Shooting in White Sands...

Well, it's like shooting in snow. The fill flash is important. You can also sled in the summer here in the Southwest if you dare to bear the heat . Anyways, this is my wife and kids along with my aunt enjoying a day of reflected heat off of a gigantic solar cooker lol. CC please.

Great captures.
The fill flash worked really well IMHO as there are no ugly shadows at all.
Awesome job.
I'm about to invest in one for this very reason.
Did you manually set the flash or have it on auto and... what flash are you firing with?

Thanks Doobsy! Well what I did was set the camera manually to expose the sand close to the 5th stop or close to the right. Then, I set the flash to 0 EV on high speed ettl. If you want to catch rapid shots in succession, then a flash battery pack will help. Anyway what this did was allow me to take high speed photos with alot of shadow detail. The photos actually look very flat out of the camera, because in theory I only captured only 2 or 3 stops of light. I then simply dragged down the black point of the photo to give better contrast. After you drag the black point down, the skin tones are kind of go too wonky dark because of the technicalities of camera limitations. But because the technique produces alot of digital information, you are able to make a bump in the curve to make a natural appearance. The same kind of considerations work well in snow too, where the background reflects alot of light. It's just a trick I learned to use when normal exposure methods don't work

Doobsy wrote in post #6263554
what flash are you firing with?

Sry forgot that part, it's 580 EX. But you can probably get the same results with a 550 or even a 430.

Looks like fun! Challenging exposure, but you pulled it off nicely!

Some of the skin tones on your little girl look a little magenta, but maybe it's just becaue she's hot?

You captured the action and the colours very nicely. Congrats.

This looks like so much fun and the exposure looks pretty awesome considering the circumstances!

Looks like tons of fun! Good job

very nice captures. Looks like a lot of fun going on there!

I love them all! Looks like you had a wonderful time! Great captures.

Those are nice. Looks like fun!!

Wow thanks for all the nice comments everyone. We had a blast even though it was brutally hot. The heat just reflects right off of it.

I really, really, really like the last capture. You're framing that one, right? Great job, especially with harsh lighting!

Difficult conditions, well executed, gives a great sense of fun.

Kristy wrote in post #6266370
Looks like fun! Challenging exposure, but you pulled it off nicely!

Some of the skin tones on your little girl look a little magenta, but maybe it's just becaue she's hot?

Definately hot out there like 130 degrees hot lol. But I think the 2nd one is on the magenta side now that you mentioned it.

DoodleBunz wrote in post #6293693
I really, really, really like the last capture. You're framing that one, right? Great job, especially with harsh lighting!

Thanks alot, ya they really had some momentum in the last one lol, I did put that in my favorite digital frame

nwa2 wrote in post #6294090
Difficult conditions, well executed, gives a great sense of fun.

Thanks nwa!