How to make a photograph against the odds
Ah, the joys of shooting a fruit farming story outside of fruit season.
And it was raining, cold, and our talent (the guy I was photographing) prefered not to go outside.
(And the headache starts to build …)
Okay, think Ben, think.
Okay, those crates look cool, imposing, and the repetition is nice.
But their isn’t much light. What little light there is, it’s nice, but there isn’t much.
Fortunately, our talent is standing still.
“Stand here, sir, relax, and rest your hand here. Feel okay? Yes? Great!” I said.
Fumble ISO up to maybe 1000, perhaps more.
Drag the shutter down to a 1/20th, maybe lower. Aperture at whatever.
Click. Check screen. Looks okay, but our talent needs pop.
The lovely reporter with me holds a flash set on on a very low manual power (maybe 1/32) out of frame on camera left aimed at the talent’s face.
Click.
A bit bright.
Shrink aperture by a little.
Click again.
He looks good and sharp thanks to the flash, but now there’s a gross shadow cast onto the crates.
If this were a tight shot, I could just dial the flash power down and walk it in even closer to the talent to control that icky shadow, but, I want the wide-angle look, so …
… I grab my remaining flash and Gorillapod, and literally ram the ensemble into the crates beyond the right of the frame, and angle the flash back towards our talent.
Set it to a small power. Take a test shot.
No shadow.
I dial a bit more power into that same flash.
Nice.
I’ve scored a nice rim light that makes the talent pop even more from the background.
Not a bad result from where we could have ended up: a cold farmer standing among some wet empty fruit trees.