Balancing and Creating Unique backdrops
Many times when taking portraits either the background is overexposed or the subject is underexposed. One way to fix this is to have a mobile snoot. Taking a speed light you snoot the light so that you can direct it. For portraits it creates a well balanced foreground and background. My settings for that were F/8, shutter speed 1/80 and my ISO was 100. Using this same technique you can also create black backgrounds. My settings to do this kind of photography were F/14, shutter speed 1/100, and ISO 100.
Caryn Esplin is who taught me this technique. Here is another cool website where they show more ways to use this kind of lighting. http://www.diyphotography.net/diy-homemade-speedlite-snoot/
