Help me plan this shot

I may be worrying about it too much, but my fiance and I are planning on doing our save the date pictures next week while out in LA. We plan on doing a nice little ocean sunset pic. I'm well aware of the silhouette that I need to account for, so I plan on bringing a couple speed lights with (an tripods and stuff and maybe some little softboxes). My concern is that after checking the exif for a similar shot that I took a couple years ago, seeing that I shot at 1/1600 at 6.3 and 200 iso has me wondering if my flashes will do any good (sb700/600), or what I should do with them. I'm toying with the idea of a composite, a (natural) hdr, or all of the above. So far my plan is to simply expose for the sunset, shooting at f9 or so and 100 iso, and let the camera figure out the shutter and flash output. I may also be including her daughter at the side of the frame, so I'd be using both flashes, most likely having the 700 on camera and the 600 slaved and mounted on my gorilla pod. Should I bring a reflector? Worry about how the sand gets lit?

I forget what camera you have but I imagine that the flash sync speed is 1/250s maximum. That means that as soon as you fit a flash in the same conditions the camera will set the exposure to 1/250 f16 (at 200 ISO) and it will try to equal the light of the sun behind

Your SB700 has a GN of 40 meters at 200 ISO which means that at f16 it's going start to to run out of power at 2.5 meters (about 8 feet). If you add a second flash with the same power you can go out to almost 4 meters (12 feet).

- 12 feet is possible for a group portrait.
- I don't know if it's a good idea to use softboxes which are going to take some of your flash power.
- Personally I would use a large reflector or even a white wall behind the photographer if I could find one
- You could always do the shoot later when the power of the sun is lower. However the light changes fast the later you leave it

I wouldn't try HDR with a mobile subject like people

Thanks Charles. The shot's going to be just as the sun's hitting the water, and I know that goes fast. I was considering the reflector. If I did hdr, it would only be for the landscape component, and if anything would help me have a few frames to work from.

Nate, as mentioned you will have a very short window of opportunity to get this right. Is there anywhere close by that you could do a trial run before you take your trip? All you would need is one other person to practice the lighting on. I may be giving you the wrong advice by saying this but in a case like this with such a shot time frame to get it right I would think using the simpler the setup would lessen the chances of something going wrong. Don't over complicate things, Jeff

I agree Jeff. Not sure, but we'll be there for over a week, so I'll have a redo window if needed:)