For a story on two women who created a rock-spiral labyrinth, I was faced with a large area to photograph under harsh 1 p.m sunlight. This was going to need a ton of strobe light to overpower the ambient sun. Anticipating this, I had my Profoto B1 wireless strobes with Magnum reflectors ready to go in my car.

I set up the strobes with reflectors attached just outside the rock spiral camera right and set them to full power on manual. But before I shot with the strobes, I set my camera on manual and came up with an exposure of the scene that was about two stops underexposed, but still preserved the highlights on subject from sun shining on them from behind. My ambient exposure setting at this point is F/8, 1/400th of a second shutter at ISO 100.

Now to add the strobe light. I fired off a frame on my Nikon Z6 mirrorless camera and the strobe light was too hot. From my on-camera Profoto Air Remote trigger, I adjusted the strobe power down until I had the perfect balance of ambient and strobe.

Without adding off-camera strobe light in this shot, the contrast of the harsh sun from behind the subjects and shadows on their faces would be too great. If I expose for the shadows, the highlights would blow out. Expose for the highlights and the faces would go dark. Adding off-camera strobe light balanced out the harsh, high contrast ambient light, giving the shot a warmer, pleasing dramatic look. Look closely too at the pleasing side-lit light pattern on the subject faces. That would have never happened if with out the off-camera strobes.