Postby Walter Glover » 07 Jun 2021, 03:14
Welcome and well done John,
It is a bold and brave challenge to take on shots like these with sunlit surf foam and silhouetted masses of textured stone. But to do it with the tonal range limitations of colour film is heroic.
Now, I realise that the notion of 'fill-in flash' might be aas abhorrent to you as they are to me, but let me tell you of an occasion that broadened my mind on that. I attended a one-day seminar in Sydney with John Sexton back in the 90s. He had a pic of a round black boulder poised on a rock shelf in rapids. To expose for the white turbulence would render the boulder as a formless black disc. He knew that he had a flash gun in his kit, but the thought that purists would ONLY ever approve of available light.
He thought about it and realised it was right there in the bag at his feet: it was 'AVAILABLE. It proved to be one of his more successful shots, published in books in addition to gallery sales.
I was always similarly opposed to the concept of press photography style 'synchro-sun' and I had decades of working on beaches and often found it handy to have a fflash with me; not to light things up per se, but to simply lift the shadows. In colour I would add an amber gelatin filter to the flash and it lost that obvious blue cast. The professionallighting gels are available from Rosco Australia and are graded: Pale Bastard Amber, Bastard Amber and Dark Bastard Amber so you can match them to the varying warmth of the daylight through the day.
Let me say, i think you nailed it with the sea, sky and clouds.
Walter Glover
"We see things not as they are. We see them as we are."
— Emanuel Kant