Portraits in a Crowded Room

If your love of photography has family and friends always asking you to bring your camera and take pictures at special events, you know the frustration well. Everyone who's taken a picture in a crowded room has had the experience-the person or persons you were taking an impromptu portrait of seem lost when compared to everything going on behind, whether it was balloons waving, people dancing or just a confusing background.

It's hard to avoid the situation when you're going to a well-attended event, and while the picture may be worthwhile to preserve the moment, it just pales in when compared to what you really envisioned. Worse yet, the real subject just doesn't engage the viewer whose eyes keep going back to whatever was going on behind.

You could always try and herd people away before you take the photo, setting up a simple background with little distraction. Good luck on a trade-show floor or with lots of attendees at a wedding or engagement party. Another good option is to take the person to a quiet location away from the festivities for the photographs.

For years professional photographers have been manipulating flash lighting to create moods and warm portraits. Usually it took a fully stocked studio to get it done right, but with today's digital cameras things have changed. Amateurs can get professional-looking results, even in a crowded room. If you don't like what you see, simply delete the image and try again.

The strobist technique is one of the most effective tools in a portable photographer's arsenal and it's ideal for singling out a subject in an otherwise crowded room. Strobist, basically, means getting the flash off your camera. This can be accomplished by PC cord or a camera-mounted transmitter that communicates with at least one flash unit.

Because the flash is no longer shooting directly from the camera, you get to decide how much light objects and people behind the subject receive. Simply moving the flash's direction allows you to create a lot of different effects, including dimming the background until it's no longer distracting. You can also turn it totally black, allowing the person or object you're focusing on to be the only thing visible.

Today's digital cameras have taken nearly all the guesswork out of photography. They automatically adjust the shutter speed, f-stop and even ISO once the metering system has diagnosed lighting conditions. Unfortunately, the circuitry doesn't understand strobist photographs, so you must take the camera off automatic or programmed mode and go to full manual.

If you don't have a light stand, have someone hold the flash toward the subject. If you're using a transmitter and receiver, take a test photo to make sure the units are communicating. The slower the shutter speed, the more the background will be visible in the resulting photo. For totally black backgrounds, adjust the camera until it's at the highest possible setting for flash synchronization.

With today's through the lens metering, most dedicated flash units will automatically adjust to light your subject properly. If it fails to do so, adjust the distance the flash is from your subject. If you're still getting annoying background, move the lens f-stop down until you get the effect you want.

To preserve at least part of the background, while highlighting the main subject, you can slow down the shutter speed, open the f-stop or both until you get the image you're looking for. That's part of the beauty of digital-you're not wasting film.

This approach takes some practice, a lot of luck and tons of experimenting. But when it comes to really isolating a single subject in a crowded atmosphere, it's hard to beat.Getting the flash off the camera allows you to control how much if any of the background shows up.A PC chord is the least expensive way of moving a flash off the camera.Today's digital cameras operated in program and automatic modes can't take advantage of this technique. To take advantage of the strobist technique, go to manual mode.www.strobist.com