Shooting something different to kent wedding photography? Oh, go on then! I recently met up with Ben (who’s wedding I photographed at Tonbridge School last year) who is a keen amateur photographer to practice some off camera flash ‘strobist’ techniques. With our gorgeous local model Lisa-Marie Thompson, we headed off one evening into the glorious sunshine up near the Wellington Rocks in Tunbridge Wells to shoot our Tunbridge wells off camera flash session.
As it was amazing weather, everyone else seemed to have the same idea, so it was a bit busy, not least with a British Military Fitness class running back and forth, but we carried on! For the first look, I wanted to balance the sun flare with flash. Only using strobes (Canon 580 and 600 flash guns) rather than a more powerful battery powered flash meant we couldn’t overpower the sun enough to include it in the frame and get it into a star shape (needing an aperture around the F14 mark means needing a lot of flash power!!) but I love the flare look we got.
We then moved under some trees to allow the flash to be a bit more prominent, but still balancing with the sun outside of the shaded area.
After exploring the common, we headed down into the Pantiles – the sun had truly gone by now so flash was the only source of light. I gelled the flash with a CTO gel to allow me to use a tungsten white balance, hence sending the sky a lovely blue colour.
Here are some of my favourite shots from the session – hope you like!
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All images copyright David Burke Photography 2013