Me and you and a speedlight named Boo

For the last six weeks I've been holed up at my grandmother's place in my hometown of Oakdale, CA. They call it The West at its Best. I call it the town I left 15 years ago for (literally) greener pastures. It's hot here (105 last weekend) but luckily grandma has a pool. I think I've been swimming more in the last 6 weeks than the last 10 years.

In order to keep me from going insane (and, well, to keep her from going insane too), Jill flew in from Seattle for a 10 day whirlwind California vacation. Being from upstate New York the only part of California she's ever seen was the inside of SFO for a 4 hour layover. I figured I would show her the town and we'd take a roadtrip down the coast a bit since we're only two hours away from San Francisco. The plan was a few days in Garnerville, NV then down to Monterey, Santa Cruz, then finally the City. She wanted some photos of herself taken at the Golden Gate Bridge. I wanted them to be memorable so unbeknownst to Jill, I packed a speedlight and a 43" brolley (standard Strobist operating equipment) for the shots we really wanted to hold onto. Personally I'm not much of a sentimentalist and rarely take vacation pictures. but I was more than happy to make some for her.

I brought along my 5Dii but for most f the shots I took of Jill I just grabbed her 40d and used the pop-up flash for fill. As a tangent, it reminded me that you can do a lot even with the little flash on the top of your camera -- especially if you understand how to balance ambient with flash. The technique is the same as when you're using an off-camera flash. Anyway, here's a shot of Jill at the Monterey Bay Aquarium that I took using the 40d with the pop-up that I think looks pretty natural:



Anyway, the real coup de gras took place at the Golden Gate Bridge: we parked and Jill scrambled out of the car to the observation deck and unknown to her I went to the trunk and pulled out a speedlight and brolly. Of course I totally got some looks from the (other) tourists. I can't imagine what they were thinking. What I was thinking was they were lucky I didn't bring the 60" Photek Softlighter on a C-stand and boom (which is my light of choice).

Anyway, after I set up my gear I went right into strobist mode: figured out the composition of the shot, checked the ambient exposure then set the flash power to about 1/8th power and started checking the balance of flash and ambient and adjusted the shutter speed and flash power until I got something I liked. To kind of show you the difference an umbrella makes, let's compare before and after shots:

Before: (ambient only):

After (with a brolly off camera right):

Even though the crop is different you can see that a little strobist goes a long way.

And just for fun, let's look at the setup. Here's the view from Jill's perspective:


So the next time you take a trip, pack a speedlight. It's small and portable and easy to pack. Who knows, you might turn that boring snapshot into a cherished memento and impress the hell of the other tourists while you're at it.