Yeah, I know what you were thinking. But that’s why you’re reading this, so I’m okay with it.

A couple weeks ago I went to an undisclosed amusement park in southern California for a conference for work (I do have a day job after all). After about four days of listening to executives droning on about mission statements, I finally had to take a few pictures before my head exploded. Luckily for me, I brought my Canon 20D, my 430EX flash, my Pocket Wizards, and a compact light stand. Sounds like the makings for some fun to me.

The fun started out in the hotel room itself for the first shot. At night I closed the drapes so no stray light would come in and I could set a nice long exposure. With the camera on my light stand and the timer set to eliminate shake, I set the exposure to 30 seconds at f10. This would give me plenty of time to dance around the room firing the flash at 1/16th power or so. If you look closely, you’ll see about four different light sources. The room was totally black, and those are all me hand holding the flash and manually firing it. You can even see my work buddy on the left holding a beer. While not very artistic, this was a fun shot to take.

After taking the shot inside the room, I decided to take it outside and get a shot of the still undisclosed theme park from my room balcony. This one was simple. The camera again was on the light stand with the timer set to eliminate shake. I had the exposure set manually to 13 seconds at f11. All I had to do was wait for the ferris wheel and swings to get moving and take the shot so they’d be nice and blurred. I think it’s a pretty cool shot.

Last but not least, I couldn’t let that flash sit there unused, so I again decided to get experimental. I wanted to get a picture of my buddy in the shot. Now the only way to get him and the park within the depth of field was to stop down the aperture even more. To make this happen without setting the shutter speed too long (and thus making everything a complete blur), was to bump up the ISO setting. So I set the camera to ISO 800, f22, and 8 seconds. I stood him up, hit the shutter, popped the flash once from camera left. He then quickly sat down and I popped him again with the flash before the 8 seconds were up. That’s it. Everything was in clear focus, there were two of my friend, and there was some cool motion blur in the park rides.

So the next time you’re bored, get creative and have a little fun being experimental. My friend here isn’t into photography at all, but he had fun taking these pictures. The best part of these shots is that no connection was needed to the camera from the flash. I just manually hit the test button whenever I wanted light.