Almost in Focus | Danny Gilleland |

I did a feature story last week on singing probation officer Paul Caraker. His office is in the new Byron Municipal Complex. The building has a really cool lobby with lots of glass and a neat staircase with wrough iron railings.

I wanted to do the photo using the stairway. I positioned him on the stairs and started out using ambient light. I shot using manual exposure because of the strong backlight. It made an all right photograph(above), but the backlight was really distracting. The light on his face is a bit flat as well.

I broke out my flash and decided to pump a little light in. I knew I wanted the light coming in from the camera’s right side. This image was exposed manually as well. I adjusted my exposure to capture the outside background scene.

Any time you are needing to use flash you will get a much better picture if you get the flash off the top of the camera. Directional light adds a nice depth to your photograph. Also takes care of red eye. You can get an off camera flash cord. Nikon makes one that is coiled and moves the camera about an arm’s length away(this of course is dependent on the length of your arm.)

Don’t be afraid to play a bit. And don’t be afraid to do some using the manual exposure mode. It’s the only way to be really creative with flash. The more you do, the easier it gets.