Strobist Attempt - Critique Please

Hi, this an attempt by me to do some off camera flash work at sunset. Used were two Nikon SB900's on the ground along with 2 flashes from the Elinchrom; Ranger Quadra Flash Set.

Appreciate comments & critique on this attempt. Thanks a lot for your help.


Attachment 77514

The reflection on the water is beautiful. And the shot is very good overall.

Did you use all of the flash heads at camera left? If so, why?

As a fellow strobist enthusiast, This is very good!

I do think the photo needs a touch of light on the right of the camera, to make your subject stand out. Some hair light would also be nice!

Over all it's a good shot! Love the sunset reflection on the water!

There is also a very noticeable halo around him.

First off, love the shot. Great overall look and well done. Anything stated hereafter are really nit piks for improvement.
I agree about the halo as Dray mentioned. It looks like something happened in post processing? can be fixed, not a killer.
Rylan has some good points about the lighting on the right and the hair, but I'm thinking the way you have it here looks very natural and if you were to try to light him up from all sides, it might start looking like a composite. the hair light might have helped though, just a bit. I'm not sure about the shadow area on the inner nose part. Looks like a dark blotch area the more i look at it. Not a killer either, and perhaps you could soften the shadow up somewhat.
Excellent exposure of the background, and great composition here.
I too am wondering about the use of all those flash heads. i would think the two 900's would have done this alone. did you use everything and how?
well done, SM

Pretty nice actually. A warm gel to warm the face might have helped. It looks a bit pale in the red sunlight.

Wow thanks for the fast input. I had an SB900 behind him behind the rocks, in the test it fired, but maybe it didn't on this one? the other SB900 was to his right along the rocks and the two flashes on tripods were front and to his left. The idea of the SB900 behind is to make him stand out and lighten his hair so I'd say it possibly didn't;t fire I was using infrared SU800 as a trigger. I'll try and do as has been recommended and repost.

Thanks very much for your input and help.

OK, here's my attempt to do some fine tuning?

I'm not so good at post processing work outside of crop and some blur or sharpening, lightening etc. basic stuff. The shot was already cropped a bit so I'm getting into each pixel when trying to modify and this I find hard.

Attachment 77517

I still see that halo around the subjects body on the right. Maybe it's some halo lighting from the flash that was behind him on the rocks?

I would say that if there is no halo visible on your high res file, than don't worry bout it. the compression happening with high res images these days really does some strange things to the web display files and with various sites that host them. i also find that FB makes my images much softer and less sharp than here and other places

Thanks Rylan. I've tried to soften the halo but I seem to darken the right side when doing it, but I think I eliminated some. You are right that I had an SB900 behind him but I'm not sure it fired. Out of interest when you get the halo I guess it's best to reduce the power of the light behind, but would the subject still pop in the overall scene? I don't have any soft boxes but was using umbrellas to soften light, one white one and a reflective silver one. I think next time I'll draw the set up and details of lights.


Thanks again appreciate your time.


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Gary, it's a good point you mention as sometimes when treating dark colours I get a very different image between my Dell screen and the same shot an my Mac, with the Mac identifying all the faults which I don't see on the PC??? I'm not a technical guy so I'm a loss as to why.