Morton Alexander, a Mill Canyon resident near Davenport, Wash., is worried that a natural spring that runs through his property could become polluted if a farm above the canyon is allowed to spread biosolids on their fields. Colin Mulvany/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
In this editorial portrait I had a few challenges to overcome. One was the background, which was in full sunlight. The other was the subject was in shade. Were talking a five stop ratio or more. I didn’t want to do a complicated lighting set up here, so I chose my Godox AD200 paired with my Westcott 26-inch beauty dish positioned camera right. If you read my last post about the editorial portrait of the woman with the horse, I said I wished I had more sparkle in the face. On that photo, I used the panel diffusion on the beauty dish. For this photo I took it off. The silver interior gave me a harder light, which gave shape to my subject’s face.
I shot in TTL mode with high-speed sync enabled. I found I needed to bump my flash exposure up a stop to balance the light better with the background. I made that adjustment right from my Godox X1n trigger atop my Nikon D5 camera.
My final camera settings were 1/2500 of a second shutter, F/4 at ISO 200.
I love how the strobe brought out the colors of the old truck and sky. I hardly had to do any adjustment in the Photoshop.
Colin Mulvany is a Emmy-nominated multimedia producer and staff photographer at The Spokesman-Review, a 60,000-circulation newspaper that covers eastern Washington and North Idaho.
After 18 years as a staff photojournalist, Mulvany made the transition to online storytelling by becoming his newspaper’s first multimedia producer in 2004. Since then, he has produced hundreds of video feature stories and audio slideshows for his newspaper’s Spokesman.com website.
As multimedia editor in 2008, Mulvany trained 14 reporters, photographers and online producers to shoot and edit video. He also helped the editorial department transition to a more multimedia-focused workflow.
Mulvany has been honored for his photography and multimedia in Pictures of the Year International, Best of Photojournalism, Society of Newspaper Design, the National Headliners Awards and the Northwest Regional Emmies.
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