I have the week off between Christmas and New years from my ‘day job’ and was really hoping to get out and do some shooting. The weather really sucked. Rain, drizzle, dark and drab light. To add to that is my own laziness of just wanting to lay around the house, surf Itunes, play video games, practice my guitar a bit – all in all – not very productive creatively.

Well this is the last day before going back to the grind and I was determined to create a few pictures, no matter what it was like outside. Fortunately it was just heavy overcast and not too cold (45 deg F) for the 1st of January in Michigan. But I wanted to do something new..and actually ended up spending about 2 hours just outside my back gate in the leaf piles of my woods.

So this is one of the results. I have procastinated for more time than I care to admit in getting to know my Nikon macro flashes from my R1C1 speedlight kit. For those of you are not familiar with this kit, it is perhaps one of the most well designed aspects of the Nikon product line.

You get a lot in this package – all kinds of mounting rings, colored gels for flashes, mounting arm, and a very nice storage case. The “Commander” itself that fits on top of your camera like a flash is pretty easy to adjust the output from the little ring flashes that sit on the end of your lens, creating different light ratios and looks to the image. Every aspect of it, from ergonomics to fit and finish, is nicely done. I have yet to scratch the surface of the capabilities here. It gives you tremendous control over how your subject is lit.

This is the result of me playing with the blue and yellow gels in the kit, using two flashes, one gel on each. This is pretty much straight from the camera, other than some minor cropping and sharpening. No Photoshop wizardry here, just using light in the field. I thought it was quite interesting, especially the way the yellow looks like it is ‘painted on’ the surface of the leaf. I suppose you could say it was painted with light. I also find it incredibly cool how the yellow light overspills onto the blue, and some of the blue onto the yellow, with different ways the light is absorbed by the leaf.

It is part of my way of getting away from more documentary approaches to photographing nature. This is just another set of tools to help along the way. Happy new year to all of my visitors to this blog, I hope you have a prosperous and healthy 2007.