12th Feb 2008
flash flavor accidents
Have you ever been shooting and had this miracle blessing where an off camera strobe (not your intentional flash) just appeared from the background / foreground and illuminated your frame, thus delivering a magical image that was totally unplanned and seemingly excellently executed? If so, then you should be thankful to be LUCKY 
Well, in our few years of shooting we have been lucky enough to see a random strobe appear.
In this photo example, Sol Tamargo squeezed off a pretty cool shot of the bride leaving the church and kissing her mother. You can see the camera toting dork in the background (me) with my associate just next to me, holding a remote flash. Sol was not intentionally triggering this flash when she composed this frame, it just happened. The resulting photo is….luck!
I like this photo because it is a strong exit moment. Bride embraces mother prior to getting in the limo. I’ll take luck
Accidental flash flavor can also come as a gift from the typical film shooting family grandmother or family relative. In this frame, our our associate Melissa. She was shooting the processional with a 24-70 when the mother of the groom squeezed off an award winner. Timing a camera shutter from a handheld P&S camera is impossible… try timing that to ISO 1250, 2.8 at 1/40th. I’ve been lucky enough to get a handful of frames with a shutter going off. I really liked the effect this one had on our image.
Lastly, I wanted to finish up with some humor. Sorry if this offends some folks, I laughed out loud after I shot it. The bride saw this photo on the LCD and just about made me show it to the entire dinner table. This was just some random golfer at a golf club. The groom was terrified to see this out of the corner of his eye…Anyway, my associate was using a flash and had placed the strobe on the top of the lockers. Having no idea that it was actuallly receiving a signal from my transmitter or that it was even there! I got this lucky nicely lit bounce light frame. Wow, sometimes when you dont plan things, they still come together! YEAY!
I’ve talked about a few other random accidents before…
Accident 1
and one of my favorites
Accident 2
Anybody else have any happy accidents to share that involve a strobe or some crazy flash moment. Please share your images with the Flash Flavor Flickr image pool
The guy in the background really caught my attention when I look at the picture. It just out shine your strobe light.. lol!!
Talk about “check your backgrounds for distractions”! Thank God for shallow DOF.
(Thanks for the chuckle.)
It’s interesting how I blogged about something similar recently. I wanted to get the bride walking down the aisle, but I had to drag my shutter because the church was pretty dark. It’s a good thing somebody else’s flash popped during my exposure.
I’ve already added the shot in question to the pool.
about that last shot… when i first saw the picture i was wondering if it was the father of the groom or someone in the wedding party! wow.
Man, Mateo you never know whats coming next! Glad you had the shallow depth of field in that locker room! Fast glass in nice in many areas!
Chris Collins!
That guy in the background is a trip…. This is what you get when you decide to get ready in a locker room with a bunch of random golfers who are showering and indecently exposing themselves…
Yeah, I could have framed the shot without it, but what kind of fun would that be?
cheers!
mateo
Exactly this happened to me when I photographed Al Pacino, no less.