Grolla’s Photography Lake Michigan Beach shootout

Golden natural light with a touch of off camera fill

Great sun and a fun smile

Stolen moments

Summer fun

Paul Grolla from Grolla’s Photography http://www.grollasphotography.com/ along with a few new friends from the Winona School of Photography (Rhonda Hale Marquart) met at the Beach this past week to hone their camera, lighting, and posing skills.

Rhonda organized the event and brought several models.  Upon arriving the overhead sun was brutal.  We had harsh direct sun without a bit of shade.  This is generally a photographers worst enemy.  It took a while to setup our gear and get acquainted during which time the sun began to get low in the sky and provide us with some amazing natural light.

Many of the photographs with the beautiful golden sun on the models were taken using primarily natural light with just a touch of off camera fill flash to balance the shadows and provide some spark to the eyes.

Some of the photographs taken with the sun behind the models are a technique we had practiced at the Winona School http://winonaschool.org/instructors/scott-a-adina-hayne a few weeks earler.  Scott Hayne http://haynephotographers.com/ is a fan of high speed sync using Canon speedlites so we decided to practice his techniques.  Results were amazing and allowed us to capture the beautiful setting sun while keeping nice light on our models.

Basically this HSS High Speed Sync techniques involves locking your exposure in manual to expose for the sky.  Then you use your flash to light the model.  The high speed comes from the fact that the shutter speeds are way too fast for any flash other than the Canon speedlites to properly expose.

Thanks to all of our models and to Rhonda  http://www.rhondamarquartphotography.com/ for putting it all together.

~ by grollasphotography on July 1, 2012.