In praise of natural light.

If you've been a reader of this blog for any time you might have noticed I have almost gone out of my way to shoot images that require me to use artificial light. For years I worked with nothing but natural light and a lot of time it was kind of hit or miss with the quality of light and thats what attracts me to using artificial light, because I can manipulate it to get what I want. The down side is that I have to drag out extra gear and it takes longer which means you run the risk of missing some shots cause your fiddling with lights. So here are two images where I shot with just natural light on a dark overcast day.

The glowing ball works really well with belly dancing

This is just a taste of a shoot that I did today. Got some amazing images with a striking local belly dancer.

more to come.

Shoot it while you can.

Last night I went out and shot some photos down at the water carnival with Brandy. SInce the carnival is only here for the 4th of July weekend we had to get it right the first time. It had been a while since I had shot something like this but this time was going to go a lot smoother now that I was shooting digital. This is one of the best shots of the night. It was done with a flash in a softbox camera right tethered to the camera via a flash cord, I used a slow shutter speed close to a half second to get the lights to blur in the background.

I saw plenty of other people with cameras down there last night but no one else had lighting gear and a beautiful woman in a slinky red dress so I think we got something no one else has shot around here this year.