carlo obillos photography

At the end of May, the apple blossoms get to work, and the apple orchards in Grey County become magical places to shoot. This shoot took place at Grandma Lambe's, possibly the best known of the large apple orchard/markets. For this shoot, I used my brand-new, one-day-old Cybersync radio triggers (I'll do a post about them a little later).

In this situation, and for what I wanted to shoot, flashes were absolutely necessary. There was way too much contrast between the sky and my subjects. Without extra lights, either the sky ends up washed out, or the people end up too dark.

Exposure here was around iso 100, 1/200, and f5.6. With a polarizer, this made the sky look beautifully blue. It had rained earlier in the day, so I worried a bit, but the sky cleared, and fantastic clouds started appearing just at the right time. The polarizer also made the grass sooo green! Light usually reflects off the grass, and this makes it look a bit washed out in photos. The polarizer helps out enormously by killing the reflection and letting the green come through to the sensor.

When shooting with a single flash, it was set about 60 degrees away from the sun, in order to fill the shadows. Later, I added another flash, right in between the first one and the sun. They were set on manual, using the test shot/check LCD/test shot/bingo! method.

Family Photography at Grandma Lambe's Apple Orchard