Do you tweeter? I erm, tweeting oso, just to keep up with the times lah. One of the tweeting dewd-ette that I follow oso is the talented Ms Annarina. I noticed her major faved word is erm, ‘fail’, or ‘epic fail’. Dontch quite know what I mean? Well, here’s an example: I planned the Sabah workshop on a Sunday. Fine with that, Sunday being an off day and all that, most people wontch be able to take a day off on weekends for a full, one day intensive lighting workshop. So I picked Sunday for the “Ted Adnan’s Location Portraiture Lighting Technique Workshop” (Saturday I reserved for the “studio session with friends-friends at Spylens Studio ady“) NOT realising Sunday is the day for Pasar Tamu on Gaya Street, Kota Kinabalu.

Fail.

Enche’ Mus (my local dewd who arranged for the Semporna Maiga trip last year…say, I might be organising a trip in early June 2010, lemme know if you’re interested lah!) suggested that I still be able to visit the Pasar Tamu if I go earlier, saaayyy, like 6 30am. I remarked that it’s a good idea, since we woke up pretty early, like 5 am, to catch the sunrise pictured below lah…

Kinabalu Sunrise viewed from Mengkabong River, photo by Ted Adnan

…so I set the alarm on both the iPhone 3Gs and the Blackberry Bold and went to bed early-ish.

We all woke up at nearly 7 50 am.

Epic fail.  Whoah hahahahahahahah.

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By 8 45am we’re at the Spylens Studio starting with a minor refresher slide show talk on “Lighting & Composition” before touching a wee bit on flash lighting technique (somehow the topic of ‘direct flash’ is pretty popular *grins*) before stopping for lunch. After lunch time, we went elsewhere lah to continue the workshop on location lah plak.

I started on available light technique and the means of controlling it (you can use either a. a reflector, b. a difuser or c. direct flash fill-in technique). We learnt about subject placement and such, composition and cropping and some more lah…

behind the scene by Bakhtiar, my No. 1 Assistant...

When the lights were low we started using, yup, you guessed it, direct flash technique ajer. We used the flash in conjunction with the low ambient light to freeze the subject while maintaining sharpness, if you know what I mean. If you dontch, go read the damn flash manual you lazy bum.

What do you mean the techniue were not covered in the Nikon SB-900/800 manual?

Participants trying out on camera 'direct flash' technique...

I ‘cheated’ a bit tho, I used a 40cmx40cm Made-in-China mini softbox to ‘soften’ the light a wee bit. Didn’t do a very good job tho…

Paschara by Ted Adnan

..shadows seems a wee bit harsh still, macham direct flash  lah.

Here’s the obligatory group shot, download a bigger file here…

Group photo, after the sun went down below the horizon...

..direct flash ajer, one SB-800 off camera positioned on camera left, another Nikon SB-800 from extreme left of camera (from the group it’s on their right lah) for some highlights on the side. If you dontch know ady, “Direct flash pun boleh mahhh!” whoah hahahahahah….