The third image in my #HrdLight project series.
Taken about 2 weeks ago on a location shoot in my home town Stockport, this project was kind of in the back of my mind… in a I will grab something If i see a shot kinda way, to be honest I just wanted to get out and shoot after a really crappy week.
Even though I used hard light a fair bit during this shoot (dam wind), I did not have any specific hard light shot ideas for this project, that was until the last location (a dark walkway) resulted in an interesting long exposure after a accidental shutter press… that started the process of making this image. Due to the lowlight level in the walkway exposures for ambient light were pretty long, this means you can get some ghosting when mixing ambient with flash, which is the result you see above.
Exposure : F6.3, ISO 500, 4” Light: On Camera (yes yes on camera) Straight up hard flash 1/64 power + 0.3ev (in camera NOT photo shop)
I tried it ETTL but it sucked (nothing new) so i switched to manual as I wanted a more consistent flash exposure. The flash exposure is the only consistency your going to get with long exposure images like this and that’s what makes them fun, to quote Forrest Gump .. You never know what your gonna get.
Also on a side note, I'm getting to like the in camera RAW processing options on the 60D quite a bit. This was shot in RAW colour and since you can’t re shoot the same image again with long exposures I converted the RAW file in camera to a B & W JPEG and added contrast, sharpening etc to give me an in the field idea. FYI the final image has gone through Light Room.