LIGHT UP A LANDSCAPE

James Paterson show you how to use an off-camera portable flash to fill dim landscapes with light

Few things are better than capturing a landscape in the perfect light; but often we’re met with less-than perfect conditions, dull skies and flat light, and this can be a great opportunity to try flash painting. Using off-camera flash, you can pick out details, and highlight the contours in a scene. You can also include a figure – or yourself if you’re shooting solo – in the shot to create a point of interest while holding up your light, as we’ve done here. You don’t necessarily need an expensive flash for this, almost any flashgun will do. Firing the flash off-camera is essential, so you’ll need a wireless trigger and receiver to activate it, but these can also be picked up very cheaply.

Twilight can be the best time to head out, as skies are dark and moody, the remaining daylight becomes a cool blue in colour, and scenes take on an atmosphere that feels entirely different to daylight. The technique for this might seem complicated, but when it boils down to it there are two key things to grasp. First, we use an exposure that underexposes the daylight, so that – without flash – the scene comes out very dark. Then, with our exposure locked in, we simply fire our flash around the scene to illuminate the parts that we want to highlight. This way, everything else comes out dark and moody, while the flash-lit parts can look spectacular. To make the project easier, we can pop our flash in different places over several frames, then combine the best parts later in Photoshop.

Get set up for flash painting and light your landscapes from any angle

1  TRIPOD