When we came across Nur Atilla at Pasir Panjang beach, it was close to noon.

Her husband Mohd Syukri said they had been at the beach since 9 am.

When I inquired as to whether whether Syukri had caught anything. He smiled but didn’t answer. The smirk is universally understood.

It was my first time at this west facing beach on Penang Island.

If my recollections were correct this side of the island experienced extensive damage from the Boxing Day tsunami of 2015.

At noon the sun is directly  overhead just about anywhere and especially here in Malaysia which 3 degrees north of the equator.

Light was not the best for portraiture because of the extreme contrast.

Thankfully there was shade and I at least had my speed lights to help tame it.

I looked around. Then walked a little further. I counted less than 6 people including me and my two photo sidekicks Johnny Lee and OS Low

In my halting Bahasa I explained I was in need of two subjects to show how gorgeous this scenery was.

Nur and Syukri were happy to help me out.

I put my speed light Godox TT600 inside my beat up Lumiquest softbox, handed it to my buddy OS Low while Johnny Lee grabbed the behind-the-scene pictures.

I of course attached the Godox transmitter on my Canon EOS-R ‘s hotshoe. The Speedlight probably was set a 1/8 or 1/4 power.

Couples are often easier to coax especially newlyweds like them.

Ignore the surrounding, how do you think I did? If you were the couple, would you have been happy? Would you buy the picture?

Other Considerations

I’m sure there are some reading this asking why I didn’t use High Shutter Speed Sync. In this instance I can tell you a 4AA battery speed light inside a softbox has little or no chance of generating enough power to over power the sun.

I would probably end up with a picture that has a darker background but better or prettier? I think not. Also I only had 24-105 mm lens with a maximum aperture of f5.6 so I wouldn’t have been able to blur out the background anyway.

Thankfully these days if you had access to software you can use Adobe camera raw or Lightroom. All you have to do is  move some sliders in the LENS BLUR panel, dial in what you want and you have more control. No one way is correct. It’s all in how you want to work.

If you shoot it with the background blur, you don’t have to tweak it in post. But you lose the ability to control how much you can blur the background.

My Crew

Thank you OS Low and Johnny for accompanying me and showing me Balik Pulau, the other side of Penang island on my last trip back.