Having to explain how you achieve a certain effect is something that I have written about before but, no matter how many times I explain a given technique, I still learn something new each time myself. The two images below were actually shot during these sessions. The picture on the left is from a one day location lighting workshop at Photofusion and the one on the right was from an editorial portraiture project session with second year photography degree students.

The left hand image was shot under dull grey skies on the last day of October in London and is a very good demonstration of how to mess about with white balances when shooting outdoors with flash. The thing that I picked up from this shot and the three or four frames either side of it is just how much leeway you have with underexposing a dull grey sky. You can go from "barely there" to really deep by going one, two, three or even four f-stops underexposed. Adding the colour to the sky just heightens that difference.

The right hand image is all about flash and blur. I had deliberately brought a "net light" which is a five foot by three foot web of small Christmas tree lights as a backdrop and then used two Canon speedlights to light the subject in a darkened room. One of the speedlights had a red gel over it and the other was zoomed in a little to accentuate the direction from which it was coming. I regard this as a bit of an easy trick, but it continues to impress the students and photographers to whom I show it. Whilst shooting this test I realised that flash and blur with longer lenses (in this case a 70-200 f2.8L IS lens) is actually a lot easier to control than it is with wider lenses. I hope that I will work out why next time!

The other revelation that has come to me during my recent bout of teaching and leading workshops is that I really enjoy doing odd things with light. It isn't just a job. So when Photography Monthly magazine got in touch and asked me to shoot something for their magazine's new "Masters" section I went out and did just that. The teaser here is that I'm not going to show the pictures here until the magazine is out (it should hit the news stands in the middle of December here in the UK) but I can say that it was shot at dusk (my favourite time of day) on the beach (my favourite location), shot with lots of flash and it involved a member of my family messing about!

As a result of doing some of these shots just because I want to, I'm going to do what advertising and fine art photographers have been doing for years - I'm going to do some more testing and shoot the kind of pictures that appeal to me... just because...