November is not the most promising time to do landscapes here on Whidbey Island, but I wanted to make another try at the trees along the Ft. Ebey Bluff Trail. As luck would have it, there was some blowing mist and occasional drizzle to add extra gloom to the day.
Having selected my framing I locked down the focus and put small, battery-powered flashes to the left and right of the camera, another one about 50' further down on the left, and a final one on the right of the path past the second tree. All were about as powerful as a Vivitar 285. Two triggered off of the camera with Pocket Wizards, and two triggered by Wien slaves off of the other two. Red, magenta and "CTO" gels added some color shifts.
By 30 minutes after sunset the flashes balanced well against the sky. I put plastic bags over the camera and lights and waited a little longer in the light rain. After another 20 minutes the sky was down to a 20 second exposure, during which I could use a couple of flashlights to paint in the path. The Nikon did some long exposure noise reduction also.
If it had not been so wet I could have done a little more feathering of the lights with taped on paper scraps.
While shooting a nuke sub went below the bluff on the way out to sea. I kind of hoped my flashes would not get return fire from the escort boats.
