The Legend of John Hartman and the Outdoor Flash

This is actually a clever ruse to drive a little photographic traffic to my blog. I could be sending this to John Hartman as an e-mail, but I am going to e-mail John with a link to this blog so the Google creepy crawlers will see that a world famous photographer has visited my humble site. Thanks, John.


I am almost reluctant to talk about John's miracle outdoor flash solution in public. It is so simple and so good it is almost like a secret weapon. Actually, I am just using this blog to ask John some questions about his technique, not to describe it -- so if you want to find out how it works you'll either have to ask John or pry it from my cold, dead fingers.


So John -- I am (somehow) going to attach three zipped files that contain small copies of a dozen or so images I have recently taken. In kind of a Clint-Eastwoodish style, I have called them The Good, The Bad, and the Huh? The titles are self explanatory -- I like the good ones (although I like some better than others), I don't like the bad ones, and I wonder what in the world happened in the Huh? ones.


I am guessing you could spend less than 46 seconds looking at all these files (not each of them) and come up with seven pointers for me as to how I can improve on your miraculous outdoor flash technique.


A couple specific questions: I don't remember reading this anywhere, but I have assumed that you are shooting in Aperture Priority mode. That is what I have done whenever I am using this technique. Another: Although this will likely come out if you are kind enough to review the sample images I sent, I would like some general guidance on shooting in open sunlight. Do you want to try and overpower it with the flash, or just use it as your main light and the flash as fill?

The Good

The Bad

The Huh?