It’s been a little while for a Field Lighting post, but I have a few in the bag. Assignment work and research has been keeping me away, and it looks like it’s just going to get heavier in the near future, but hopefully I can squeeze in a few remnants of my existence on the World Wide Web during all the work!

I don’t know if I’ve ever written about on-camera flash, and Lord knows I don’t advocate it much, but every once in a while, it comes in handy (besides the occasional wedding)! The above photograph was taken on a Lesser Prairie Chicken lek where Blake Grisham and Nick Pirius were conducting research on this seemingly dwindling and fragile species. We sat in the pickup some 75 yards or more away from the lek until we were sure all the birds had flown off. We then drove up slowly, trying hard not to disturb any birds that may have been caught for analysis. If a bird is located, then it’s out of the pickup and quickly to the bird, back to the truck for measuring, banding, radio-collaring, etc., and then released. This literally does not take more than five minutes sometimes. The point is to not traumatize the bird or negate it’s surroundings in any obtrusive way while still ensuring proper research is conducted to help the species later down the road (the bird has a sock over its head to keep it calm).

OK, you can imagine this happens in a short amount of time, and by all means, less time than it would take to set up lighting for all the images taken from piling out of the pickup to scurrying back and through analysis. Enter the on-camera flash. Mobility is definitely the name of the game when you employ this stick of dynamite on TOP of your camera (whether it be an internal flash or attachable speedlite). My entire mentality of handling on-camera flash is the same as it were off. Constantly check your ambient, and work with it judiciously! Luckily, this bird was taken in right after the sun had set, so the sky was a nice blue, low in value, making my flash (a 580EX gelled amber) easily controlled at low settings, saving both battery and everyone’s eyes! Controlling the power on the on-camera flash can be handled in a variety of ways, just as if it were off-camera. I tend to work in AV mode with exposure compensation dialed down a bit in order to save the ambient.

The flash does have a diffuser placed over its bulb. On-camera flash is not nearly as pleasing without this affordable device. Shadows are hard enough with it on. In my opinion, hard shadows coming from the camera axis doesn’t say much in my own photography (there are others that would undoubtedly disagree, and for good reason).

This final shot is the release of the prairie chicken. Stayton Bonner, the writer for the story we were working on, was in for a very fast treat!

Jeff Haley is a good man. I came out of nowhere to introduce myself to him over the phone several months back, telling him I’m the photographer for a Texas Parks and Wildlife story for which he’s already been interviewed. When I first visited his ranch in the Texas Panhandle, we rode around in a car for three hours, just scouting locations, taking a few portraits, but talking the entire time. Turns out he knows some folks I know, making the world a little smaller (this is a good thing, by the way).

This is my favorite type of portraiture. I mentioned in a post last week that I really enjoy the work of Arnold Newman, the father of environmental portraits. Ever since I began to study his work, I knew that the story that goes along with a person is powerfully conveyed in their surroundings. Combine telling the story, with a little technical get-you-there-on-the-lighting, and you have a nice looking image that stresses the land and the man, both tied to each other, one with a reverent concern for the other’s well-being (I especially like the look of Mr. Haley’s brows in the above shot, exaggerating that concern he has for his land).

In true Joe McNally fashion, I’ve included a lighting diagram below. I can’t stress the significance in drawing one of these out on paper or in your mind before the actual shoot. Nevertheless, just be ready for anything, and be creative!

Here is another from that day, and a little bit different setup (just a little). The idea here is to work with the ambient, use it as the main, as in this case, or as a kicker, like in the first portrait. The flash just does the fill work in the shot below.

I’m don’t regularly use a bare flash, but in this case, it was easy to get around with, the wind wasn’t going to blow down any umbrellas, and it saved some power. I’ve been using the Elinchrom Ranger Quadra system lately, but remote strobes definitely have their advantage (more on this later).

Lighting shouldn’t take over the story aspect of environmental portraits, but using it practically and creatively allows you to make a portrait pop, however little it needs to.

]]> http://www.jerodfoster.com/2010/01/24/field-lighting-jeff-haley-cattleman/feed/ 2 http://www.jerodfoster.com/2009/10/01/wind-energy-and-lesser-prairie-chickens-in-texas-parks-and-wildlife-magazine/ http://www.jerodfoster.com/2009/10/01/wind-energy-and-lesser-prairie-chickens-in-texas-parks-and-wildlife-magazine/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:46:55 +0000 jerodfoster http://www.jerodfoster.com/?p=371

I haven’t visited the blogosphere in a while due to some pretty exciting and unique opportunities, both photography and research-related, but I definitely had to give props to the October issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine. My good friend, Stayton Bonner, and I produced the cover story dealing with the growing wind industry and wildlife that may be affected by its production, more specifically the Lesser Prairie Chicken. The magazine produced a great spread!

This was a fantastic story to be a part of, and thanks goes to Stayton for a great job on the research and writing end, allowing me to be the eyeballs for the story! I’ll post more on the process of the story later, detailing the different shoots we went on, and how everything came together.

While you’re online, swing over to both TPW’s and Stayton’s sites to find out more information about the story and those behind it! More to come, including a how-to on Stayton’s bio shot…