I've been shooting Francesca for a while since meeting her at an event with Nikon Ambassador Vincent Versace. After seeing the epic sunset the night before i knew i wanted to head down to Dumbo and see if lighting would strike twice. But that is the beauty of the Creative Lighting System. The ambient light wasn't all i wanted it to be and that meant add some flash. It was windy, cold, and damp but Francesca brought her equally stunning friend Shay and we made the most of it by adding flash to get the light that I wanted....

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The light moves super fast at this time of year and the sun is setting more to the South of Manhattan rather than right behind meaning the prettiest light is offset from the skyline. This made my decision to make the flash the main light source that much easier...

The wind was against me for much of the day with the Hexi acting like a sail. So earlier shots from the day had no mods and just didn't really work for what I was going for. If you've read any of my other posts you know that I do lots of none mods shooting with a bare SB-910 but with the wind I wasn't able to use multiple flashes and the light just wasn't giving me what i had in my head without the softbox. 

As we moved out locations from Dumbo toward Brooklyn Bridge Park the wind started to cut down a little bit so I added the Hexi24 with Grid back to my SB-910 and Manfrotto Stacker stand. I've taken to combining the Hexi with a Manfrotto 026 umbrella to get the most flexibility from the set up without resorting to my boom arm. On a day with the kind of wind that I had yesterday the boom was a no-go so the added ability to maneuver the softbox with the Hexi's grip and the 026 was very helpful. I'm doing some product style shots for a future post on this so if it interests you check back....

Shooting a city skyline with flash is always a somewhat tricky proposition especially if not using a tripod. Which I wasn't. To get the exposure for the ambient of the Brooklyn street I came to a 1/3rd of a second at 7.1 for the top shot. Francesca and Shay were in darkness at this exposure but it let the streetlight and the buildings behind look somewhat natural. Adding the flash was done via TTL with the D810 pop-up as the master. I asked them to hold still and they did which meant that as long as I could stay still I'd get a sharp image. Sharp enough at least.