Test Shots Photo Shoot

So yesterday I had a great time shooting with my model for the hour, Shin.  I found this great location behind a department store and i thought to myself "This would look really cool as the sun goes down, and would be a great place to learn how to use my mono light by playing around with it." This guy cuts my hair while i'm here in Japan.  His passion is street fashion that is unique to Japan so i found it fitting to ask him to pose here in the element that his clothing fits.  Really there wasn't any point to this shoot apart from trying to figure out this new expensive piece of equipment that i bought.  For all geeks and photogs out there I'll go over some of the challenges. Fist off, this obviously is a digital photo which i shot RAW, but my main format and camera choice was film. I was using the digital basically as a light meter since i don't own a fancy light meter. Basically I wanted to underexpose the background to create contrast and really show the mood of the place. The biggest challenge was the film camera i intended to use flash sync was a max of 1/30 second. (really slow) If you haven't used a flash before basically shutter speed controls how much ambient light enters the camera.  At 1/30, a lot of light is being let in, so i had to wait until the sun was setting which meant i had 15min to shoot in that light. Because the shutter speed is so slow I couldn't get as shallow depth of field as i would have liked. I would have liked to have shot at f5.6 to make the background a little less detailed, but the slow flash sync forced me to shoot at f22-f16. Also I'm new to using a studio flash so I was just moving the mono light around until i found the position i liked.  not familiar at all with lighting arrangements.  This is also why I used the my digital Nikon to see what the image would look like. 
The digital Images aren't great but that is becasue i didn't proses them yet.  they are still how the RAW files looked out of the camera.  They look pretty good which gives me hope for the negatives i shot to look amazing out of the lab.

Also I learned while i was shooting this that working with someone that doesn't speak your languages is a challenge.  I didn't take into account that every time i was around him before i had a translator with me.  She was working during the shoot.  Also I should familiarize myself a little bit more with good poses becasue I wasn't really sure how i wanted him to look after i got set up.  I didn't want it to look too much like a senior photo or a fashion shoot so i thought the poses i kind of showed him through charades would be ones you might see someone be in if he were just bumming around the place.

Well that is that.  I definitely need more practice and become more familiar with the methods i need and the tools i am using, but that is exactly what this shoot is about.  I didn't know what i needed to know before and now i do.