A quick portrait shoot

  When it comes to cameras, I've been lately shooting more with my smartphone, than with a DSLR. I actually started a picture a day project for a couple weeks ago, with the idea to use only my Samsung phone, and the results you can see in Instagram @georgfagerlund. This doesn't mean that I buried my "real cameras", but more like that I've been so busy with other things that the only way to shoot has been the phone thingie. Today though I managed to make a couple of frames. The gear I used was a Nikon D300s and two Yongnuo YN560 mark 4 flashes. My setup was pretty simple. My beautiful model was standing in front of a brown wall, one flash unit was behind the model for the rim light, and one flash was bounced through the ceiling from the right side of me. For post processing I used Nikon Capture NX2 and a little fine tuning in ON1 Perfect Effects 9. The image looks like this, a lovely portrait of a lovely model.

      

Flashing

  Lately I've been flashing quite a lot. Nooo... not in the bad way, but I bought two of those quite cheap and great Yongnuo manual flashes and one YN560-TX radio trigger. That's a lot of light for me and I love it. Working still on my flash technique, as I mentioned in a previous post, but it's getting easier all the time. A good rule of thumb seems to be as the pros say, start with one light, if it's good, great, and then add more lights if necessary. Here's a sample from yesterday evening. One flash from behind the happy cat owner and one 45 degrees camera right (no modifiers, just bare bulb)...