This is a photo of Pola Rock in American Samoa. It is located in the National Park and is a beautiful rock formation often photographed. Most of the photos I have seen are with the rock filling the frame (I have some nice photos like that). But I was never satisfied. Then I remembered an article I read about thinking outside the box. Sure, get your safe shots first, but once you have that, go ahead and try something different. In this case, I wanted to show the formation as something more mysterious, so I used a wide angle lens. Walking down the road, I found this flower and I liked the little "V" shape in the foreground leaves which kind of leads your eye into the frame. Now, which my camera on my tripod and using f16 (I think) to get everything from the foreground out sharp I took a photo. Unfortunately, the foreground was too dark. Since I couldn't use a graduated neutral density filter (which I confess I left at home) I did this. With my camera in manual mode and at f16, I dialed in the shutter until I had the proper exposure (making sure I did not blow out my highlights - histogram and nothing bunched up on the right side). Of course, the foreground was dark. So I pulled out my canon 550ex flash and two pocketwizards (which allow you to use your flash off camera). I then adjusted the power of the flash until I had a foreground exposure I liked. By using off camera flash, I was able to bring the flash closer to the red flower to get that to really pop. So how to do that if you are alone? Use the timer (with your camera on the tripod). This gives you time to handhold the flash where you want (of course if you brought a stand for your flash you can just do it that way. Take some photos, check your histogram and you are done.
