About the photo: This was shot during the Metro NY Balloon and Music Festival held in Brookhaven Calabro Airport held last weekend. My wife insisted that I had a work adjustment so that we can attend the event and all I can say is, I am so glad I got approved at work as this event was totally worth attending! The weather conditions was perfect. Cumulus clouds were abundant so I knew that I will not have any trouble including the sky in the photos. The last time I attended this event (a year ago?), I was testing my newly purchased Sigma 50-500mm. It was a great lens as I was able to shoot a variety of subjects, from portraits to closeups of motorbikes in the air. This time, I challenged myself by going ultrawide with the Tokina 12-24mm f4. I did use the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 but I focused on the Tokina more. I think it was Joe McNally who stated, "Go Wide and get close to your subject" and that is what I did. Of course, there is a risk of distorting your subject if you go too wide but that depends on your subject and the look you want to achieve. I would intentionally distort some photos but for most portraits, make sure you don't put your subject on the corners and don't crank your lens to its widest setting all the time. Find the right balance between going wide, and getting just enough of the scene without making it look cluttered. As what they say, "less is more". Another challenge for me on this event was using the flash. I used to be a "natural light" type of guy but then I ran into some hurdles along the way. One of them is the fact that you can't control the lighting most of the time, producing nasty shadows and insufficient light. I used to shoot indoor events just by using a fast lens (17-50mm 2.8 or 50mm 1.8). Yes, they allow me to shoot with enough shutter speed to prevent motion blur but what about those horrendous shadows especially underneath the eyes? Overhead lights can be a bad thing on some cases. (especially bad to use on older women!) How about outdoors? Can a flash (or strobe) be useful? Definitely! In this shot of the guy playing the steel drums, without the flash, the contrast of the late midday sun made his face into a silhouette. I could have used auto-bracketing then merged the photos later in Photoshop but that is time consuming and he was moving too much to have a couple of photos that can be merged. I could also increase the shadows in Photoshop but then again, that can be time consuming and I will also ran the risk of increasing noise in the shadow regions. The best solution in my opinion is by using a flash. It doesn't matter if it is on or off-shoe, as long as the flash/ambient light ratio is correct. -------- This is very important as I have fallen to this mistake a million times: You are in a sunny event and saw an interesting scene with people in it. You decided that a flash was needed so you whip out a dedicated flash (or pop the built-in flash) and take a shot. Nothing happens! It was as if the flash wasn't turned on. Maybe you are too far from the scene that the flash does not reach the subject so you go nearer and shoot again. Nothing! Hmmm, maybe the flash was not strong enough so you crank the flash power to full and maxed the zoom. STILL NOTHING! Doh! It turns out, in my case, that I have exceeded the maximum flash sync speed. The maximum flash sync speed of my D300 was 1/320 but I was shooting as much as 1/1250 (based on the scene) so the flash was useless. Yes, I do have "FP mode" or "high speed sync" which basically allows me to use the flash beyond the 1/320 limit but not all cameras have it and it makes the flash less powerful and ineffective on some cases. If possible, try to stay within the maximum sync speed of the camera (makes your flash batteries last longer too!) --------- Link of the day: Portrait Lighting Tutorial: Character Study