A week of small triumphs so far. The lighting class went outdoors, to learn about using flash in ambient light.
The first 4 are from an experiment in creating a dark, overcast look on a bright sunny day if there’s a bit of cloud. You take an ambient light meter reading, then meter for the flash & shoot the model. Then you crank up the shutter speed, underexposing the background. Since the model is effectively painted by the flash, the shutter speed really only effects the exposure of the background.
Another thing we tried was rear curtain synchronised flash. So you set an exposure for say 3 seconds, and when someone moves through the frame they leave a movement trail. The rear curtain sync causes the flash to go off at the end of the exposure, rather than the beginning, painting a frozen moment of the moving subject at the end of a movement trail. The final image is the use of flash at the start of a long exposure, combined with light painting using a torch for the rest of the time.
The other news of the week was that I discovered I didn’t need the ITIN IRS form I’d read was necessary in order to get onto the iBooks store. Instead, there’s a method for getting something called an EIS, which can be done over the phone. It takes about 2 weeks to be enabled, vs 6 weeks for an ITIN form. A shame to have blown $280 on a redundant passport, but I guess I can travel in the next decade.