Tag Archives: joe mcNally

Photographing fire spinning.   

Posted by enmanscamera on

This past week one of the women my friend Jo McAvany recently photographed told Jo she was going to do some “Fire Spinning” on the beach in Kamloops Friday evening and wondered if she would come along and take photographs.

Jo told me and we joined the two Fire Spinners and photographer Jennifer Tyler just before sunset along the north shore of the Thompson River across from down town Kamloops.

Oh, and with regards to our current need for “social distancing”. There was no necessity for any warning signs or circles on the ground to remind Jo and I to keep our distance, the spinning hot flaming batons were enough of a warning.

Jo chose to use her 24-70mm lens and I had my 16-35mm. I was happy with the close wide-angle shots I was getting, but Jo told me she wished she had brought her 70-200mm lens so she could crop in tight without having to move in close to our subjects. I had to agree that the longer lens would have made for easier shooting. (And less cropping later)

We both started by slowing our camera’s shutterspeed way down. That gave us good shots of the fire movement, but the person holding the flame came out blurry. We then added flash on a few shots, tried increasing our ISO and had fun experimenting every way we could. I haven’t seen Jo’s photos, but my experience was a bit hit-and-miss.

I want to try again with an off-camera flash. There is a well-known picture of a Hawaiian Fire Dancer on the cover the book, “The Hot Shoe Diaries” by photographer and writer Jo McNally. The image shows flame spinning and a relatively sharp dancer with a black underexposed background. McNally says he used his Nikon Speedlight off-camera and positioned it close to the subject.

I originally hadn’t planned on going with Jo and quickly grabbed a speedlight from my shop at the last minute and only tried it on-camera. (Obviously the wrong place to put the flash almost anytime)

I also now know that I should have used a faster shutterspeed. My slow shutter time would work great for night cityscape photos where there is no subject movement other than the ocean, but the setting was to slow for the constant moving women doing the fire spinning. And I now know I need not have worried about depth-of-field. McNally chose wider apertures for all his low light shots of the Fire Dancers with excellent success.

I have done some reading and critical thinking about my photos and I am sure I will be able to correct the mistakes I made.

I’m not totally disappointed with the photographs I took of the two Fire Spinners, Jessika and Kristen, and there are some very usable shots that with a bit of modifying in post will surely be worth showing to others. I have no doubt the Fire Spinners will like some of the photos I took, but I can do better. I hope I can get an opportunity to photograph them again.

One of the (many) things that has kept me interested in photography for all these years is there is always something else to learn.

Wireless Hotshoe Flash for Photography

Posted by enmanscamera on

I have always been excited about technology changes in photography; for example, I remember how spectacular it was to have a workable, in-camera light meter when I got my Pentax Spotmatic II. Shortly thereafter I added a Vivitar 283 flash that allowed me to do preflash tests with my flash off camera and make adjustments to the lighting.  Within a couple years came the wonderful Nikon F3 with TTL (through the lens) on-camera, flash metering, and for me the world of photography changed even more. Since then a lot has happened to flash photography and I will confirm that the current trend of using off camera, wireless hotshoe camera flashes is exciting.

A greater number of serious photographers are learning to employ flash, from what was originally a flat, one-light source for an image, and they are starting to use the word “modelling” to show how the light affects their subject, and easily can wirelessly locate several small flashes at different positions around their subject.

I recently talked to a friend learned about portrait lighting by attending a Scott Kelby lighting workshop, however, there are other very well known photographer-writers worth researching, people such as David Hobby (www.strobist.com) and Joe McNally (www.joemcnally.com) that have created a world wide following with their books, blogs, and videos on using wireless hotshoe flashes instead of the heavy, cumbersome, power cord lighting that photographers have previously used for many years (like me).

So why go to wireless flash? Or, why a wireless hotshoe flash that we originally purchased to set on our camera?   For me it comes down to ease of use and portability as I regularly do staff portraits for businesses.  In the past I’ve arrived on site with two large bags of lighting equipment containing big strobe heads, stands, umbrellas and lots of power cords. Now, I carry lightweight stands and umbrellas in a small bag slung over my shoulder, and several small hotshoe flash units in a handbag. Both the equipment and the setup time is considerably less.

In his book “The Hot Shoe Diaries,” McNally writes, “it makes my job easier. It enables me to move fast, and have a flash system that thinks along with me and solves certain problems historically attached to flash photography (big heavy units, cables and wires everywhere…”

As I have written before, I like using flash indoors or out. There are those times when I am following a moving subject and have my flash mounted above my camera on a flash bracket. I rarely rely on a single ambient light source and prefer using a flash to add light to improve the quality of my photographs.

For occasions when my subject is stationary I use the wireless flash off camera; and for portraits I like three lights, one above and behind me, one off to the side and one behind the subject. My set up isn’t always the same, it depends on the available space, but for example, the flash above and behind might be either in a softbox or a reflector umbrella, the sidelight could be a small shoot-through umbrella or bounced off a reflector panel, and backlight directed at the background with only a small dome diffuser covering it.  That’s one quick, effortless setup that I can easily carry in two small bags – one bag for light stands and one for the flash units while my camera is comfortably hung around my neck as usual. All this, as I just wrote, is easy to setup without having to connect the flash to the camera with wires and the flash to the wall with power cords.

Because of the interest and questions fellow local photographer Rick Tolhurst (www.shotsbyrick.com) and I have been getting questions about how to setup and use small, off-camera, wireless flashes for portraits, we have decided to put on a simple lighting workshop. The interactive one-day session will discuss one, two, and three-light setups for portrait and glamour photography. For those interested the workshop will be held on Sunday, 30 October, 10am-4pm, cost is $60. Pre-registration is required and any photographers interested should call or email me for specifics.

Using small wireless hotshoe flash has made photographing people a lot easier and serious photographers that have not tried it yet are going to feel the same way as those that dragged their feet in moving from film to digital.

www.enmanscamera.com