The fact is, these plastic devices that you attach to the end of your flash are not softening the light coming out of your flash.

Light itself is neither hard or soft. It’s photons flying through the air in a straight line. The only way to create softer shadows is to make the apparent size of the light source in relation to your subject larger. This can be done, for example with soft boxes and umbrellas placed near your subject. Another method, if you are indoors, is by bouncing the light up into the ceiling or into a wall, which will bounce back much larger light source than the small size of your on-camera flash.

You can also use these plastic flash diffusers to aid in softening the light indoors. What these attachments do, is send the light spraying out in all directions, which in turn, bounce off everything, causing light to fall upon your subject from many directions to produce the look of softer light.

Now, are you heading outside to shoot with on-camera flash? The first thing you should do is take your plastic diffuser off (if it’s attached), and shove it in your pocket, camera bag, or wherever else you feel like shoving it.

Contrary to popular belief, a piece of translucent plastic that scatters light in all directions without nearby surfaces to reflect the scattered light back into the scene, will not soften the light. A diffuser outdoors — a large majority of the time — simply wastes light, reduces range, slows recycle times and eats batteries.

The light that will hit your subject will be the light that starts at your flash and heads straight at your subject. All the other light spreading out in all other directions will not have anything to bounce back from and will just go to waste. If you think that bouncing off the clouds is worth a try, fahgettaboutit, that’s a lesson in futility.

Outdoors, use your on-camera flash as fill, and shoot direct. Your mileage may vary, but by setting your flash to ETTL mode with a FEC of -1 1/3 to -2, should yield some very nice results.

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The Fallston gym, like most in Harford County, has very little room, and no balcony at the end of court which prevents getting our lights high and pointed parallel to the sidelines. We had to place the lights on the sides, which create too much crosslighting and harsh shadows.

When using strobes/flashes, ideally you want to over power the ambient light by 3 to 4 stops so that when you are shooting at your camera’s sync speed (typically 1/250 sec), the quick burst of light from the strobes is what freezes the action and not the shutter speed. I tried bouncing my 580EXs off the back wall to create a large light source, but my flashes, even on full power, could only muster about 2 stops over ambient. In a darker lit gym, this method would probably work, but Fallston’s ambient lighting is better than average.

I had to stick with direct light from the corners of the gym. I placed my flashes on my 7-foot light stands and set them each to 1/8 power, 28mm zoom and aimed them towards the top of the key.

Here are some samples from the night.

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I’m bored.  What to do? I know, take some pictures of the Christmas ornaments on the tree we recently put up.

These shots were taken on a tripod with my 135 f/2.0 lens. ISO 200 and a tungsten WB. The average shutter speed was about a third of a second.

Then I grabbed the nutcracker on the end table, and set him in front of the tree, put a 1/2 CTO gel on my flash and manually fired the flash at the his face while the shutter was open.

Ok, that little project is over, what can I get into now … ?

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I can finally say, “Yes, I’ve shot an NFL game.”

I’ve shot many high school games, a college game, but they don’t compare to the NFL Experience.   To those who shoot the NFL regularly, it’s probably old hat for you, but for me it was like getting to fly first class after riding in coach all my life.

The first thing that really surprised me was how big these guys are.  Not sure where these guys hang out all week, but I’ve never seen people this enormous at the grocery store or mall.

Photographing the game is pretty much the same — except the players move so much faster, and passes get to their intended receivers (or defensive players) in a blink of an eye.

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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!

Above is a photo I took (after moving items from the garage to the shed) on Labor Day using an on-camera flash with a diffuser. Obviously, it’s not a beautiful home interior photograph, but the technique is similar to what you would use.   I manually exposed for the window — which rendered a very dark picture with a small, well exposed, rectangular portion (the window).   I then fired up the flash and set no FEC, leaving it at +0.   The flash did all the thinking for exposure of the inside of the shed, leaving the well exposed window!

Next time you are photographing a kids party, family gathering or real estate indoors with a window or open door in your background — take a moment to expose for the bright outside light, use your flash (or several flashes for real estate photography) and then fire away.  Your pictures will look great without a big white, blown out window — but rather the scene as your eyes see it.

This is the continuation from Part 1 of the wrestling team poster project done using a green screen. In part one, I explained how I used a green screen to put together a team picture.

The next stage was to provide some sample background images to be selected for the final poster.  I submitted for review, ten different images, from pastures to buildings, for potential candidates for the final poster. Coach Watson and his staff settled on the stormy clouds version. In addition, he let me know that one of the original wrestlers has transferred to another school and would need to be removed. With the removal of that wrestler, I then rearranged the other guys to balance it out.

Coach Watson wondered if I could add a bolt of lighting to the sky. I played around with Photoshop after Googling for help inspiration and technique from others. I personally like the poster without the lightning, but the coaches loved it, and wanted it included.

The final step was to add the text, and get the final OK.  Once approved, it was time to send the final image to the lab to print the posters.

This was a fun learning experience, and would gladly accept another project that could utilize the green screen.

In fact, I am going to start utilizing this technique for doing T&I (team and individual). No more ugly bleachers or gym stages in the backgrounds. Another benefit is that there is no need for everyone to wait around for the entire team to show up — I’m sure the parents will appreciate that aspect.

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If you are a sports photographer and frequently shoot high school night games of football, soccer, or lacrosse, you have probably experienced poor lighting.  Some of the newer fields have decent lighting, but a majority of the ones I visit are marginal at best.

Prior to Bel Air High School being remodeled, if I shot a game without flash on the old football field, I would usually come away disappointed with my results.  The light reading on that field was ISO 3200 f/2.8 1/250 on the best lit areas of the field. The team wears dark blue uniforms and shots from the endzone and sideline would be horrible, unless you shot at 1/60.

If you shoot at night with a flash sitting on-camera, you will end up with a majority of your subjects with red eye or ghost (white) eye.  Pupils are dilated and the light from your flash is so close to the lens axis that red eye is unavoidable in that situation.   To use flash without getting red eye, the flash needs to be distanced from the lens axis.  One way would be to put the flash up high above your camera.  Well, in doing that, you being nimble and having the ability to move up and down the sidelines quickly is probably hindered.  What I do is put my flash below my camera. This allows me to move up/down the sidelines pretty much the same way I would without flash. The flash below keeps the weight low to the ground and doesn’t affect my shooting ability.

I setup my monopod with an L-bracket attached with a hose clamp (purchase at any hardware store) about 15″-18″ below the camera. I mount my 580EX upside down with the camera still able to talk to the flash with an off-shoe cord.  I shoot football with my Sigma 120-300 f/2.8 DG at ISO 1600; f/3.5; 1/250 with the flash on E-TTL -2/3.   In doing this, the ghost-eyes are eliminated completely, and red-eye will only be seen in a small percentage of shots.   What the flash does is pops the color and lights up inside the helmet to see eyes and faces –  for that’s what the mom’s really want to see!  The downside to having the flash below the camera is that it creates some funky shadows, for the light is coming from below, but it really lights up underneath the helmet and will produce many more good images than without flash.

My setup isn’t pretty, but it works.  You too can create this setup for little money.

#1: Hose clamp and L-bracket placed onto monopod. Tape to protect the monopod.  I suggest using gaffers tape — I used blue duct tape, DOH!  Washers used because the thin bracket causes the bolt to bottom out before getting tight.

#2: Canon 580EX flash attached upside down.

#3: What the players see. (My father’s arm typically isn’t attached though)

#4: Side view of setup.

Another alternative to the hose clamp and L-bracket is to attach a super-clamp to your monopod and use a lightstand bracket to attach your flash to the superclamp. The super-clamp method will add more weight to your monopod. If that isn’t an issue for you, that method is very simple to setup.

Below are some samples of what this setup can do.

My solution — a chamois.  Yes, the same type of chamios that you would find in an auto supply store for drying your car.  Purchase a large chamios and cut it up into several 3 to 4-inch squares.  Now you can put them in every bag you own, in the car, in the office, you name it.   They work great.

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