Old Town San Diego Engagements Pt2

First off let me tell you story of how I made this lighting happen while without an assistant, I’m pretty proud of myself.

OK so I’m traveling alone but I’m still wanting to use my lightbox with my flash (sb-900)

One of my goals this year is to shoot with my lightsource higher up. I had it on a lightstand but didn’t have a hinge system to have it pointing down. So the groom helped on these pictures above by tilting the lightstand down at his fiancee

But then I obviously needed to take pictures of them both together. And I needed the sky… which mean I needed to be laying on the ground.

So I layed on the ground and with one hand took pictures and the other hand held the base of the lightstand that was fully extended to about 10 ft

Twas a site to behold let me tell you.

You take what you’re given when in these circumstances. I woulda adjusted the light to match desired positioning of the couple but instead because of the circustance we had to adjust them to work with the light we had… or appreciate the light we got and roll with it.

If you always work hard with tunnel focus to get what you plan out in your mind you become powerful to achieve. However you loose the joy in discovering those Eureka moments.

OK then we went into the tourist area of Old Town

It was night… I tried the small LED panel… but it wasn’t cutting it so I went back to flash.

Reason I wanted to try not doing flash was because I’d have to take the big lightstand and softbox and I didn’t know if it’d be in the way while walking through this area.

But it was a cold night (for san diego) and there weren’t that many people around.

Pretty much if you’re doing pictures at night you’re looking for a lightsource in the back. Old wooden lamp and post with cactus… I’ll take that.

Thoughts on this one above? I find it’s always fun to turn off the light and just do silhouette, I know it’s not often what a grandma wants to see in an announcement picture. But then again I give them a a ton of worthy pictures and they’re only gonna bick 1-5 of them so there’s more to these shoots to me than just an announcement picture.

I asked what his last name started with… can you guess the answer?