For the past six weekends, I’ve been building myself a storage shed in my backyard. This past Labor Day I finally completed it and started loading it up with my junk stuff.

I had been taking photographs all along it’s progress and in looking back at all of the images, I thought I would share a technique I use to balance both the indoor and outdoor light.

This first image was early on in the framing stage.  You don’t think of this as an interior photograph, but if I had just exposed for the sky, the framing would have been underexposed, and you would have seen no detail in the framing at all.   Alternately, if I tried to properly expose the framing, the sky would be blown out.   Solution — balance the light with your flash!

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I just returned from an assignment to shoot a home here in Bel Air that goes all out in decorating for Halloween. I purposely arrived at sunset so I could make good use of the sky as well as see the lights on display.

This shot was taken at 6:50p — about 20 minutes after sunset.

To make the sky look even more blue, I set my camera’s white balance to tungsten. The rest of the camera settings were 1/4 sec SS, ISO 200, f/5.6.

I also used two off-camera strobes, both with a CTO gel to match my tungsten setting of the camera. One Vivitar 285 at 1/8 power on lightstand about 15 feet in front of left side of house. Second Vivitar 285 at 1/2 power in my right hand over my head pointed at front door area.

This technique works great for portraits taken at dusk with the sky in the background.

This past weekend we painted two bedrooms. Brittany’s was painted on Saturday and Henry had his done on Sunday.

After completing the job I decided to play with a couple strobes when taking an “After” shot. I placed one strobe on a lightstand and bounced it off the ceiling at 1/8 power. A second strobe at 1/32 power was placed on the floor with a snoot attached and aimed it to hit the lower edge of the dresser and the closet doors. I shot it from the point of view of Henry (9 months).

Painting is not one of my most favorite chores, but when the job is finished, it is rewarding.