First experiment with off-camera flash

Took a trip to the cottage and decided to bring my newly acquired 580exII's to try some off-camera flash. It was a harshly bright sunny day, and my goal was to expose for the nice background and then add flash to either fill the subject to match exposure or sometimes go further to make the subject more dramatic.

At first nothing was working, and I thought it was the fault of the optical trigger system. Come to find out, the "fresh" batteries I installed in the slave 580ex were not all that fresh, causing intermittent firing and full flash dumps. After I got that sorted out, things started to take shape. Started dabbling with HSS, but will have to explore that more in another session.

Anyway, here are some of the ones I was happy with. Also tried some new post-processing techniques in Lightroom. Critique is very welcome. I'm looking to get better with this style.

I like 3 and 4; the others still have hard shadows that could be avoided by not shooting at that time of day and by positioning the model so that her back is to the sun (or no more than 45 degrees from the sun). That would have given you good back/rim lighting and then the flash could be used for fill lighting.

I agree with PM on #3 and #4. I don't like the flare as much in #4, but it is still a striking image. I can't even tell a flash was used in the first 2. Which might be good, except that the shadows are very pronounced. In #5, the pose is just bad. It looks like she in the middle of jumping and her breasts are in midair. It looks completely unnatural. The last the shadows are just in bad spots on her face. Would have definitely been better if you could have had more muted light.

I tend to judge outdoor flash use based on if I can easily tell if flash was actually used for the shot. The only one that it is completely obvious is #3, but somehow, it doesn't look bad to me. As a matter of fact, it looks very much like a magazine cover photo layout just waiting for the story headlines to be added to the left side lol

Nice stuff

Thanks for the comments guys. Normally I would position her with her back to the sun, but in most cases that would have put me in the water (which is freezing) - and I wanted the bridge in the background. Obviously the time of day which I shot was not ideal.

As for the flare, most of that was digitally added. I went back and forth with it debating on whether to add it. It definitely is a certain style that I'm not sure I fit into well.

The goofy jumping pose was not serious, but it was cute enough that I left it in.

I liked #3 which I thought felt most "magazine like" which was also my goal. I wanted something that looked a little manufactured and stylized.

It was a great learning experience overall. I appreciate the comments on things to improve. I will definitely pay attention to my shadows more and where they fall on the subject.