The way it is achieved is fairly simple, with the best effects seen during the hour before sunset when you are not fighting the intensity of the natural light so much. To achieve this, it is a matter of metering by hand, or through the camera, the ambient light that surrounds the subject and then manually dialling up the power intensity of the flash to be 2 stops brighter than this measurement. Depending on the direction you are shooting, i.e into or away from the sun, you may need to meter for the sky as opposed to the ambient light around the subject, just play with it and see what achieves the picture you are looking for. When this is done and the settings for the flash exposure are transferred to the camera, the flash becomes the dominating source of light with the backgrounds becoming dark and as the sun sets, they almost become black. The flash is fired via a radio trigger, of which there are many types. The amount of ambient light can be increased or decreased by changing the shutter speed, this has to be kept within the flash sync speed of the camera, normally around 1/200th. If you want to restrict the spill of the light from the flash there are various adapters that can be applied to funnel the light to the subject.
If you are feeling adventurous you could add in a second flash. You could also try this technique using either a video light or a torch, thats another technique on the list to be tried
Then I went for a dramatic location to test it out, my Daughter was really impressed when I said we were off to the Graveyard!!
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