Alright, Jarhead5811, I'm here. ;-)


Hmm....I too would suggest using a wider aperture to capture more ambient light as well as producing a bit of bokeh. Don't get me wrong, the beach is a great thing to see, but we're not really seeing the beach/water that much anyway. And I guess it depends on what your vision for the final image is. The images are certainly interesting as the off-camera light source draws interest to the specific area it's illuminating, but my personal taste is for the flash and ambient to be a little more balanced. I posted this one in another thread, but it's a good, recent example of balancing the light:


EXIF: Canon 50D, 17-55mm f/2.8 IS, 55mm, f/4.5, 1/250 sec, ISO 100


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In the image above, I actually used 3 flashes and a polarizing filter. Two flashes (each full power) were camera left in front of the subject being diffused by an umbrella. The other flash (1/4 power) was camera left, bare, and slightly behind the subject to act as hair/rimlight. The settings slightly underexposed the background, yet I threw enough light on her to compensate for the fact that I was using a polarizing filter as well as diffusing the light with an umbrella (making it soft and flattering).


And Keith B is right, a 1/4 or 1/2 CTO gel is a great way to warm up the color of the flash to better match the warmer daylight tones for seamless white balance adjustments (or else to just give a warmer/pleasing color to the subject).


Lighting-wise, I think my favorite is the third image (although I'm not a huge fan of the framing).