One of the things that surprised me when I first started leading photo tours to Venice was that costumed models displayed themselves just to be photographed. I thought they’d be on their way to a costume ball and would have no time for photographers. It’s just the opposite. These people know the kind of lighting photographers like, and some of them come out at dawn just so we can avoid crowds and, at the same time, capture beautiful lighting. This shot was done with off-camera flash at about 6:30 in the morning in San Marco Square. I rested the flash unit on my backpack on the ground to get the severe angle of illumination. Off-camera flash means you have to take test shots for two different exposures: 1) the light on the subject, and 2) the ambient light of the background. I first determine the f/stop and the ISO for the architecture and the sky, and then I adjust the flash-subject distance using that same f/stop until, after making one or two test shots, I like the exposure on the subject. The shutter speed doesn’t affect the flash exposure.
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