Tag Archives: photograph

I set out to capture a off camera flash portrait of Matthew on his bike, I came away with a great photograph for his mum to remember Mothers day for many years to come!

I took this off camera flash shot of Matthew at 4:30pm on Mothers day on a bright afternoon with a hint of rain from the clouds.

Off camera flash photography is simple enough to create and looks fantastic when done correctly, Let me take you through the steps I took to create this photograph.

First I found some foliage in the local park that would give me a nice enough background and would give me some framing for my image.

I wanted to bring out those stormy looking clouds in the background so I took a meter reading of the sky with my in camera meter then slowed down the shutter speed a couple of stops to to 200th second to bring down some of that ambient light.

Then took out my 580EX11 flash, set it to manual and connected it to a pocketwizard Flex TT5 and asked my assistant (my lovely wife Claire) to hold on to it as I did not want to bring a heavy light stand with me, she kindly held it into a umbrella at a distance of around 3 feet and bounced the light back towards Matthew.

After some metering with a lightmeter I then turned the flash to full power at F13 and composed the image.

The only post processing thats been done here is some burning on the grass to darken the area, leaving the face and bike as the highlights.

The hardest part of setting up my off camera flash image was getting Matthew to say still on his bike for a few minuits while I set up the shot.

Equipment used

• Canon 5dMK2
• Mini TT1
• Flex TT5
• Canon 580Ex2
• Bowens Umbrella

If you are interested in having a portrait of your children outdoors or even in the studio, please get in tough using our contact form