Photo #17 – Lonely Fence

32mm - ISO 400 - 1/40 - f/4

As the US89 winds up and down through Arizona and Utah we are on the last leg through Utah when the clock told us it was time for another photo. We haven’t seen another car on the road for an hour, the temperature outside is hovering around 10 degrees and we find a place to pull over. In looking around we find an old fence sitting all by itself.

We have to walk across 20 yards of solid ice while carrying our gear. We wanted to find an interesting way to light this fence so we put two speedlites behind a shoot-thru umbrella to create the largest light source we could with minimal gear. With both lights set on 1/4 power which is quite a bit of power considering the conditions.

Since it was as close to complete darkness as you can get (no moon out) there was virtually zero ambient light so the shutter speed was irrelevant. To prove this point we shot handheld at 1/30th of a second which is normally way too slow to hand hold a camera. Since the only light was the flash, and the flash duration on 1/4 power is about 1/30,000th of a second, we get a perfectly sharp image even at a slow shutter speed.

Rather than trying to adjust the flash power with gloves on, Chris adjusted the camera using ISO and Aperture settings to get the exposure he wanted.

Additional Info

Barbed Wire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire