I don’t know what it is about the Bay Area but we suffer from a glut* of photographers. Every Tom-Dick-and-Jane with enough money for a digital camera is now a photographer. But that is a whole other discussion (don’t get me started on fighting with Uncle Bob & Aunt Jane at weddings with their big zoom lenses getting in the way).

One would think with so many photographers around it would be a snap to find a fellow creative to collaborate with.

uh, not so much.

So when I met Brandon while shooting our World Record Afro Wig Photo Shoot and he, like me, was down for working together I was stoked.

Today Brandon texted me to see if I wanted to head downtown and try and grab some portraits on the street. That turned out to be a bust as it was ri-donkulously hot. We did come across one of my favorite portrait subjects – The Great Morgani. I’ve got gigabytes of images of him, just do a search on this blog and he’ll come up. He is always patient for the camera and his outfits are so far out and well done you would be dull in the head not to photograph him.

Brandon has been wanting to work with me for a while to hone is off camera flash skills so we set up and started shooting away.

Here is Brandon.

Here he is doing something artistic with a hole in a window.

I read all the time on forums about how mid day sun is the worst time to shoot and how using off camera flash in bright sun is oh so hard. The key, they will tell you, is to get your subject into the shade. Failing that you have to get them to face the sun and hope for the best. This is all well and good but the problem is sometimes you can’t move your subject or to do so would ruin the mood. I of course didn’t know about these “rules” when I started incorporating strobes or flashes in my street photography. I had to try something else. If my subject is in direct sun with their back to the sun (most sane people don’t like to squint into the sun so they turn their back to it) I use the sun as a giant rim light and then my little strobes do the work of filling in the shadows. The result is the subject pops out of the background. I thought I was a genius for about 2.5 seconds for figuring this out then I found out it is all old school after reading about it on David Hobby’s Strobist Blog
**. Oh well. I love the result so who cares. I use this technique all the time in my street photography and as it turns out it works really well at weddings. I’m in Santa Cruz so I shoot a lot of weddings on the beach. Most of those weddings are right in the middle of the day with the hardest harshest light you can imagine. No one likes squinty eyes in formals right? But where are you gonna find shade on the beach? No problem I say. Turn your groups away from the sun and flash them – er, fire off the strobes that is.

For example here is a shot of The Great Morgani. Back to sun (cause, you know, duh it is bright). Pretty boring image. It is a snap shot and not that interesting.

But add a little flash and the image comes to life.

This was two strobes, one on camera and one in my hand, both dialed up a bit. Of course it doesn’t hurt that TGM is a real performer and with out any coaching from me through in that added bit of flare.

* glut is the right word right?
**seriously. if you are at all serious about photography and want to learn how to effectively use your flash you gotta check out Strobist. He puts all his knowledge up on the web for free.