Flashing Yourself! (What?)

Well, here is my first photography lesson for all of you out there.  This lesson will teach you how to get a better protrait with a basic lighting set up.  You can get the equipment to do this for about 100 dollars.  For your info, I get almost all of my equipment from B and H Photo out of New York.  They are great to work with and I recommend checking them out.  Also, check Ebay for great used photo gear. I guess I better explain what a strobe is for those of you who don’t know.  A strobe is simply a flash.  Some cameras have flashes built into the top of them. To take a photo like this you need to have a flash unit that is seperate from the camera body.   For the photo below I use a single strobe (flash unit) on a light stand with a remote trigger unit attached to it.  A remote trigger unit is also know as a slave unit. A remote trigger sets off the flash when light hits it.  When I took this photo I used the small flash that is on the top of my camera to set off  the remote trigger which set off the flash unit and lit me from the side.  The flash unit was about 10 feet from me and the camera was placed on a tripod. I was about 15 feet away from the tripod.  I used a flash meter for this shot, but I have since sold it. I have gotten pretty good at guessing the exposure, but if you have one it will help.  Please feel free to ask questions about this post. I will answer them in a timely manner.  Now it’s time to go out and have some fun.  Thanks for reading! (click on the photos below to see them larger)