I've been keeping an eye on this week's featured photographer, Ed Pingol from San Francisco. I noticed Ed's photos in the Flash Flavor Flickr image pool and immediately went to look for more of his work. His lighting style is pretty impressive. He manages to shoot some of the sexiest formals (future FF post) I've ever seen, all with the power of of his ambient light deleter flash stick.

 

Ed Pingol writes about "deleting the ambient" Monica (my wife) and I were presented a huge problem with busy cluttered backgrounds of freeways, street post with wires and people walking to and fro. we needed to "delete" everything and try to manage a decent picture on the process. This technique can be applied anywhere and can easily be done as long as you have the capability of off camera flash. a definite "must-add" for your bags of tricks if you don't have it yet already. My off camera flash "light stick" consist of 2 sb-28 flashes mounted on a flat bracket triggered by a pocket wizard (also mounted on the same flat bracket). you can easily get one from ebay for $7! make sure you search for "multipurpose flash bracket". This little setup is then mounted on a "Bogen 3232 Swivel Tilt Monopod Head" which allows me to... well, tilt my flash heads to any direction i want, which gives me a lot more creative freedom when compared to simply attaching the flat bracket straight onto a monopod. ****UPDATE**** I found this forum post that showcases Ed's how to's on the strobe setup... Thanks for putting this together ED! Here is Ed's post on deleting the ambient: I placed Monica who is holding the "light stick" 5 feet behind the couple. the flashes were both set at 1/1 (full power) with a beam spread of 24mm (the widest setting). when your f-stop is adjusted to compensate for the light stick's bright flashes we automatically delete most of the ambient light and are left with what is pictured above. A question that is brought up often is "why 2 flashes"? well, a cool thing about shooting with 2 instead of one is you can double your light output. but the main reason why i shoot with 2 is because of those times when i don't need to shoot at full power. i double the speed of recycling time because shooting @ 1/2 power with 2 strobes is equal to shooting @ 1/1 with a single strobe.

 

Kewl! I must admit, I haven't once used 2 flashes on one rig but now that I think about it, I think there are definitely some situations where 2 heads are for sure the way to go! Especially outside in bright bright daylight! I look forward to seeing Ed's stuff on formals, you are really going to enjoy the time he puts into making his portraits! Anyone get inspired by this or have a photo examples? Please give Ed your thoughts! Cheers! Matt