Compositional Photons: Strobist Exercises

So this is one of the projects I'm going to embark on that was in that list of things I'm going to do to make myself take more pictures. Well I'm taking advantage of the Internet phenomena that is Strobist and having some fun doing it. Practice makes perfect and the more practice and experimenting I do the better I'll get at making quality work "effortlessly". This is in no way meant to copy David Hobby's Blog... just to take advantage of the groundwork he's layed out.
Link: http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/

For those of you who are already familiar with David "The Strobist" Hobby's blog you can ignore this paragraph. But for those who aren't I'll just give you a quick summery, that in no way does it justice, of what the Strobist blog is all about. Basically its all about off camera lighting techniques. Anyone interested in lighting and learning it well will benifit from looking at this site and subscribing even if your an experienced photographer.

So what I decided to do was to skip the Lighting 101 section and move right to the Lighting 102. I did this mainly because Lighting 101 is the information that explains the lingo, equipment and basic lighting ideas that are necassary for doing strobe off camera photography. Also because there really aren't any exercises to do and "show" you. It's REALLY good info though and is a great place for starting a kit and for referencing. Anyway, Lighting 102 is all about doing specific lighting techniques.

Lets get to the PHOTOS! Keep in mind these are just exercises and aren't ment to be "artistic" or anything they are purly just an exploration of light...

Lighting 102: Unit 1.1 - Position (Angle)

Yeah this is of course a kind of "blah" thing to do but you know even David (the "Strobist") admits it. Its worth while doing just once and I can admit until now I hadn't done this just for the sake of doing it. I've done this kind of thing when positioning light but already had some kind of vision where I want the light. Yeah so good to do at least once for the learning aspect of it but not exactly something you'll want to do more than that...

Lighting 102: 1.2 - Position | Distance

Ok so this is a little more relevant for learning (not that position isn't) because it gives you a better sense of how your light source interacts with your subject. Realizing now that I should have maybe used a larger space to better exemplify the inverse square law of light I might have done this a little different but it's still clear. If you look at the 6th photo you can see that my flash when backed up at the same power output I don't get a good exposure. Also in the 2nd photo the exposure is obviously way too much. Also the quality of light changes depending on the distance of the light source... Look at the shadow of the clown in the 4th photo... Look at the shadow of the last photo... See how the light gets "softer" in the 4th where the light source is closer and farther away the light becomes more "harsh" with harder edged shadows. Anyway its really good to see this for yourself.

Having some fun?
Of course I couldn't just do something with out having a little fun with it so when it was all said and done I played around a little with balancing ambiant light and strobe light...

Strobe only