Talk about perfect lighting

I was trying to get some good shots of seagulls flying overhead at the beach Saturday, but they were never in the right light. Seagull photos in Florida are a dime-a-dozen, so I wanted to make the photo special somehow. I decided to attach my flash and put it in "tele" mode at full power for a direct burst of light.

I finally caught a shot of a gull overhead with the sun slightly behind him and the flash underneath.

It made for PERFECT lighting. The sun illuminated him in a way that made him appear to glow from within, and the flash gave enough light to his underside and brought out tons of detail. Be sure to click the image and view the larger version (if you're a Flickr member, that is).

This will probably be one of the few times in my life I use flash on a sunny, cloudless day in the middle of the afternoon aimed at a bird.

Camera Model: NIKON D50
Flash Used: Yes, Vivitar 285hv, full power, bare
Focal Length: 200.0mm
Exposure Time: 0.0005 s (1/2000)
Aperture: f/8.0
ISO equiv: 200
Metering Mode: Spot
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)

Surreal Lighting

It was a foggy night and I was on the hunt for a photo opp. on my drive home from work. I had my camera with me and a tripod in the trunk, but the only places I saw possible shots were impossible to stop at.

So I forged along until I was only a couple blocks from home. The construction site here was lit by 3 large street lamps. Their arrangement created really awesome lighting on the leftover equipment, and the fog helped to soften the light and add some halo effects to the scene.

I tried several different exposures, but it was very difficult to meter this scene. I got a couple right, though, and liked the results.

In Photoshop, I applied some 3.5px radius sharpening to the construction vehicles to help bring out details and shadow edges.

I plan on returning to this site soon with a model to see what we can come up with.

Camera Model: NIKON D50
Flash Used: No
Focal Length: 31.0mm
Exposure Time: 6.000 s
Aperture: f/11.0
ISO equiv: 200
Exposure Bias: -0.67
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)

Despair

This shot came about because I couldn't get a good lighting result for a "model" shot in the corner of an old plantation's building (Bulow Plantation ruins). I only had one external strobe on me and couldn't produce satisfactory results with the walls on either side of the model.

But I wanted a shot. So I told the model to get down on the ground and look sad and distraught. Basically, life handed me lemons, so I made some lemonade.

EXIF data was stripped, but it doesn't matter too much. From what I can recall:

Aperture: F/8
Shutter Speed: 1/40
Focal Distance: 28mm
Flash Used: No
Mode: Aperture Priority