Hot shoe flash lighting.

  Since deciding that I wanted to create an equine book, filled with equine portraiture of all styles and concepts, lighting seems to be one of the important aspects that i'm going to need to make sure each image is to the best of quality and stands out tremendously.

Limited to a certain budget my main lighting equipment consists of a hotshoe flash, lighting stand, 1 white umberella and 1 black/silver reflective umberella, along with a wireless trigger set. I am in possession of a soft box but without the correct fixtures I cannot place it onto the light stand.

As Wales has it's typical horrible weather, and I'm a current shortage of models, as my little brother has pretty much gone on strike, I decided to use the house dog.

I needed to experiment with lighting with using the only equipment I had, to be able to understand what placings can create which effects etc.

This was the first photography I took, the flash was relatively close, with the white umbrella attached facing scrappy so it's acting like a softbox.  It did turn out to bright as I have lost some of Scrappy within the photograph i.e his legs, but in a way I quite like how it makes his head and facial features stand out more. There's a sort of sincerity/sympathetic glow to it.

This was the second shot, which as you can already see is a huge improvement. There is a nice visible blur to his feet and the background to help the main part of him (face and features) stand out, and also makes the photograph look less flat. The lighting is just nice here, it seems more balanced and not over exposed. The only issue I find within this photograph is that his nose is more in focus than the rest of his face.

This was my third and most favourite shot. For my taste I think that the lighting is perfect, He stands out in the image, and it looks very three dimensional. Along with his face being all in focus and the front of him being in focus to slowly fading out in a blur further behind him. There also seems to be more of an expression in his face, and I do find that this image just show us his little mischievous character.

Shooting indoors was quite easy and having a set area to work in and a model that co-operated made it all the better.
My next challenge will be to adapt this to people portraiture and shooting outdoors.