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What does everyone think about strobe in the shot?

fhphoto wrote:What does everyone think about strobe in the shot?

Strobe in the shot?

Or strobe in this shot?

They're two very different questions.

When it works, and it quite often can, then why not?

But in this shot, it does nothing for me, I don't know that it's adding anything here, except perhaps a distraction.

Also, you seem to have a light source off to camera left, but I think it's a bit too strong for this image; you have blown, or are very close to blowing, a lot of details on the model's rh side (left side of the image as we are viewing it). Look at he shoulder, belly, and in particular, the nape of her neck. I think that pulling back the power of that light source may have helped you somewhat.

To address your question first, in general the strobe being in the shot can be used to effect and I've seen it work quite well on occasion. Here I tent to agree with Gary. not sure it's really giving you much here. For the strobe in frame to work, it needs to either add so some sort of story, or be explained by context. eg it might be representing the sun here if it was higher, or if she was looking over her shoulder with a look of trepidation perhaps it could represent the lights of a pursuer.

To the wider image, I tend to agree the light camera left could have been brought back about a half stop, though I'd say it's a preference thing and if you wanted it that close to blown, then ignore us! I would say however that framing this slightly differently would have helped. I think moving yourself slightly to your right, resulting in the model moving left against the background, to hide that piece of blown sky that is intersecting with her neck camera left. I think that this blown area blends into the hot neck and that removing that would give some better separation. With that change, I think the hot lighting from camera left would work better as well.

Cheers.

Kudos for the concept but ditto the above two replies..

Unfortunately I also feel distracted by the extra strobe.

In this particular shot, I feel the strobe has no context, as has been mentioned. The placement does not fit with any perceived logic or story.

I beg to differ.

I think that the strobe looks slightly in front of your model. Some kind of depth perception thingy. If your model could cast her eyes in the direction of the strobe-light and hold her hands out as if she were holding or perhaps trying to touch the 'light,' then the image would have worked really well.

So I think you should think about this again and use the strobe as the focus of the image. Use the model as a prop. If you see what I mean.