The key ingredient to all photography is light — interesting, variable, colorful and dramatic light, wherever you can find it.
I’ve been playing a lot this week with simple and not-so-simple flash setups and realizing, once again, what a waste of money high-tech and high-cost TTL flashes are. Everything you can do with that $350 X-TTL dedicated flash can be done with a $75 Vivitar 285HV. And, for what you pay for that single dedicated flash, you can own an entire functioning portrait studio’s worth of useful lighting equipment.
For details, read Strobist.
And, no, this is not a flash photo.
photo: Rick Bartow, 2008
2 Comments
I don’t know much about flashes especially in-studio lighting since my kind of photography is always in the wide wild open spaces.
Having said that this is a beautiful image. Its beautifully composed, gorgeous golden (tungsten) light and the blurred left hand hints at the lively discussion.
Thanks, Thomas. The subject, Rick Bartow, is a very good artist here in Oregon and, you might say, crates his own light.
BK