Sunsets & Flash

Details: Sunset at Grange Beach, Adelaide.
Nikon D700 with Nikkor 24-70mm | 50mm, 1/320 @ F4.5, ISO 200

Driving along the coast here in Adelaide on a nice balmy night, Dene and I couldn’t resist pulling over and taking a few snaps of the setting sun. That was not enough however. We raced back to the car and pulled out our trusty flashes and rigged them up on a tripod. We got a few strange glances as both of us took turns posing and acting a little crazy in front of the camera.

I have had my SB-900 flash (a nikon speedlight) for a few months now, and I generally use it at weddings directed at ceilings and walls to get some bounce flash, but I also enjoy using it in fading light situations like the sunset we see in these shots. We had maybe 8 minutes from the time of jumping out of the car, running down the path to the beach and setting up. We only had one tripod (or light stand), so we took it in turns using it for our shots. I wish we had some gels to warm the scene, but the shots turned out OK.

I put my flash to the left of Dene around 1.5 metres away. I would have used my shoot-through umbrella, but it was just too gusty to risk it. Poor Dene had his flash, which was placed on his back pack, fall off into the sand. He lent down to grab it and of course the clumsy bugga drops his Canon camera onto the sand in place for the flash. Either way, both of them ended up working OK.

Once again, I used Lightroom 3 Beta to do postproduction on the shots, but thats a laugh really, because I didn’t do anything as I am really learning the program. I did however use the adjustment brush to burn the sky behind Dene a little.