Fine Art Banana
February 19, 2010 Tags: banana, Black and White, fine art, Flash, off-camera, photographer, Photography, ST-E2, wireless flash
Category: Black and White, Photography No Comments 
It’s one of those non portrait or wedding photography posts today which I do from time to time, especially when it’s not wedding season, so if you are a bride looking for a wedding photographer this post may not be of great interest, unless you like off camera flash and/or fine art photos of bananas.
Fine Art Banana
The main reason I’m posting today is I have just received my wireless flash transmitter, the ST-E2 and I was having a quick play round with it. I have had a bunch of pocket wizards for some time now so I’ve done quite a bit of off camera flash stuff but I find they aren’t the quickest things to set up which isn’t ideal for things like wedding photography. The good thing about the ST-E2 is you an just pop it on the camera and set your flashes as slaves and away you go. You don’t have the sort of range you get with the pocket wizards but if you are just taking photos in a room (eg a bride getting ready) these seem to work great. If you have a couple of flashes you can also change the lighting ratios remotely which is pretty cool.
A good understanding of how to use flash both in automatic mode and manual are very important and after a bit of reading around the best way to develop this to just get out your flash(es) and practice. Still life photography is a great way to practice, if you can light something a little bit differently you can make something as plain as a bit of fruit look quite interesting. That’s pretty much all I have done with this shot of a banana from earlier today. I had 2 flashes either side of the banana triggered with the ST-E2, one was direct and one bounced off a nearby wall. My camera was in manual mode but the flashes were in ETTL, one of the main advantages the ST-E2 has over pocket wizards is it’s ability to talk to the camera with the complex infrared bursts just before an exposure. I processed it in black and white with siver efex pro to add a bit of film grain just to give a bit of a fine art feel to the end photograph. So far I am happy with the ST-E2 and hopefully it will give me a few more options when wedding season rolls round.
