoot his baby boy, and I used natural window light to shoot mainly closeups because I had problems with background.

This time it so happened that I visited my friend again, and I happened to have my camera with me. His baby boy was in a playful mood and since he liked my previous photos he (not baby, my friend of course!) asked me to take a few more. This time I decided to solve all my background problems and shoot something more than closeups.  In addition, it was late in the afternoon, and the sun light was almost gone, so In all photographs that you’ll see here, I used flash, and only in the first one, in addition to flash from the right, there is window light from the left.

In order to get good shots I had to solve several problems – to figure out lighting would be the most important one, and background would be the second important. Since me and my friend’s family are good friends I had no problems communicating with them and their baby boy Eric was in a perfect mood for taking photographs – he was smiling and playful.

In the photo below the main lighting was sunlight from the window on the left, but if I didn’t use flash from the right side, then the shadows on the faces would be too deep. So I used a flash and set it to 1/8th of it’s full power to fill in the shadows.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

For lighting I only had one flash (Canon 430EX) but I also had remote trigger making it possible to have lighting off-camera. In the photo below Eric was sitting on the couch, and I placed a flash with 1/4 CTO gel on it facing away from him straight into the pillows of the couch so that Eric would be lit not with direct but with reflected light (this made the light source bigger and shadows smoother). In addition I asked his father to hold a white bed sheet close to Eric’s right (camera left) side. This made the shadows on his face lighter, because light from the flash reflected from the pillows hit the white sheet, and reflected from it to the shadowed part of Eric’s face.

The background in this photo is almost black because I used flash and the ambient lighting didn’t affect the shot at all.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

For the next photo I wanted to do something different, something bright and happy. They had these pieces of soft foam that they used to place on the floor for Eric, and they made an interesting background. In addition I asked Eric’s mother to blow some bubbles for him to play with, and started shooting. I caught a few nice frames and this one I liked the most. In this shot there is still only one flash placed on the right side and reflected form the pillows.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

Now we went from the living room to Eric’s room, and here I encountered another problem. The walls of Eric’s room were green, and this is bad for your white balance. I know, I know – you say “shoot in raw, and then correct in post”, but I wanted to fix this in-camera making post processing time shorter. So here is what I did – I placed my flash facing the opposite wall so that the light would reflect off of it (because this is how I wanted my lighting to be) and then I took a shot of a green wall (the opposite wall from the flash). Then I changed to manual white balance and chose that shot of a wall as a reference. This made wonders for my white balance, and photos started to look so much better!

Click on the photo to enlarge.

In this photo Eric’s father is holding the flash facing the wall and reflecting from the wall to Eric’s and his mother’s faces. Yes, it is still only one light

Click on the photo to enlarge.

And finally I wanted to play around and take some unusual shots. So I changed to a wide angle lens (with UV protector on it, in a sec you’ll understand why) and started shooting Eric from various angles from a very close distance. Eric got very interested in me and my camera and started touching the lens (you see, the UV protector was a good idea ), and I made some very nice shots even though they were distorted due to the wide angle.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

In this post I talked about lighting and background, which are all technical details, but it is not enough to make a good shot of a baby and his parents. My advantage here was that I knew them so they were comfortable around me, and I was comfortable around them – this is very important. The more relaxed your subjects are, the better your pictures will be. It is also important to know what do you want to show in your photos (the love of parents for their child, happiness, thoughtfulness) and then try to find situations and angles to show it. And of course – experiment, experiment, and experiment!

Till the next time,

Take care!

Greg.

Popularity: 2% [?]

For those of you who don’t know what the hell I am talking about, I’ll briefly explain the issue.

When you buy an expensive lens, you want to protect it’s front glass element from scratches or other accidents. So most likely the photo dealer will suggest you to buy a UV (ultraviolet) protection filter to screw on your lens. But the question is – will shooting with UV filter degrade the image quality?

Lately I found myself bothered with this question a lot. It started when I bought my Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L lens. I bought it second hand, and the guy who I bought if from told me that it was with the UV filter all the time since the day he bought it, so it is completely scratches free. Way back I took an advanced course in optics in university, and I know that adding additional optical element to optical system changes system’s overall performance. This is exactly what you are doing to your optical system, i.e. your lens, by adding additional optical element, i.e. UV filter.

So how significant this “change in performance” is? In other words will the final image suffer in quality because of that?

I felt incompetent to perform tests to find an answer myself so I did an extensive web research, and I found a lot of information on this subject. It seems that there is no single conclusion to this matter, but here is my summary on it, which in my opinion includes all the major points, fact,s and conclusions regarding using UV filter on your lens for protection.

• Putting UV filter on your lens will certainly degrade lens’s performance.
  • Explanation to this is pretty simple. When you screw on the UV filter on your lens, you basically add one more optic component, but not only that you also add a space filled with air between the filter and lens’s front optic element. So when ray of light hits your lens, instead of hitting the lens’s front element and passing to other optical elements inside the lens, it first hits the UV filter, refracts, passes to the space filled with air between the UV filter and the lens, and only then enters the lens. That ray of light can also be reflected several times between the lens and the UV filter (coating on the UV filters tries to prevent that).
• The extent of the image quality degradation may vary from invisible to the human eye to a severe degradation in contrast and sharpness (and other image qualities), and it depends on the following factors:
  • The quality of the UV filter
    • I found many photographers complaining about Tiffen UV filters (even about the expensive ones). I even saw a test one guy did showing that using a Tiffen UV filter significantly decreases sharpness and contrast. That guy didn’t write the exact model of that filter though.
    • There is general agreement among photographers that expensive UV filters with double coating are the best choice if you must put a UV filter on your lens. Many photographers recommend the high end UV filters from B&W, Nikon, Hoya (Super HMC), Singh-Ray.
  • The subject that you are shooting – or more important the direction of light. For example if you are shooting into the light, then with UV filter there are more chances to have lens flare (partial solution is to use lens hood).
  • The lens. If the lens that you use is not of high quality, it may already produce less than great images, and adding a UV filter won’t make them worse than they already are.
• There is everlasting debate whether one really needs the UV filter to protect the lens. Here are some pros and cons:
  • Pros:
    • UV filter gets dirty instead of the lens, so you don’t have to clean the lens that often (just clean the UV filter), thus protecting the lens’s coating.
    • When shooting on the beach, or during sand storms, or in any conditions where there are tiny particles in the air, which eventually land on your lens, you are risking scratching your lens when cleaning. Better scratch the UV filter.
      • Lens cleaning tip – when there are tiny particles on your lens don’t wipe them off because that can scratch the lens. Wash the front element first and then wipe it with micro fiber cloth.
    • If you accidentally drop your lens, or bump it into something, the UV filter will take the blow saving the lens.
      • Actually another opinion is that in such situations if UV filter breaks then its glass might easily scratch the lens.
    • The degradation of image quality resulted from UV filter is negligible in most cases.

• • Cons:
    • This one is somewhat philosophic – why put a 100 dollars piece of glass on a $1500 expensive lens? It means that it is very difficult to produce a high quality lens, and this is why it is so expensive, and by putting a relatively cheap (to the lens’s price) UV filter, you must degrade it’s quality.
    • Lens hood does great job protecting the lens so no UV filter is needed in most situations.
    • Don’t over protect your equipment risking loosing in image quality. Be reasonable, and predict when your lens might be in danger and when not.
    • The hard coating on most expensive lenses is very strong and can withstand numerous washes and cleanings (as long as you do it wisely).
    • Buy Lens Warranty instead of UV filter

Here is a great test of UV filters in action by Ken & Christine

In conclusion, there is no simple right or wrong here. Having all the information above you must decide for yourself whether to use UV filters or not. I decided to use them when shooting on the streets or in dusty conditions, but to remove them when shooting portraits, studio, or landscapes, in other words when there is little risk to damage the lens. I also use lens hoods almost all the time. If I was a millionaire and money wasn’t an issue , I probably wouldn’t use the UV filters at all just to be sure that I am getting the maximum quality that my lens can deliver.

If you have additional information regarding this issue, you are welcome to share it here, and

Remember, you only have to enter your name to leave a comment!

Have a great day,

Greg.

Popularity: 2% [?]

It is a very common issue among photographers, therefore many articles were written on this, and now it is my turn. In this post I will describe how I try to keep myself inspired and what helps me to come up with ideas for photographs hoping that you find my experience useful.

Inspiration and ideas go somewhat together – when you feel inspired, most of the chances that you’ll have ideas for photographs, and when you have an idea for photograph, it’ll probably inspire you to bring it to life. Therefore the following text will be a mix of tips for getting inspired and coming up with ideas for images.

• I have a notepad in which I write quotes from different sources, which inspire me. You know, you read something or watch TV and at some point you hear a sentence that makes you go ” That’s right! What a great thought!”. If you don’t write it down most of the chances that you’ll forget it. So I write down these quotes and go over them from time to time or when I feel uninspired. That helps a lot, because not only you will be reading inspirational quotes, but you will also remember the circumstances at which you wrote it down, and that in itself can bring back the inspiration.

• During your “good” periods, when you feel inspired think of the things, events, places, people, which inspire you and write all that in the same notepad. It’ll help you a lot to get some of the inspiration back during the “low” periods.

• Another thing that inspires me is listening to the music that I like. Listening to music while looking around for ideas for photographs can be a huge help. Think about it for a second – in the movies they always use various kinds of music to create different moods. Take action movies for example. A certain music can add tension to otherwise usual situation. So when you listen to certain music and look around you, you will see things differently depending on the music that you listen to and it just might inspire you to raise your camera.

• I have a separate folder on my computer with my best photographs. When I create an image that I like very much, I add it to that folder. When inspiration leaves me and I feel that I won’t ever be able to create one good image, I go over my best images to remind myself what I am capable of.

When I come across an image that captivates me, I try to find out who is the photographer and then visit his website. If I find his works exceptional I bookmark his website. Over the years I gathered list of photographers that inspire me, and I come back and go over their work when I need inspiration.

I bet it happened to many of you, you keen photographers! You walk around doing your daily routine, and then suddenly a picture or a scene pops into your mind. It might be due to something that you see in front of you (on the street, in public transport, etc.), or because of your thoughts at that moment. It doesn’t matter why. But when it happens – write it down in a few words so that you won’t forget it. I do it in my iPhone because it is always with me. I have this nice diary application called Momento, and I write down there in a few words these pictures of my imagination. It doesn’t mean that I implement them all, but when I am out of ideas, I take a look at my notes and it helps.

• In the Momento app that I mentioned above I can also add photos to text. So if I see certain situation and an idea pops to my mind based on that situation, I simply take a photo of it and add it to the diary entry.

Well that’s about it. All these things combined help me stay inspired and keep shooting during my lowest periods and I hope that you’ll find useful at least some of them.

If you have your own ways to get ideas for photographs and stay inspired, I sure would like to hear about them in the comment section below, and

Remember, you only need to enter your name to leave a comment!

Greg.

Popularity: 3% [?]

There is so much talk about post processing, and whether it is good or bad. There are people who never post process their photos, and there are also people who always process their photos, and also anything in between.

I do process my images in Lightroom or Photoshop, but not always. Sometimes the weather is perfect, and the air is so clear that nothing needs improvement. But in our busy world, we don’t always have the time to wait for the perfect conditions, and have to settle for whatever weather there is when we have the time for shooting. In such cases post processing can significantly improve the end result, and it is very important to shoot RAW in such cases because it gives you more flexibility in post processing.

In this post I will walk you through my Lightroom post processing steps, using one of the recent photos I took. Below on the left you can see the initial photo of an old fortress that I took on early morning. Unfortunately the sky was covered with clouds so that there was no contrast in the photograph.

Below on the right you can see the final image, after I finished working on it in Lightroom 3.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

So how I achieved this end result? Let me walk you step by step. All the steps below were performed in the Develop module.

First of all the sky bothered me the most in my initial image. It lacked contrast and was completely colorless. So I opened the adjustment brush, set it up and covered the sky area. Below you can see the screen shot of the settings that I used for the adjustment brush. Let’s go through some of them:

Contrast - though in most cases increasing contrast is more useful, in this case with clouds decreasing the contrast revealed more detail in the clouds.

Saturation – I increased the saturation of the adjustment brush because I also changed the Color to a shade of blue (as I’ll show in the next screen shot), and for this addition of color to be seen better I had to increase the saturation.

Clarity – Clarity is always good for clouds . Really, increasing clarity makes clouds pop.

Color – I decided to add a slight color tint to the clouds so that they won’t be boring gray, but still have a realistic color.

Feather and Flow of the brush are needed for creating smooth gradients between the adjusted and not adjusted areas. The values that you see here are not a must, and you’ll have to play with them to find what suits your taste.

Below you can see the color selection box and the values that I chose.

Now, I painted with the adjustment brush over the sky. There is a slight problem when you want to paint with adjustment brush over large areas, especially when the changes that brush does are subtle – you might miss a few spots in the middle and even more at the edges. I found a pretty easy solution for this: temporarily, in the adjustment brush settings decrease the exposure value to -4 so that in addition to all your essential adjustments, you’ll also significantly darken the image in the painted area. This will make the painted area perfectly visible. Then, after selecting everything that you want, slide the exposure slider back to it’s initial position.

In the image below you can see the clouds painted over with the adjustment brush with exposure set to -4.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

And here you can see the result of painting with the adjustment brush after I returned the exposure slider to zero:

Click on the photo to enlarge.

After adjusting the sky I examined the overall look and decided to make a few more adjustments to the whole image. In the screen shot below you can see the initial settings, with which I started.

Let me explain the adjustments that I did.

I decreased Exposure slider to -0.45 in order to reveal even more details in clouds, but this also darkened too much the lower part of the image. To compensate for that I increased the Fill Light slider to 20. After increasing the fill light, I felt lack of contrast in the fortress, so I increased the Contrast to +34. Next I increased the Clarity and Vibrance just a little for a finishing touch. In the screen shot below you can see the final settings.

And this is how the image looked like after performing those changes.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

We’re almost done, but not just yet.

I stared at the image for a few minutes, and it seemed to me that something was missing. Finally I understood what it was – subtle vignetting. Let me explain. The shape of the right column together with the clouds create a sense of movement from the outer frame towards the center of the image, and vignetting would emphasize this sense of movement.

And here is the final image (same one as in the beginning of this post).

Click on the photo to enlarge.

So this is how I do my post processing – by first analyzing the image, deciding what is missing or could be improved, and performing the adjustments. Of course this whole process is not “scientific” at all. It is very intuitive and imaginative, because in order to achieve an end result you have to visualize it first. Sometimes though it is more like “lets move this slider and see what it does to the image”.

Did you find this article helpful? How do you post process your images? Any examples of before and after will be much appreciated, and

Remember, you only have to enter your name to leave a comment!

Greg.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Any photographer who lived in Israel, amateur or professional, must have visited for at least one photographic session the old Jaffa town. It is known for its beautiful alleys, old architecture, and historic heritage. The downsize of this is that it is difficult to create unique images of Jaffa since so many have photographed it before. But still I decided to give it a try.

One early morning Ira and I went to the Old Jaffa. Ira to take a walk there and me to try and create unique images of Jaffa. I would like to share some of those here.

In the photo below you can see the Sea Mosque. It is a small mosque (closed to visitors) standing near the Jaffa’s sea promenade.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

This is Wishing Bridge. On the bridge’s rails there are Zodiac signs. Ancient legend has it that if you stand on the bridge, touch your Zodiac sign, look at the sea, and make a wish, it will come true. I was standing near this bridge for some time thinking how I could photograph it differently, because I’ve seen so many photographs of this place. And then this little dog showed up, and just before stepping on to the bridge turned back to it’s owner for permission. I snapped the photo right that moment, and it looks like the dog invites the viewer to the bridge.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

In the next photo you can see The Faith Statue. Even though I shot several photos from much closer distance, I like this photo the most, because in my opinion the palm trees add a nice touch to the overall mood of the image.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

This one is just a closeup, but I like it. In order to create something like this you need to have the fluffs which are in focus to be much closer to you than the rest of them. Otherwise the background won’t be blurry enough.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

Now this is very famous Suspended Orange Tree of Jaffa. When we came there the sun was getting pretty high and I was looking for ways to use it in my photograph. Instead of shooting with the sun behind me, I decided to try and include the sun in the frame. Since I shot RAW I could later brighten the shadowed foreground (I did it in Lightroom by increasing the fill light). After shooting the photo on the left, I started thinking of ways to give this composition a more surreal look. Suspended tree itself is somewhat surreal, and so I wanted to enhance it. While I was wandering around the tree and thinking, I suddenly saw Ira standing behind it… actually I saw only her legs and it looked interesting to me and I photographed her standing behind the suspended tree so it looked like the tree had legs to stand on the ground. As I was getting ready to wrap it up and go somewhere else, this woman showed up from one of the alleys, and Ira was still standing behind the tree. I quickly snapped another shot and ended up liking it the most.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

Many artists live in old Jaffa. In the photos below you can see a typical alley and an entrance to artist’s home. The paintings that are hanged on the walls help create the unique Jaffa atmosphere of art, ancient age, beauty, and relaxation.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

But not only artists live in old Jaffa town. There are also many half ruined buildings occupied by homeless people, and one can strongly feel the presence of poverty. I saw this man sitting on the plastic chair right there on one of the Jaffa’s streets. He had such a wise-proud look that I couldn’t resist and snapped a photo of him.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

That concludes my photographic reportage of Old Jaffa town in Israel.

As always comments are highly appreciated, and

Remember, you only have to enter your name to leave a comment!

Greg.

Popularity: 2% [?]

On November 2009 I decided to start a project in which I would post to my blog one photo a day , which you can see on the sidebar. I got iPhone 3Gs as a present from my sister back then, and wanted to improve my compositional skills. So I set up an application that allowed me to post photos that I take with my iPhone directly to Photopathway.

I must say right away that I didn’t success in posting a photo every single day. It was and still is too hard for me because I don’t want to post just any photo. I want to post photos that have at least some artistic value, and I simply can’t create such photos on a daily basis. But I post at least 2 – 3 photos a week.

As I said – I started this project to improve my compositional skills but recently I realized that there is one additional huge benefit to it. A few days ago I looked at my whole collection of daily photos. As I looked at each photo from the past to the present, memories started emerging in my head. Memories from each day when I shot the photo. But not only I remembered where and why I shot the photo, but most of the times I could remember that whole day!

So this project is also my “visual diary”. I even don’t have to write anything in this diary. Just by looking at my photographs I can remember many many things that happened on that day, what my mood was, and what my thoughts were.

I suggest everyone to try this photo-a-day thing, and even if not every day then at least few times a week. And my conclusion from all this is – to try and take photos more frequently, and also try to make such photos that will make it easier later to remember the happenings of that day.

Does anyone else has visual diary?

Remember, you only have to enter your name to leave a comment!

Cheers

Greg.

Popularity: 1% [?]

This is a very interesting question you know. I am sure that anyone who takes interest in photography at times thinks about it. In my head sometimes these thoughts sound like “I’d really like to make a great photograph… yeah… but what should I shoot?… what should I create?… ”

If you really want to create something, especially if you are not sure yet what it is, you have to allocate a certain amount of time to thinking about it. I mean that you have to tell yourself – “today between 10:00 and 11:00 I am thinking about creating an interesting (also can be beautiful, romantic, breathtaking, sad… anything you prefer) photograph”.

I want to demonstrate this from my own experience. A few days ago I felt this urge to photograph something at my tiny home studio. I didn’t have any idea what it would be, but I just had this desire to create. So I made myself sit down for about 45 minutes, come up with ideas, and briefly sketch them on piece of paper.

My first problem was that not ANY idea that came to my mind was possible to shoot because I was limited to the objects that I had in my apartment. Having realized that fact, instead of just thinking of any idea for photograph, I started looking around my home at different objects and thinking how can I use them creatively?

While looking I saw my table lamp. Actually it was always standing on my table, but until I made myself to think creatively, I never thought about this lamp as a subject for my photographs. And then, while looking at this lamp I remembered of some TV program I saw as a kid that had these two lamps jumping around like live beings, and I decided to try and create something in that direction.

I still had no idea what would come out of it, and I didn’t have any definite final result. So I just started sketching this lamp standing on the table in different poses and thinking what can be done with that. No, I can’t draw, and it doesn’t matter, because you need sketching only to help your thinking process.

One of the ideas that came to my mind was to photograph this small lamp with it’s light bulb lying beneath it, while the lamp “sadly looking” at the bulb. And so I did as you can see in the image below.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

In this image of lonely lamp looking at its light bulb I used only one flash from the left side with 1/2 CTO gel on it (this gel makes the white flash light to be warmer). I wanted a warm lighting here. Looking at the result I felt that it is not enough for an interesting image… I felt that it doesn’t conveys the “stare” of the lamp at the light bulb.

And then suddenly it hit me – I need another lamp to make this more interesting! And luckily my life partner Ira had one on her table. I took that lamp and started playing with two lamps. Finally great idea came to me – to make the second lamp “look” inside the first lamp as if to see “what happened? why you lost your bulb?” and so you can see my compositional setup in the photo below.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Now, having the final idea of a shot in place I started thinking of little details. I wanted to emphasize the fact that the second lamp did have its bulb. How would I do that? Well, I decided that I would light the whole scene with white light, but I would also have yellow (warm) light coming out of the second lamp towards the first lamp. And you can see in the photo below that the down-looking lamp is warm-lit.

The final photograph below I accomplished using three strobes. Two strobes without any gels from left and right sides (I had to play with their powers to achieve the desired lighting), and the third strobe with 1/2 CTO gel on it I held in my hand and pointed inside the first lamp.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

After getting the final image above, I felt that there is not enough emphasis on the light that comes out of the second lamp. I wanted those rays of light to actually be seen. And here is a point that I am sure not all of you thought about. Rays of light are invisible unless they reflect off of something and hit our eyes. So in order to make these rays of light to be actually visible I had to have them reflect off of something – for example dust, or smoke. So if I would fill up the whole area with smoke then the rays of light would be seen. But then the rays of my two other flashes would also be seen, and the whole image wouldn’t be clear and crisp.

So I decided to take this work to Photoshop, and artificially add the rays of light, using the original light warmth that 1/2 CTO gel gave me (just used eyedropper tool in photoshop to sample that color). To give you an idea how I did it – think of Radial Blur filter in Photoshop. If you have additional questions regarding how I did it feel free to ask me in the comments. And for all the people who are against “Photoshop manipulation” -  in the case of this photograph my goal was not to show reality, but to convey an idea of mine, therefore I am totally cool with using Photoshop here.

Here is the final result, which I am pretty happy to come up with.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

In conclusion – the main idea of this article is to show that in order to come up with interesting photographs, you have to allocate time for thinking – what you want to do and how you are going to do it. Even if you don’t have any specific idea in mind, just make yourself sit down and think for half an hour or so, and I am sure that you’ll come up with something interesting!

As always your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Do you agree with this article? If you don’t then why? Can you suggest additional steps towards being more creative?

Remember, you only have to enter your name to leave a comment!

Till the next time,

Cheers!

Greg.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Hello everybody!

Today I’d like to talk about photographing sunflowers in the outdoors. I mean not one or two sunflowers at home but photographing them in the open field.

It all began when my friend asked me to make a picture for her. She wanted a very specific photograph of a large field of sunflowers, that would be completely yellow because in her imagination all the sunflowers would look up at the sky. This idea came to her while she was driving along a sunflower field, but she didn’t really pay attention to them.

I was glad to have an assignment like this because I just love any opportunity to be creative, and also if she would later hang my photo on her wall, it would be very flattering. So we decided on a day and drove to that sunflower field. I chose second half of the day towards sunset, but early enough to have time to scout the area and choose location.

When we arrived at the sunflower field I was surprised to see that all the sunflowers were NOT holding their heads up, as you can see in the photograph below. I am sure that there is a scientific explanation to this (maybe they were ripe and heavy for example), but in my mind I have always imagined sunflowers to hold their head up high. As a result it was impossible to make a photograph that my friend wanted. In the photo below you can see that there is too much green in between the yellow.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

But since we have already came I decided not to leave empty-handed and began to think of various creative ideas to shoot the sunflowers in their current state. Let me remind you that it was around sunset time and the sun was getting lower and lower. The shot that you see below was made almost against the sun. The sun was almost facing directly inside the lens and then I lowered it a little. So the flare can be seen, and in my opinion it contributes greatly to this photograph by creating a certain end-of-the-day mood. I also like how it lights the white “hair” on the stalk emphasizing its shape.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

When the sun descended more, the contrast between the sky and the sunflower field grew and it was impossible to capture both the blue sky and the yellow sunflower heads without flash. Either the sky was burned out and the sunflowers were correctly exposed, or the sky was correctly exposed and the sunflowers became very dark. So I took my Canon 430EXII flash out and started using it together with my Yongnuo remote trigger. I was shooting on manual, setting the exposure to correctly expose the sky and setting the flash power so that sunflower would also be correctly exposed. I asked my friend to hold the flash in a way that the sunflower would be lit from the side creating nice shadows.

But, of course, nothing comes out right from the first try, and I want to show that here. As you can see from the photograph below the lighting on the sunflower looks too bright and too artificial, and the shadows are too harsh. In addition there is a big shadowed area of the sunflower as a result of incorrect flash position. And even though the sky is correctly exposed it is not enough to make a good picture.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

But I didn’t give up, and after numerous attempts and adjustments I found the right combinations and my photographs started to improve. I was thinking less and less about technical side of the photographing process and concentrated more on the creative side. In the photo below you can see more natural lighting and balanced composition.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

I thought that the sunflower above came out too yellow so I decided to add a 1/4 CTO gel to the flash and see what happens. And I liked the result of that, which you can see in the photographs below. I liked the warmth of the light, which matched good (in my opinion) with the warm colors of the sunset.

Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

As the sun was getting almost down to the horizon I got this interesting idea to shoot the sunflower with the setting sun in an interesting juxtaposition (never believed I would use this word ), and because the sunflower heads weren’t looking up I could do that! I came low under the sunflower and positioned it to be in front of the sun, asking my friend to point the flash from my right at the sunflower. I needed the flash to point a little up so that the light wouldn’t spill on the green leaves.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

After getting the shot above I was pretty much satisfied but decided to try more compositions and lighting directions just to see what comes out. And it turned out to be the right decision, because in my opinion then I made my best photo of that evening.

I call it “Don’t want to look at the sunset”

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

One more thing – you could say that I didn’t have to use flash but to take several exposures and combine them together in HDR. Yes, I could but in order to do that I had to use tripod and also if it was windy (even a little), it would be difficult to create a good HDR photograph. Taking into account that I had limited time as the sun was setting pretty fast, if I was using tripod I wouldn’t have time and flexibility to try as much different compositions as I did just hand-holding my camera.

I hope you liked viewing these photographs, and learned something new in the process.

I want to read your comments and your suggestions are always appreciated. If you have pictures of sunflowers that you’d like me to review, you can send them to greg at photopathway dot com and I’d be glad to do that here on my blog.

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