THE MISSION
Light a landscape scene with a flash at twilight
Time needed
2 hours
Skill level
Expert
Kit needed
Camera, tripod, flash, wireless flash triggers
Few things are better than capturing a landscape under the perfect light. But often we’re met with less-than perfect conditions, dull skies and flat light. This could be a time to try flash painting. By using a portable flashgun or Speedlite, you can pick out details and highlight the contours in a scene. This could also be an opportunity to include a figure – or yourself if shooting solo like me – in the shot while holding up your light, as I’ve done here. You don’t necessarily need an expensive flash for this, almost any Speedlite will do. Getting the flash off-camera is essential so you’ll need a wireless trigger and receiver to fire it, but these can also be picked up very cheaply.
Twilight candown to it, there are two key skills to grasp. First, we use an exposure that underexposes the daylight, so that – without flash – the scene appears very dark in shot. Then with our exposure locked in, we simply fire our flash around the scene to light the parts that we want to showcase. This way, everything else comes out dark and moody, while the flash-lit parts can look spectacular. To make things easier, we can pop our flash in different places over several frames, then combine the best parts later in Photoshop.
