I wanted to throw a shout out to my very friendly volunteers today during the workshop. We did a shoot on the beach and wanted a change of pace, so we found these 2 really nice surfer guys who agreed to help us out. The technique we were working on was shooting into the sun, and adding enough fill light to balance the subject out. A very tricky skill if you dont know what you are doing, but once you have it down…its cake! So yes, this is with a Speedlite. 
Also ran into a very nice family down by the dock. They were crab fishing, and I grabbed one quick shot of them before we left. This is not as good a picture as I had hoped. The problem was the DOF, to get them AND the crab in somewhat focus, I needed a very thick DOF, so: Aperture ; f10, added Speedlite to fill (the sun was already down), the mistake? Shutter Speed 1/20, my hand movement caused the blur! It looked great on the screen, not so much when I got home, but I promised to post it…so here you go! 🙂
I offered this family a free shoot tomorrow after noon, so if you guys are still interested, just shoot me an email! Thanks again!
I love that you show shots that don’t work and explain what went wrong. Great learning tool. THANKS!
I agree! First it is nice to know that we aren’t the only one that make mistakes…lol and second it is awesome that you own up to them and that you show us what could have been better. You truly are an awesome mentor! =]
Loving that surfer shot! Here’s a question for our maven. How do you hand-hold a flash unit and a Pocket Wizard (if that’s how you’re activiating the flash)? My hand starts to cramp up! Not to mention the pain involved in shooting one-handed with the other hand!
Surfer Shot was done with direct flash, when I shoot off camera flash I almost always use the ST-E2 transmitter and therefore do not need to attach a pocket wizard. 🙂