Small Flash, big portrait

I'm really liking this small off-camera flash stuff I'm learning on the strobist site. Flash mounted off camera, to the right and a couple feet higher than the camera. Exposed for the sky, fill light with the flash.

I think the entire photo needs to be brighter... it seems very underexposed.

With that taken care of, I love the perspective... makes him look 8-feet tall!

I would agree with above post that the photo needs to be brighter. Perhaps when you get your exposure setting for the sky, you should adjust the exposure compensation setting so that the brightest area is one or two "hashes" below the +2 on the light meter. If you meter on the sky and take those readings, your camera will try to make that at 50% (gray). That will cause the background to be darker than necessary as it is here.

The photo does need to be brighter...but...i love the photo!

Definitely needs to be brighter. Could be great with some post processing.

To be more specific than my learned friends (edit: except Darvonops, I think your ambient exposure is too low relative to your flash exposure. Perhaps this was an artistic decision (if so, it should be processed accordingly, i.e. with more drama), but usually it's just a mistake (and it's one I still make sometimes too). Also, having the flash higher would do wonders for the long ugly shadow behind him.

Light placement should be about creating desirable shadows. I find this hard too, especially when working on location with limited grip equipment ...

Damn, just when I thought I had it all figured out, I get all this constructive criticism.

Thanks for the tips everybody. Back to the camera to nail this down...

easy to fix in PP!!

Cool shot.

Somthing else I just thought of, if the flash was a little bit lower, would it not make the shadow better?

I am not good with a flash yet, so I dont really know, just something I see in the picture that looks unnatural a little.

pprice wrote in post #6215813
easy to fix in PP!!

Cool shot.

pprice, it may not be as easy to fix in pp as you'd think. By trying to lighten shadows, often you add a lot of noise or grain and lose contrast within the shadows. It creates a lot of undesirable effects. Best to get the shot the way you want it exposed in the first place, then simply do minor touch-ups in pp. The other thing to consider, if you are going to make a mistake of under or over exposing a shot, it's best to overexpose (I'm not talking about blowing a picture out, I'm simply talking about overexposure, but maintaining the data still within the histogram) due to the amount of information within the lighter scale of recorded data. You never pick up noise by darkening a photo, whereas the opposite is not true.