When someone calls you and says “Hi Bert, I’m Ernie”, you think it’s a bad joke, right? Well it turned out it wasn’t a joke at all, but sure it was fun. Ernie is a talented and motivated photographer who wanted to do a one-on-one workshop to learn more about balancing flash with ambient light. He brought his daughter Sofie as a model. I think every father with such a lovely daughter just has to become a photographer.

Ernie sure did his homework so we didn’t have to spend too much time on the basics and could move on to unlocking Sofie’s modeling potential.  She kept giving us one great look after the other. Normally I don’t shoot much myself on these kind of workshops, but I couldn’t resist firing a couple of frames.

Here we are using the natural light falling through the open studio door as a main light. One gridded speedlight lights up the background for some more depth.

Overpowering the ambient light around noon isn’t that easy with a single speedlight. But by using a bare flash pretty close to the subject and zooming it in, we could still enjoy the reasonable recycle time of working at 1/2 power.

I’m the kind of guy who turns happy accidents into a career. At first I found the wind blowing Sofie’s hair all around the place pretty annoying. But when I looked at the pictures on the back of my camera, I discovered that it actually looked pretty cool. So I let her swing her head like a shampoo commercial model. Sofie may be wearing a neck brace now, but at least she got some dynamic pictures.

When I’m doing workshops I always stress out that you have to photograph “around” your subject and setup. Often you find some great angles by just spending five more minutes with the same setup.

Big thanks to Ernie and Sofie for this great day.