I had hoped to get out for some street candids this weekend, but what with the new bed and Jason's music class starting back up and needing a haircut and so on and so on, I didn't have time. So, Sunday afternoon I took about 15 minutes and tried out some lighting techniques with Jason at one of the neighborhood playgrounds. Here I was trying to both overpower the ambient light with my flash and to cross-light using the sun as a fill/rim light. I'm not sure I'm quite ready for prime time with this technique yet, but even so it seems to have worked out pretty well, which is exciting.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40, Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens, and Vivitar DF-383 flash (in Gary Fong Lightsphere). Manual exposure mode, TTL flash mode (+0 EV). Aperture f/8, shutter 1/500 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: a bit of retouching around his mouth; light skin smoothing over his face; curves to increase exposure and contrast; levels to brighten midtones; reduced overall brightness; brushed in Intensify Contrast adjustment on his eyes; lightly dodged over his eyes; added vignette; added sharpening.

Thoughts for improvement: Well, the expression is a little "deer in the headlights" and I wish I had thought to bring a rag to wipe the spit off of his mouth. So, as a portrait it's less than ideal. But as this was mostly a lighting experiment, I think it was pretty successful.