Mixing Ambient & Artificial Light

Liddle Red Writing Hood

Update: for more on mixing ambient and artificial light, see this post and this post.

I wanted to experiment this week using my speedlights in late afternoon/early evening sun, but...realized that I really should have been out there a little earlier.... The sun looked like it was in the right place in the sky to give us another hour of light or so, but unfortunately at my chosen location it was already just sinking behind a row of houses.

That meant there was still ambient light available, of course, but I was kind of hoping to experiment with the sun actually in the frame to see how the speedlights stand up. Needless to say...that just plain didn't work out....

In the image above there was a softbox camera right almost at 45° to Cristy, our model. To fill in the shadows on the left side we had a bare flash gun camera left 90° to the model. And that's it - the shutter was left open a little longer for the ambient light to brighten up the red wall a little - f/7, 1/100 sec. ISO 200.

So then...self-assigned homework for me: experiment, practice and learn a lot more about balancing light - this is just the beginning! And now that the weather's getting nicer - there's really no excuse not to.

Eager to haul out all the gear tomorrow and try again with a model up from Rochester, New York! Stay tuned for that.

And if you're still kicking yourself because you missed the free 3 day online workshop with lighting legend Zack Arias over at creativeLIVE, don't worry - in case you haven't heard...Zack is Back April 29th - May 1st completely for free. Topics to include - among other things - mixing ambient and artificial light! How about that?!