These images were inspired by a theme that I first ran across on Zach Arias blog.
GOYA = Get Off Your Arse (and shoot)
I found myself this past Saturday sitting in the kitchen trying to kill some time before heading off to the gym with the boys. I could have sat there and continued surfing the net and reading about photography OR I could could challenge myself to shoot something in the next 20-minutes. Chris was the unlucky victim as he was closest to me when the urge hit. I grabbed the camera and left the 24-70mm on – I put my SB800 on a stand and headed out the backdoor. It was a cold morning with overcast skies and just a bit on the foggy side. I placed the flash about 3-feet from Chris. I underexposed the ambient by about 2-stops and set the flash at about 1/4 power.
To my surprise and disappointment I wasn’t getting what I expected. I checked my exposure, I checked the flash settings – everything APPEARED to be correct – but in the actual images it didn’t appear as if the flash was firing. Then it hit me – check your shutter speed again, yep it was set way above the the maximum sync speed for the flash, which in my case is 1/250. Once I made the correction we were in business. I now had 5-minutes to shoot some frames and hopefully get something I was happy with. Luckily this is where my “talent” took control and pulled it all together for me.
This whole exercise reinforced to me the need to do more of this to keep me sharp on all things “technical” so that I can spend more time focusing on my subject.
Nikon D700 | 24-70mm f2.8 | SB800 (off camera)
