It’s time for you to improve your wedding photo by using outdoor flash photography technique. I know how is the feeling for using the flash at the first time, it’s weird and don’t really know about how to adjust it but trust me it will be really simple to do for everyone even you never use it for the entire life. Right now and in this page I’m going to share about how to use 1 flash for shooting outdoor wedding.
Shooting with flash is not that difficult because all we need to do is trying over and over again till we know exactly how to set up the light. Generally it almost same with using dimmable continuous light for an outdoor photo session but on outdoor flash photography you will definitely need a wireless trigger and receiver to turn your flash on.
Outdoor Flash Photography Inspiration Photo from My Previous Session
If you never use outdoor flash photography technique before than now it’s your turn to try it on, in fact even I always bring my flash and wireless trigger for every wedding shooting that I have but I still love shooting with available light during the day and night. I know sometimes I bring this flash to illuminate my couple or surrounding but I know there is something bigger that I will achieve when I learn to use it for my own.
Down here I will share some of my previous outdoor wedding shooting that using an outdoor flash photography way to shoot.
1 – Use Flash from Upper Level
I was shooting for an engagement session in Maldives for one humble Singaporean couple that passing my website, what they did is drop me an email and we meet twice in Skype and around Boon Lay than we flew to Maldives for this session It was beautiful day when I shoot in that spot during the golden sunset moment. I ask my couple to stand together and in other side my wife is helping the bride to hold her dress’s tail and holding my flash from upper level of the wooden stairs.
Now look at for this RAW photo below,
Here in this frame I put my Canon EF 16–35mm f/2.8L III USM Lens and set it as f5.6 and 1/80 for the exposure time. When you want to this outdoor flash photography technique than you can ask your assistant to hold your flash out of your camera body. This technique is called as off-camera flash and once you set everything done you must have a Godox Xpro-C TTL Wireless Flash Trigger for Canon on your camera hot shoe and put the receiver on your flash, here I’m using Canon Speedlite 580EX by the way, and boom!
Gears on this scene
2 – Reflect the Flash to the Wall
On this second photo I will bring you into my previous pre wedding session in Yogyakarta Indonesia, a city which belong to my hometown for over than 25 years. On that day I went to a nice resort in the south of Yogyakarta and shoot for about 6 hours. Here in this scene I found a nice classic thick wall with a lovely retro hanging lamp, I was imagine that I can put my couple right in front of the wall and using outdoor flash photography system to create this moment.
If I using the flash for direct shooting to my couple in my engagement session in Maldives above but not on this scene, what I’m thinking is I’m gonna make a reflection on the wall by using this technique. So what I did is asking my couple to stand together and let one of them hold my Canon Speedlite 580EX.
So here is the RAW files looks like,
On my side I put one of my favourite medium range lens Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM with Godox Xpro-C TTL Wireless Flash Trigger for Canon on my camera hot shoe. If you see that photo above than you will realize that there are so many dark area such as on the tree, ceiling, and the most important part is the lamp, so I wondering that I could do a simple digital imaging for turning on the hanging lamp for the rest of my work.
And here is the final result, it was fantastic!
Down here you can see how I directing my couple to make that scene,
Gears that I use on this scene
3 – Shooting Under the Rain
This third outdoor flash photography method may inspire you about how to keep working and creating stunning image even you face an un-conditionally situation and on this case is, the rain.
When I shoot for a pre wedding last year, I feel that the weather is not in what I’m expecting for because it’s a huge cloudy sky since I drove my car to the resort. And I’m right because following 45 minutes of outdoor pre wedding shooting, there is a heavy rain on the location. During this situation I know that my couple is so stress because they are really busy and don’t have other time to shoot except that day. So I take the challenge to keep shooting under the heavy rain to get some shots and this is the final photos.
What I’m doing here is asking my couple to stand together holding the umbrella, technically if you want to shoot the rain falling into the ground than you must fire up the light from behind the couple. So I’m using Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM and set the aperture on f4 and got the exposure time on 1/60. I put the Godox Xpro-C TTL Wireless Flash Trigger for Canon on my camera hot shoe and let my wife holding the Canon Speedlite 580EX about 5 meter behind my couple.
This method will let you get a light on your couple face and capturing the rain water clearly which falling into the ground, this outdoor flash photography technique also giving you a nice umbrella shape and keep all surrounding into dark which is make the photo looks stunning and dramatic.
Gears that I use on this scene
Why You Need to Learn Outdoor Flash Photography Technique on Your Wedding Business
If you love shooting wedding that you might love shooting in a natural way or we used to called as using an available light a.k.a the sun. I personally love to shoot like that actually especially during the preparation and ceremony. I surely know that I also have a full frame camera and great lenses like I wrote on my wedding photography equipment lists but the challenge will start coming if I face a situation where I need to capture the beauty moment of my couple with a superb landscape view like what I had in outdoor area, and that’s why I still learning about how to shoot with outdoor flash photography technique.
Trust me, it’s interesting and easy!
Technical Guidance to Shoot with Outdoor Flash Photography
Now take a short look for my tutorial below,
I was shooting on a nice beach on that day and there are few potentials things and landscape that I want to capture together with my couple, to make this happen properly I think it would be great if I can shoot with an additional illumination method by using my flash.
I was asking my couple to stand together and hold their hand in tight than in other side me and my wife is going up into higher level. My wife is holding my Nikon SB-700 AF Flash and I shoot with Nikon D810 with a Godox XPro-N i-TTL 2.4G High-Speed for Nikon on the hot shoe.
Since I shoot with an ultra wide Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED so I have to make sure that I put my couple right on the centre to avoid any distortion till I got this technical data as f9 and 1/100 for the exposure time, it’s been on 14mm range actually.
Now you can see the difference, from the flat photo into nice and glamorous result that I can achieve with simple outdoor flash photography way, yes surely you see some digital imaging on that photo where I use Photoshop to turn the wooden bridge street lamp.
Specifically here I can improve my photo through this steps,
1 – Lightening Up My Couple
I know that I’m too late to go to this spot till I have the situation where it is almost dark so I don’t have any choice for shooting in this area except using my flash to lightening my couple.
2 – Capturing the Landscape in More Dramatic
The good thing of giving additional illumination to my couple is I can separate them with the landscape view and through this case I can increasing my camera exposure into 1/100 so I can get the sunset ambiance for clear. Just for your information if I shoot this frame on 1/100 without outdoor flash photography method than I can get the sky for nice but my couple will be so dark.
Gears that I use on this scene
I hope this article gonna help you about shooting wedding with outdoor flash photography technique, it will be so easy and fun to try but just in case you still have any question than I’d love to give you more guidance for sure.
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