That was the idea, anyway. I’ve been inspired by Nick Turpin’s street shots, using high, undiffused strobes, and have been experimenting on and off with the technique. This is a shot from this evening in the woods near my home, which uses a single flashgun on a 3 metre stand out of shot to the left, pointing at me. I used a little more light to the shadows by using the pop-up flash on the camera, set at 1/8 power. By setting the white balance on the camera to tungsten – the usual for warm indoor lighting – and underexposing the grey sky, it went very blue. To counteract the effect of this colour shift in the flash (which would’ve been very bright blue with no adjustment), I added a warming (“CTO”) gel to the flash gun, thereby making the main light a neutral colour. Then, setting the camera on a tripod and using the remote shutter release on a five second timer, I jumped off the rocks around thirty times, until I got the timing just right. The only Photoshop work on the image is a slight dark vignette and crop.
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