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This was shot in the graveyard of the local Unitarian Chapel late last week. The light you see behind the stone is the streetlight. I also used an SB900 snooted about 2 metres camera right pointing straight into the middle of the frame. Down on the floor camera left, I used another SB900 diffused and aiming up to bring out the underneath of this near side.

As I tweeted the other day, my latest little off-tangent project is to shoot something, anything, in a Chiaroscuro style. And this is what I've ended up with. Its pretty much as I'd envisaged from the outset, so that in itself is an achievement! Image has been monotoned in Lightroom with a heavy vignette. Strobist: More...

Took this shot at the weekend whilst out recce-ing for a commission I have to do. I'd never been to Lymm dam before though I've passed it often enough. Tooled up with just my 70-200mm F2.8 & Sigma 10-20mm, and a couple of SB-900s, I went for a little pre-dawn stroll around the edge of the lake to scope out possible locations for an autumnal panorama. The weather was typically grey and gloomy and the sun was never gonna appear. The sandstone bedrock and the bountiful vegetation would have made for some wonderful detailed shots, had I been looking for the type of shot, but I wasn't. So I sauntered on, enjoying the solace until I stumbled upon the "Wishing Bridge". I plotted up for a brew and figured I'd have a little play here. I set up one SB-900 on a gorilla pod, and suspended it from a branch high up camera right, and then popped the other one on the tripod as close to the first as I could with a tree acting as a gobo between them and the bridge. Whacked Pocket Wizards on them both, gelled them and set one to full power and the other to half, and zoomed them both to 200mm. I then shot the bridge with the 10-20mm at 11mm, 1/15 sec at F6.3 on ISO800. It was just an experiment to see whether I could replicate a sun low on the horizon, and I think it's a fairly reasonable effort, though I maybe overdid the light a little. The shot below is the same location, but without any light.

After the fiasco that has taken place with the exam boards moving the goal posts as far as my AS-Level in photography were concerned, I've decided to bite the bullet and re-take the AS, so that I can then go on to doing the A2. I tipped up on Monday to college only to feel a little like the mature student amongst all the kids. Though it wasn't like that at all, having already done (and got a good grade in) the AS once, it was a bit like going over old ground.More...