travel this year?

Rick, it is very easy. I was using a Canon 20d and a 550ex.

I metered for the ambient sunlight which was F11. I placed Ali so that the sun would be a kicker light. I set my flash to output F16 on Ali and had someone hold it out to my left (45 degrees) My camera was set at 1/250 @ F16 to match the exposure of the flash. This in turns darkens down the background as it is one stop more than the ambient.

Thanks for the excellent description. Her skin tone is so warm I assumed you had used a gel in there somewhere :) Always great to see the details behind a great shot like this one!

btw what is in her left hand?

Great shot and thanks for the explaination. Not a lot of equipment, but a lot of thought put into how to do it. It's all about the light! :)

No Gels at all, just straight flash. To acquire proper skintone (and her skin is that warm) you need correct white balance. 2 ways of doing this, custom whitebalance & know what your camera is doing. I know know that I get acqurate white balance with "some" of the presents, for this shot I used the flash preset, as my flash was the main lightsource.

Wow, yea, that is a great shot Hodgy :)

I don't think I'll be doing any major travelling anytime soon, sadly. I may make plans to go to the next Photoshop World here on the east coast, which I believe is in Boston. Other than that, I'll probably stay fairly local.

And speaking of wedding photographers, my sister's wedding was last weekend. The photographer she hired stopped by the house early to get some candids of us getting ready. She was using a Nikon D2x and a medium format Hassleblad (I think I spelled that right, maybe). I felt so dumb walking around with my D50, lol, but she gave me some pointers and tips. She also let me play with the D2x...it was heavenly.

I remember shooting a wedding where I had used Canon AE-1's and 3 guests had Digital SLR's. Needless to say, my images turned out, their's didin't.

Here's an image of the Las Vegas skyline I took with my CAnon P&S camera. Stiched 3 images together.

http://www.nobsphotosuccess.com/vegas/skyline.jpg

Click HERE for a larger image

Hodgy,

That is a great shot! Wonderful stitching and all the colors are just brilliant!