Of course, you could just buy the unnamed, expensive radio triggers, and they really are worth the $400 or so if you need super reliability and other kinda groovy features, but those kind of folks will not read this anyway! I had given up on my pair of Cactus triggers. I had debated giving them away and just sticking with optical triggering (using the light of a flash to set off another flash wirelessly), but everything changed the past couple days. Here is what happened.

The problem with my Cactus radio triggers (aka “radio slaves”) was pretty simple: I would press the shutter release, and the flash would not fire. I press the test button on the Cactus, and nothing would happen. At first, they were just unreliable, which in time became utterly useless. Just a quick search on Flickr, and you will find loads of folks who love these and hate them (for these same reasons), so I figured I just had a dud pair.

So, I thought it was my battery. I changed that, and they were better for a while, but quickly went downhill again. That was when I discovered how reliable my optical flash triggering was.

I could use the pop-up flash on my camera to trigger my flash just about anywhere (around corners, through bodies, etc), at least, anywhere I had been using my radio wireless triggers. I still did not want the pop-up flash light in my photo, so most often, I deflected almost all the light with folded up paper or maybe just softened it with a coffee filter slid over the flash (high-tech, huh?).

There are two big negatives to this method of wireless flash, though. One, you are usually holding a piece of paper in front of the pop-up flash or holding a coffee filter on. That means you are shooting with one hand and sometimes at awkward angles. I did have the presence of mind to tape the coffee filter on a few times, but even still, it was a common problem.

And two (the really big downside), I am limited by the recycle rate on my pop-up flash. My “big” speedlight/flash can fire very quickly and many times in a row, but that little pop-up hangs after one or two shots and needs to recycle or recharge. And when you are doing a shoot with people (portraits, family, group, etc), and you see that perfect opportunity a half second after you  just fired…well, you miss it if you have to wait on that pop-up flash.

Having an optically triggered flash is still a great idea, but when that is a pop-up doing the triggering, you are greatly limited. If you had two or more speedlights, the “triggerer” either itself radio triggered or mounted on the camera, and the second flash triggered optically, you would be set. And that is where I am headed, but the pop-up flash just about killed my family shoot (see the last entry), and I had to find something different.

Re-enter: the Cactus triggers.

I took the Cactus trigger set and my flash down to buy batteries and test them out to make sure that was the problem. Oh, I have a little confession to make: as I was messing around with the idea of putting them back into action, I noticed the transmitter light was dim…i.e. it had a battery in it too and it was going dead. I should have known it had a battery too, but it just never registered in my head. I had figured it was using the camera’s power. I should have realized it had a battery because you can trigger it even when it is not attached to the camera. Not too quick on that one.

Anyway, turns out my brand new receiver battery was dead, because I had left it to “on” the last time I used it…at least, I assume that is why it is dead with almost no use, even though it was not receiving anything…unless that transmitter button is getting pressed accidentally in the bag…hmm. I digress, but an important digression for your information’s sake, don’t you think?

Lesson 1: turn them off when finished and possibly keep that test button from accidental “testing”.

Anyway, I replaced the dead receiver and the dying transmitter batteries, and the triggers (no-so-miraculously) worked flawlessly. One more thing, though: when I put the dying transmitter battery back in, it would still trigger the flash, but if I pressed it fast, several times in a row, it would miss a few of the clicks. With two fresh batteries, it would trigger the flash as fast as I could click the little test button. BINGO!

Lesson 2: if your Cactus triggers are not firing 100%, try fresh batteries in both transmitter and receiver.

So, once I realized it was just an issue of dead batteries, I bought some spares and put them to a field test. I am referring to the shoot I set up to fix the horrible flop of a shoot a couple days earlier. Flop shoot = pop-up flash triggered. Looking back at the photos from the second shoot, they never missed a beat; there was the flash in every photo, even when firing three or four quick shots when the family was in action.

So, for all those times I have hinted on this blog that my little Cactus radio triggers were less than wonderful, I take it back. That was probably the best $40 I  have ever spent on camera gear. If you are interested, just run over to Midwest Photo Exchange (where the cool, off-camera flash kind of folk go) and search for “cactus”. And do yourself a favor: pay $15 more for a V4 set, instead of the V2s set, which I have. You may not know it, but there are several very practical, little updates that make them much more useful in the field.

Come on, stop dreaming about $1,500 cameras and ungodly-expensive lenses, and drop $50 to make just about any flash (even that stol borrowed one from your dad’s camera bag) transform your photos from plane-jane to rockin’-awesome.

My current humbling experience all started a few days ago with a wonderful meal and talk with a photographer friend of mine. It was not him, but just watching some of the videos he has produced recently really reminded me what a two-bit punk hack I am. It was not the technique, but how he captured the power of the story.

Then today, I shot a very “ok” family portrait session. That is “ok”, as in, I do not want to say more of what I really think. The harsh sunlight made things tough, not only for lighting, but for the quickly wilting subjects. Excuses aside, though, I really want to know what happened. How do I improve? What can I learn here?

One of the key problems was a lack of familiarity with my lighting equipment. Well, more accurately, I was so focused on trying to balance the flash with the blaring ambient, I totally lost connection with the subject. I did not direct them. I did not let them know what they should do. And, to top it all off, I was not really even paying attention to them when I put the camera up to my face (or before then either).

Ok. How to fix it, though? What are some keys to making it different, and I mean small practical things?

Limit location/scene. In an attempt to give the mother a wide choice of background, poses, and set-ups (for lack of a better word), which she expressly stated she wanted, I ended up magnifying my difficulty at getting the lighting right. What I should have done is pick one or two spots, the ones I knew would end up best in the end, and spend more time there. Then, after the lighting was set right, I would be free to interact and catch that nice moment.

Be the director. To help them be at ease and to have confidence in me, I must direct. If I notice somebody is not smiling, find a way to get that out of them (well, if you need a smile, which this photo was certainly expected to have). If they are all just standing straight, hands to their sides, in the classic boring pose (because the photographer did not know what better to do), I need to help position them, pose them, suggest movement, or whatever.

Well, there may be more things, but every other “should-a” I can think of really falls into one of those two. Honestly, I really think I am going to call them up, let them know I have some “ok” shots, but nothing really nice, and I would be more than willing to set up another shoot in the next couple days.

And for the cold-hearted motivation, as if I were not already motivated enough to want to make this right, I found out during the shoot they will be printing this photo with some printer in the US to show as an example to other families here in town of that printer’s services. In other words, if I can really excel in this shoot, my work would be displayed before a wide(r) audience, and I would be first in line to provide photographic services for their family and group photos. I am not terribly concerned about that (because I live and work in a different country anyway), but it would be throwing away an excellent opportunity.

So, to add on the title of this post a little bit, it is good to be humbled, especially publicly. That reveals the weak areas of our photography and, if publicly so, gives us great motivation to improve.

My boy is utterly fascinated with the moon.

All day long, though he knows it is rarely visible in the day, my boy is asking about the “mooyn”. Every circle is a moon, not a ball or even a sun…it is a moon. Even my SmugMug camera strap, which features a simple smiley face (two dot eyes and a crescent looking mouth) is a moon and two stars to him.

I rarely post family-related photos here, because I want to keep my focus. I make this exception, because my focus has changed! I making more of an effort to use documentary photography, telling the stories of life around me instead of just taking isolated, nice-looking shots. Well, when I’m 64, I sure hope I can look back with pride at having told the most important story to my very best: my family.

I take photos of my boy lining up his toy cars; it describes how he thinks. I take photos of his sweat drenched head with a little chuck of fried chicken stuck to his forehead. I know my little girl smiles, and I want to have a photo to show to her grandmother (who lives on the other side of the world). I even have silly things like a photo of the first time my boy clapped his hands.

As a quick aside, I feel very sorry for my children when they have to put together one of those wedding slide shows…it will take them months to work through even the favorites…that is, if I have told those stories well!

It is great experience too. I experiment a lot on my family. In the shot above, I was playing around with the lighting balance between my boy (simple bounce flash off the balcony walls) and the sunset. I should have started earlier, but still managed to squeeze a little sunset out. I was also trying out different angles, trying to use the geometry of the photo to draw more attention to my subject, but also itself to tell more of the story.

So, that is all to say, in my quest to tell the stories of life, I cannot overlook the stories I know the best, to which I have complete access, and which will probably mean the most, in the end: the story of my family.

If you have a normal flash mount (just found out Sony uses their own “standard”…punks), you can easily buy a little optical trigger for no more than $15. You slide that baby on the bottom of your flash, and then when any other flash goes off, it will trigger that flash. So, the pop up flash will trigger it, or hey, I have even used my point and shoot flash to set off my speedlight!

But that is not the end.

Rarely do I actually want the pop up flash to show up in the photo. If portraits with a long lens or maybe on a bright day, I might just shoot the pop up flash straight, but usually, I want to redirect or soften it somehow. I carry a couple of those flat coffee filters in my bag: lifesavers. I cut the small end off and can slide it over my pop up flash, softening the light. Napkins work too.

A few weeks ago, I did not want to soften, but to almost totally mute the pop up flash. Oh, side note, those optical triggers are pretty good. I have never had a problem getting them to “see” the flash even with all this muting and redirecting going on. Anyway, I did not want any pop up flash, so I taped normal paper, folded a couple times, so it would hang just in front of the flash. Some light still got through, but most was bounced backwards (and into my eyes! …dang!).

Sometimes, I will just put my hand in front and redirect it off to the side. That will add a little red to the photo (your hand is full of blood, you know), but sometimes that is actually nice, but usually not a problem when you have another flash firing. If you want to keep it white, just use a business card or some such.

I love optical slaves (optical triggers, whatever…slave is the more standard term, but I find it a little non-obvious). You do not need line of sight to set those off. As long as enough flash is bouncing around so they can see it, you are ok. Cheapo and wireless. You cannot beat that.

My first pieces of gear will be sunscreen and a hat if I can scrounge one up. I will take my backpack full of all kinds of gear, but will most likely need to leave that behind and carry a small choice of essentials. most likely, if it is like all the other days recently, the day will turn very bright and sunny. So, instead of uselessly cursing the brightness, I will embrace it as my friend and let it add to the feel of the day’s shooting.

So, what gear will I actually take?

It is not like I have a plan in my head for such and such a situation; I am just thinking this through here, in case it is of use to someone else out there. Regardless of lens choice, I will certainly take my lens hoods!

I will probably take my 35mm lens (so shooting close to the standard 50mm on a film camera). Wider would be nice, but that is as wide as my bag gets at the moment. Sad but true. One, I have my cropped sensor working against me. And two, I would have bought I wider lens, but going below 35mm, the f/stops were increasingly …um…un-bright. 35mm was the happy medium. It would be a happier medium if I had a full-frame camera, but this is all another topic. I will move on.

I might take my flash and one of my groovy handmade straw grid snoots. The flash would come in handy simply because it will be a bright day with nasty shadows, and I could fill those in if need be. I will use the snoot if I want to darken everything down a stop or two, then focus the flash on a specific subject, thus using light to draw the attention where I want it.

Oh…how will I trigger the light? I have some radio triggers, but they are el cheapo and too unreliable. If I go with my optical trigger (built into the flash unit), I will have to use my camera’s pop up flash to trigger it. Actually, now that I think of it, usually the pop-up flash affects the photo too much, but on a bright day, I most likely will not have a problem with that. So, I think that is my choice. That is also a great choice because it means minimal gear.

Honestly, what I would really like to take along, but do not yet own, is a Lumiquest SoftBox III. That is a portrait miracle maker. Basically, I could have a handy softbox for individual portraits and softly fill all those nasty shadows. I would not use it for every shot, mind you, but for a nice portrait (which I am sure folks will ask me to take for them), it would be grand to have along.

I have not mentioned much gear, I know, but this is going to be the kind of shoot where I want to blend in and be forgotten (well, ignored will work too). To be honest, that is my primary mode of functioning. And if you think the flash is not so subtle, if it is as bright as I think it will be, I bet even the flash will not be noticed unless they happen to be looking at it when it fires.

I will mainly be shooting that one lens. I will probably keep my Lensbaby handy to add something unique to some of the shots. Most likely, though, I will stick to the 35.

Oh…and the battery in the camera is almost dead. I guess I should go switch the batteries and charge that while I still remember.

The first day, about a week ago, things went ok…not great, but lessons learned. I also wanted to field test a pair of Cactus triggers. “What are those,” you might ask? With those, I can remote trigger my flash via radio (i.e. no cords). Those ended up incredibly frustrating, to be honest. They did not fire very consistently. When you read through discussions about these on Flickr, some folks love them and some hate them. They are consistent for some folks and inconsistent for others. For me, when they are needed, the break. When I am goofing around, they work flawlessly.

Wait, this was about the flash. I will get back to the story.
So, the second day comes along. Seeing as my radio triggers were not reliable, I decided to go optical. Meaning, I could use the pop-up flash from my camera to trigger a little optical sensor attached to the flash. I had heard it might not do well on a sunny day (and sunny it was), but it worked just fine, until…

Pointing down into a fountain (our backdrop), someone said, “Cooper, is that your…” There was no need to complete the sentence, everything went into slow motion and their words would have been incomprehensible, anyway. I calmly walked closer to the long, dark shape at the bottom of the water, then took a glace to where my tripod-flash-umbrella set up had been: nothing. It did not hit me till I saw the white (now folded up) umbrella sticking out from the tripod.

I tried to stay cool so my friends, for whom I was taking the photos, would not feel too bad. I layed down on my stomach and fished it out of the fountain. The flash was…wet. It is an interesting feeling to see water pouring from your equipment. I took the batteries out. That is only sensible, but I figure it will not make much difference with such a low power source and the fact they were already sitting in the water with the flash on anyway.

So, needless to say, I did not get much of a field test out of the optical flash trigger, but I pulled out my handy dandy coffee filter, slipped it over my pop up flash to soften the light, and used that for fill light every now and then.

I honestly thought the flash would be fine in the end. I unscrewed every screw I could find and it ended up looking like C3-PO after coming out of Lando Calrissian’s recycling room (if you are not a Star Wars fan, you can probabaly still figure it out). The trickiest part was getting the head open. The bottom was easy, but I never really did get that head open (I probably should have looked it up online, like I did the spelling of ‘Calrissian’ a few seconds ago). I finally figured the plastic cover where the flash actually comes out would just pop off, and it did, both of them.

I hair dried the whole thing till I was more than satisfied and when I put it all back together (it was not too bad, easier than getting it apart) it worked just fine. As a fun side note, sometime after I put it back together, I was looking for some manual or something for my flash online. I found out the red glass looking thing on the front is a built-in optical slave receiver. In other words, my little optical trigger I mentioned was a silly purchase, because my second hand Nikon SB-26 speedlight already has one built in! Sweet. I feel dumb for not knowing that already (I thought it was just a distance calculating light…which is also in there), but you can bet I will be putting that to work.

So, yes, your flash should be fine if you decided to drop it underwater like I did. Take it apart, hair dry that thing (though without the hair part), and I would guess it will be fine. Oh, I forgot to mention that a bad connection with the Cactus trigger the previous week was loose and I dropped it twice, once concrete, once grass. So, I can confidently say this Nikon SB-26 flash is a tough character.

Here are some tips, gleaned both from experience and a podcast which inspired me to write this stuff down. It has been so long since I have listened to the show, I cannot remember what from my notes was the guest’s idea and what was mine.The podcast was the Digital Photography Show and the guest was James Duncan Davidson. Well, I think it was him, but for the life of me, I cannot find the podcast I listened to in any archives. Anyway, the photographer in question has a lot more experience than I do, but I can attest to each of these points in my own experience.

First, the settings. Do yourself a favor: shoot raw. Many of you will wonder why I should even mention it because you always do anyway…just tune out for a paragraph, then. You will run into wildly different light sources, and raw will give you the latitude you need to very easily change the color temperature back to what it should be. Well, there are more reasons to use raw, but color temperature is a big one.

When you need to photograph speakers, here are some specifics. You will often be shooting in fairly dim situations and need high ISO to get shutter speeds up to 1/125 to 1/250 (we will get to aperture in a minute). You will need as fast as possible. What you will find is that photos look out of focus, but really they are just slightly blurry. I know, these are not high action shots, but especially in the lips, you have to be able to freeze the action. Some speakers are harder than others; you have to acclimate to the speaker.

And this is certainly no place for that f/3.5 – f/4.5 kit lens! You need fast glass, baby! Canon, Nikon, and I am sure the other manufacturers as well, have cheap 50mm f/1.8 lenses. You will learn to love ‘em, I promise. I have a friend who bought a 50mm f/1.8 and now rarely ever puts his kit lens on the camera. You get really used to that extra stop or two of light…think of it, two times the light! In any case, you will be constantly frustrated with your photos with anything less than f/2.8. Even then, you will be riding at the very edge of your equipment’s capability.

Have your flash ready, but do remember how incredibly distracting it will be. You better let the speaker know…that might not be a nice surprise: speakers kind of need the audience’s attention. If you do use flash, it is best to shoot some test shots before hand so you know right where it needs to be set. In other words, get it right the first time.

And think through the kinds of shots you will need to take. Marketing people want crowd and conversation shots. PR and news folks want shots of keynote speakers. You can figure it out for your situation, just make sure and think it through.

And if you really want to put a smile on their faces, find a way to run a slide show or something on site. The audience would love to see those photos; that is the only way most people will ever see them. A good example is running a slide show of photos from a wedding ceremony at the reception. If you truly have a unique vision, you will have a perspective on the wedding that nobody really noticed.

And by all means, get experience just shooting around at your next conference. It is ok to be a photo junkie. Have fun. Play with perspective. Find something nobody else saw.

I certainly wan to give a special thanks to the original photographer and the hosts of the podcast for the ideas in this post.