In all my years as a photographer, I've always used natural light as much as I can. The main reason was that I usually worked by myself and to carry all the extra lights was not something I liked to do. It taught me how to "see the light."
What I've noticed over the last couple of years that a lot of photographers are using off camera lighting to tweak their photos. I've noticed the dramatic lighting and thought maybe it's about time I changed my thinking. Since I had light stands, it was a matter of figuring out which flash units to use and which light triggers to use (aka radio slaves). I had used the shoe mounted flashes on light stands but I needed something with a better light than the direct flash. I had noticed a lot of use with Beauty Dishes and actually had a pair of studio reflectors that someone had given to me about 20 years ago. Found them in my garage, cleaned them up and now use that in the studio.
The challenge for outdoors was to find something that won't fall over in the wind which made umbrellas impractical unless I had an assistant which is not very often. Even my single flash units are not immune to the wind and waves as I found out on one of my sessions when my flash unit, battery pack and radio receiver went swimming in the ocean.
After doing much searching, here's what I came up with. A 12" Optecka Beauty Dish for portable flash units.
The dish's bracket mounts to a light stand with a 5/8" mount.
One then mounts the flash unit on the bracket and adjusts the position. I think I'll need to get some rubber washers for the future
This is the correct mounting to get the most effect out of the flash unit's light.
The silver cap in front of the flash disperses the light to the entire dish spreading the light to a larger area. Of course when one does this a lot of the power is lost. For you techies, with this flash (a Neewer TT850, the guide number at 10' is 56 at ISO 200. It's not practical for me to use this at the beach at sunset but it's great to add a punch of light in other scenarios.
Here's a setup of the flash on location. The stand is a Cheetah stand which makes it easy for me to pick up and place (best on a hard or flat surface).
An image taken without the flash. It's fine and most people will feel this is acceptable and I did at one time.
Add the flash and it's a whole different look. All images are straight out of the camera.
Even headshots (closeups) benefit from the inclusion of the beauty dish. This is without the flash and it looks fine.
Add the flash and the image has more punch and a cleaner more defined light.
And after applying a little bit of Photoshop tweaks...
