Outdoor Flash

36 advanced photographer January 2011

Outdoor Flash Inspiration

outdoor flash

Natural lights all well and good but for pin-sharp images that roar off the page oozing colour and clarity, you just cant beat a little bit of flash. The dark art of strobism is more popular than ever: many are completely hooked on

the hugely addictive approach to lighting. Over the next 12 pages well reveal advanced techniques for improving your

own shots as well as the kit youll need to get started...

In-depth gUIde to...

power up wIth phIl wInterbournes gorgeous portfolIo

January 2011 advanced photographer 37


outdoor flash



In 2008 the writer Malcolm Gladwell published a book called Outliers, examining high-fliers and the road to their successes. Throughout the now critically acclaimed work, Gladwell makes reference to the well-known Ten-Thousand Hour Rule that practicing a specific task for around 10,000 hours is the key to excellence. If this theory is true, keen photographer Phil Winterbourne would have had to devote every waking moment of his life to discovering more about off-camera flash, as hes only been taking pictures properly (as he himself puts it) for just three years. As a full time IT professional for BT, a keen mountain biker and busy father, Phil has only been shooting strobist pictures for just over one thousand days so his photographic journey is quite a short tale. Though Ive always had cameras. My dad gave me my first one when I was about nine, and the first SLR I used was his OM1 back in the seventies, he says. All my pictures were utterly rubbish. Id take a sh*t holiday picture, develop it, say, God, thats awful and then not take another for six months. The delay was too long for me to learn.

It was the advent of digital capture that saw Phil start to embrace photography. When I got a digital camera I could press the button, look at the back and say Oh, thats underexposed immediate feedback. Armed with a compact camera, Phil joined up with a gang of like-minded BT colleagues, forming an online camera club. Every month a subject was picked and a panel of judges would critique submitted pictures. That was what introduced me to photography in terms of rules. Theyd say, The subjects a bit central stick it on one of the thirds and Id think Whats thirds then? The continual feedback turned me from a snapper into a photographer. My understanding of everything came from that internal BT competition.

Phil worked away at his hobby until the arrival of the Canon EOS 300D. I felt Id got to the point where I wanted to have more control and the compact that I had been using was quite limited. I became a proud Canon owner and have been ever since.

People personPhil quickly found his niche in portraits, one of the areas stereotypically avoided by amateur photographers who favour trains or landscapes its cos they dont answer back. the photographer laughs. Im very much a people person. Im always asked How do you take such good portraits? and its because I can talk to people.

Although Phil had always taken pictures of his children, their limited attention span soon frustrated the photographer. A contact of his mentioned the popular social networking website Model Mayhem and advised Phil to try working with a professional. I spent about a year being too scared to try and organise a shoot with anyone, he says, but the first time I actually went out to do a shoot with a model was September of 2007. I had an on-camera flash, which I was using for fill more than anything else, and Id never heard of off-camera flash at this stage. I did have a reflector so I was trying to be really clever and angle my camera flash towards the reflector in my left hand to bounce light in.

This marked the start of Phil trying to control light in his pictures and again, it turned out to be the Model Mayhem site that pushed him on to the next level.

Another photographer started up in the area at the same time as me, and we were

shooting the same models from the site the ones with no experience. He sent me a message saying Im not stalking you, were just using the same model. We got talking, and he sent me a link to the Strobist blog.

Strobist.blogspot.com is written by the American photographer David Hobby and is the first stop for all things strobist. Needless to say, Phil was immediately hooked on this vibrant form of photography.

Its the power of the pictures that I like, he says. With photography, I sort of paint in oils. Some people paint in watercolours, which are subtle and soft and tonal whereas that bold oil look you can only get if youre taking control of the lighting and putting loads of contrast in, tweaking the shadows and highlights.

Phil learned his craft by trial and error. Early on it was complete experimentation. That blue shot in the underpass was taken in April 2008, and that was one of the first times that I went out and tried to do any strobism. Id read all about coloured gel strobism but the kits were expensive, so I went out and bought a box of Quality Street, picked out all the blue wrappers and used those to gel the flashes.

His home-made kit is echoed by his atypical approach to strobism. Im a bit of a cheat, he admits. Strobism to many photographers is all about using cheap flashes and manual wireless triggers , but I dont. I use the Canon IR trigger ST-E2 because that gives me ETTL metering and despite all the arguments to the contrary I think thats better.

Said arguments against this method are along the lines of TTL systems dont always make your photos look the way you want, and infrared systems need close quarters, line-of-sight and specific angles to work but people-person Phil counters by saying that theres nothing more annoying than when youre working with a model and you have to stop the flow to fiddle with your camera. The art of strobism is all about balancing your flashes with the ambient light, and if youre outdoors with a model youve got to keep that dialogue going all the time. You cant be stopping, saying Ooh, the suns out, hang on a bit and adjusting.

Phil winterbourne

Its the power of the pictures that I like.

With photography, I sort of paint in oils.

Some people paint in watercolours, which

are subtle and soft and tonal whereas that bold oil look you can

only get if youre taking control of the light

Words Charlotte Griffiths pIctUres Phil winterbourne

With only three years of true photography under his belt, Phil Winterbournes portfolio of off-camera flash work is startlingly accomplished for a newcomer

BIography Location leeds shoots with Canon eos 5D, Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 l is, Canon ef 17-40mm f/4 l, Canon speedlites 580, 430, st-e2 trigger



So how does the photographer set up his system to shoot? In my head Im thinking in plus or minus stops, which works really well with the flash exposure compensation, he explains. I almost always shoot in aperture-priority AE mode because I work out what depth-of-field I want, set an appropriate aperture, then the shutter speed can look after itself. Ill chimp the first exposure, think right, I need to dial this down two-thirds of a stop for the ambient, and then Ill start layering in the flashes, dialling in some flash exposure compensation. Then Im off. I clamber all over the place, point the camera up or down, the sun can come out it is a bit of a bugger in strong sunlight but otherwise, its sorted.

Once the photos are done, then comes the editing: like most photographers Phil spends a great deal of his time in front of the computer but unlike most photographers, he doesnt complain. I love it. When I get up in the morning, I turn the computer on when I go to bed, I turn the computer off, he says. I think it was post-processing that really helped me get into photography. Not in the case of rescuing bad shots, but more that when Im shooting an image Im already thinking about how Im going to edit it. I really enjoy the editing. I know loads and loads of photographers that resent every second they spend in front of the computer. Im a bit like a cook. When youre out shooting, thats like stirring the mixture the bit on the computer is where you take the cake out of the oven and eat it.

Phil will rarely spend more than about ten minutes working on an individual image in Photoshop. If its ten minutes, thats a long time for me, he says. But Ive been doing this for a while, so Ive worked out what I need to do to get my look to pictures and its roughly the same, so its a much quicker process.

With this laudable level of dedication to learning, you have to wonder what level Phil will have reached in another three years. Bookmark his site: one not to be missed.

the storIes behInd the pIctures

Dr whoThis was taken in the same underpass as the green image. One flash was behind the model, facing forwards on 24mm, gelled with a blue Quality Street wrapper the key light was camera right at eye-level. The zoom head was set on 24mm.

Canon EOS 5D, EF17-40mm f/4 L, 1/13sec, f/4, ISO 400

MYSPACeThe aim of this was to try and create a good photo in the style of the typical MySpace ams-length shot. I had to clamber up on a fence to get the angle and balance while also trying to direct and shoot.

Canon EOS 5D, EF 17-40mm f/4 L, 1/80sec, f/4, ISO 50

hAir SwirlSShot in a local park, this was a shoot for the models portfolio. I was particularly drawn to the different colours in her hair, and how they complemented the autumnal leaves. To bring that out I shot this with quite a wide lens, but zoomed my on-camera flash in quite tight to give a natural vignette.Canon EOS 5D, EF17-40mm f/4 L, 1/125sec, f/4, ISO 50

ContaCt:www.philwinterbourne.co.ukwww.flickr.com/philwinterbourne

Green SCreAMI was being experimental with my new flash gels. It was shot in my favourite underpass and I wanted a really green background. But just gelling the backlights wasnt working, so I gelled the key light purple, betting that when I corrected the white-balance, the green would go very green.


PurPle PAtChTaken behind the Royal Armoires museum in Leeds city centre on a training course I was holding. I saw this tatty door and loved the contrast of it and the model. I got one of my students to hold the flash off to the right-side.Canon EOS 5D, EF70-200mm f/2.8 L IS, 1/80sec, f/4, ISO 100

hooDieA gritty urban/fashion shot. To keep the moody high contrast look I wanted I underexposed the ambient by about a stop and fired a flash from about 45 degrees from camera right. Looking back now I wish Id placed the flash higher to improve the look of the nose shadow.

Canon EOS 5D, EF70-200mm f/2.8 L IS, 1/200sec, f/4, ISO 100

FAb FlAreOne of the great things about shooting outside with flash is that you usually have an extra light along from the sun. Here the backlight is coming from the sun with a bare flash doing the work up front.

Canon EOS 5D , EF70-200mm f/2.8 L IS set to 145mm, 1/800sec, f/2.8, ISO 100

leAVeSAnother very early shoot where we were shooting for both our portfolios. I was looking fo a bit of a sixties vibe, hence the black & white look. And I used the same trick with the very wide lens and zoomed in flash to highlight the centre. I like the way the distortion from the wide-angle has affected the leaves.


SeXY oilSThis is one of my favourite outdoor shots. The stone work made me think of old oil paintings, so I decided to make the image look as oil-like as I could. I used very contrasty lighting on the model and underexposed the background.


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