lighting workshop.

This is the best image that came from the lighting workshop. It is far from perfect and among many that were absolute failures. I did not anticipate how bright the strobe flash actually was and as such it took several frames to stop down sufficiently. Thank you to Trina for being a cooperative model, the strobe flash is not something anyone's eyes appreciate. Given a chance to re-shoot, the following changes would be made:

The subject would be moved further from the background, so to avoid the shadow in the right of the image.

The strobe would be held higher, the low angle to the face creates a distinctive shadow but not an ideal one. We did not have a tripod for the light so it was held in hand, the light should have been around eye level if not slightly higher.

Preparedness. The lighting would be set up, the model would be given a better position to work from, and the camera would be properly calibrated for the brightness of the strobe, all before the model arrives.

The sync speed on the camera used for this image reaches 1/250th of a second. This next image is an example of surpassing that. 

At 1/800 of a second the shutter moves much too quickly to for the flash, resulting in the blank area seen here. The great thing about the digital medium is that it allows for errors to be made at little or no cost to the photographer, creating the potential for a steeper learning curve. As stated by Henri Cartier-Besson, "your first ten thousand photographs are your worst." Digital photography allows present-day photographers to tear through those first ten thousand quickly, cheaply, and with little material waste, though given the looseness with which many photographers approach a digital camera that number might be inflated higher than ten thousand.