Fill-flash in a rain forest?

[adrian tyler]

i've worked quite a bit in forests lthe last couple of years, forests block out nearly all he light giving you and indoor/outdoor light scenario, i try to avoid bright sunlight and expose negs metering the shadows. then print cotrasting the midtones, here are the results:

http://www.maxestrella.com/home_home_eng.html

good luck!

[Bruce Watson]

In a similar situation I did a double exposure that worked nicely. The sun was going in and out of heavy clouds. The sunlit grove was too harsh and the cloudy-lit one was too flat so I double exposed and used half and half.

Now there's a thought. Nice out-of-the-box thinking!

[adrian tyler]

careful double exposing on all but the most solid tree trunks, be aware that the rest of these natural structures is of a flexible nature and even the slightest breese will move the things at the end of the branches, assuming you are interested in registering the 2 exposures!

[Ron Marshall]

careful double exposing on all but the most solid tree trunks, be aware that the rest of these natural structures is of a flexible nature and even the slightest breese will move the things at the end of the branches, assuming you are interested in registering the 2 exposures!

You're right, but he can mask out all but the shadow areas in the lighter shot with PS.

[Koge]

H.,

There were plenty of answers above, this is a different approach. If you wanted to try B+W film and develop in Formulary DI#13 or D23 two bath development to dramatically reduce contrast then you would have a negative that a negative that will capture ALL DETAIL in both shadow and highlights. But its B+W so if you have to hand color it or do it in Photoshop. You can use flashing or pre-exposure but in color its so much harder to control hue densities. My friend who uses Photoshop tells me you can shoot a few transparencies to capture both shadow and highlight detail then CS4 has an algorithim that sandwiches all to produce a technically perfect exposure. Good shooting.

[C. D. Keth]

You're right, but he can mask out all but the shadow areas in the lighter shot with PS.

I was talking about doing both exposures on the same sheet of film.

Anyway, I just waited until a calm period, figuring that most things would come to rest more or less in the same position. If you look really, really close you can see things that are ghosted and were different but there's surprisingly little. I like of like that it's there for those who take the time and care to look close enough to see it.

[Bosaiya]

You got sun? In Queets? Good thing you got a photo of it, nobody would believe you otherwise!

[Rakesh Malik]

Yeah, Danny said he got something like 10 minutes of sunshine when he spent two weeks in the Hoh once, or something like that

He must have been there in winter, although winter here in Seattle's already getting weird, what with the sunshine and all today.

[anchored]

Concerning using fill flash during daylight shots... I've used it a bit, keeping flash exposures low enough to only gently fill in deep shadows... not sure how well it would work on such a subject with as massive a depth of field as a rain forest, but works well enough on small shacks and the like.

Only suggestion to the original post would be to consider the use of remotely fired flash units instead of synch cords. Such devices as Palm Pilots or... as I use... Elinchrome Skyports.

On the rain forests... last year spent 3 days in the Hoh Rain Forest area... reportedly the wettest spots in the USA. Was hoping for light rain, or drizzle, or at least fully clouded skies. No... spent three days with bluebird skies and not a cloud to be seen. Rain forest shots with blue skies and harsh lighting just wasn't what I had in mind.

[Heroique]

Thanks for all the splendid ideas! And I hope more are on the way…

Next time I’m in a sunny rain forest, I’ll have additional techniques in mind, including double exposures, pre-exposures, a touch of wireless flash, and different films – such as those you’ve mentioned: 400PortaNC, or E100G, and even B+W film in two-bath developments.

Strange, but after reading your responses, and especially Ash’s response, I’ve become a little more satisfied with how Velvia-50 blackened the left-side trunk after all – it certainly dramatizes the center trunk’s sunny green moss.