Sunset Lighting

Annette and I made the trip to Erie for the long Independence Day weekend.  While we were there, we were able to go to Presque Isle State Park, which is more commonly known by the locals as "the Peninsula".

At this time of year, the park is just beautiful.  Everything is so green and lush.  It seems there is always a cooling breeze from over the water. We enjoyed it so much.

We took our niece for pregnancy pictures by the water.  We found a beautiful spot at Beach 1.  And shot some great pics.  Then we moved to the North Pier and took pictures with the pier lighthouse in the background.

In the evening, we went back to Beach 1 with another niece, Sarah.  Sarah was both our model and our guinea pig.  She was so patient with us as we experimented with matching the light with the setting sun with some fill flash.  I really do appreciate that she was such a good sport about the whole thing.

During the photo shoot I was very frustrated because I couldn't quite get the intensity of the two light sources to match.  The photo above is about as close as I came.  It was one of the last photos that I took.

But, as I have mentioned before, if you just think about your problems you will come up with some additional ideas to try.  Unfortunately for me, the ideas come after I leave the photo shoot.

So it was with this photo shoot.  Once we had driven half way home, I realized that I should have waited and stayed longer.  I think it would be easier once the sun had disappeared below the horizon.  In addition, I think that two flashes would have worked better.  The one from camera right should have been higher and I should have added a flash to camera left to fill in Sarah's hair and cheek on the dark side.

Here is a picture shortly after the sun disappeared.  This is when we should have been taking pictures.  Oh, well!  We'll do better next time.