Ken Knoll Photography

It’s the first weekend in a long while that is completely free of any obligations and todos – I handed in a major paper at my university and my upcoming final thesis is not going to start before september. What a great feeling! I was planning on doing some location scouting in the region. I heard that there is a real sand dune in the middle of a small town nearby (I honestly don’t have the slightest clue as to why or how it ever got there), so I was going to check it out. And, while I’m there, do some nice, quick and easy portraits.

Not alotta gear, just my small diy softbox with a half cut of cto to add some spice to the nice available light. The dune itself turned out to be smaller than I expected, and well, with less sand. Well, restrictions are often a good thing, ’cause they force you to be creative and work with what’s there. Speaking of which, I had the 50mm walk-zoom lens on the camera, which I almost use exclusively on my camera since I can’t afford any other lens right now – another layer of creativity jogging restriction.

So I worked with some perspectives that I don’t normally use that often (model sitting, me standing) to try out something new, we had a little fun with throwing sand and freezing it mid-air (which is surprisingly easy) and walked around on the dune to find new perspectives and backgrounds. One thing that I’m really excited about is that David Hobby, who said that you start to get the kinda-scary ability to guess exposure and power levels pretty close to the optimum, is absolutely right: It normally takes me about one to three test-images until I’m perfectly happy with the light – no flash meter, no scientific method needed.

It really is that easy: Measure the environment, decide at which level relative to your light it should be, guess the power level on the flash (depending on distance, light color, light shaper) and pop some test frames. And once you’re good to go, you can just fire away – or switch roles and let the photographer be the model.