Late Evening Flash Portrait

[Pichead]

This photo was taken for a senior portrait session. The shoot lasted the entire afternoon and when this was taken, the sun had just gone down below the horizon creating a nice mood on the tracks.

I used my Nikon D700 and set it to Aperture Priority mode using an Aperture of f/1.6 on my 85mm 1.4 lens. The shutter speed for the ambient turned out to be 1/125th of a second @ ISO 200. I chose the f/1.6 in order to get a shallow depth of field, as I didn't want to detract from the subject and only wanted the background scene (train, etc.) to be suggestions.

I positioned a Nikon SB-600 strobe on a stand, pointing through an umbrella. This was placed to camera-left just out of frame on 1/8th power in order to make the subject pop.

[scootermcq]

lovely shot and a beautiful model. tfs

[RLucas]

This shot is really nice! Thanks for sharing how you did it. Did you have the light stand bagged, or was the train not moving fast enough to blow it over?

[bpretorius]

Beautiful shot - thanks for sharing the details.

[RichardTaylor]

Beautifully captured & thanks for the mini tute.

[zona5101]

Beautiful. Your fill ratio is perfect.

[johnw2738]

That's so beautiful, never ever seen this kind of late evening portrait before! hats off, its a very well done and perfect work!

[BryanC]

Great image overall, but yes, I really like the balance between flash and ambient...very natural looking.

[Pichead]

Originally Posted by RLucas

This shot is really nice! Thanks for sharing how you did it. Did you have the light stand bagged, or was the train not moving fast enough to blow it over?

Thanks for the comments, all. I did bag the light stand, as it was kind of windy. And, we lucked out in that the train pulled up and stopped in the position you see in the photo for roughly 10 minutes...almost like it was posing for me...

[poacher]

great image DOF is amazing just falls off right at the end of the model TFS