This was a very nice and scary-mysterious man. When he looked at me he twisted his head around like a puppy trying to cast an ancient spell on me. No puppy has ever done that to me, so you can imagine my confusion.
We sat around and watched the sunset at the Taj together and I asked if I could take his picture. After I while I rubbed my House-like stubble since it has been a few days since I shaved. I asked him if he liked my beard. He gave a grunt in response that was either a laugh or a grunt of general disgust at the state of my beard.
I usually don't use my flash, but this case called for a bit of fill light. I aimed my SB-800 straight into the air and used the white card off the top to reflect, while setting the EV to -2/3, so as to not over-power his face. As for the other settings, the exposure bias was -2 EV, shutter speed 1/125, focal length at 31mm, and the ap at f/4. The background is HDR, as are his robes. As with many of my photos, that does not mean those bits are 100% HDR! These are probably on the scale of 10-25% HDR in this case.
So much of my work is landscape and architecture-related. So I rarely use the flash in those conditions. I think using natural light is the way to go, and, as you know by now, with HDR, you can eek out every little morsel of light that is bouncing around the scene. However, I still carry my flash almost everywhere because I do very much enjoy taking photos of people.
from my daily photo blog at
www.stuckincustoms.com
