Ben at the Rollingwood Pool.  The pool is in bright, direct Texas midday sunshine and I wanted to use an umbrella with a flash ten feet away to overpower the ambient light.  Enter the Profoto AcuteB.

It’s all the rage now.  You just can’t take a photograph outdoors without using some sort of electronic flash to fill sunlit scenes, or create a lighting design with a mainlight that overpowers the sun.  Art directors love the look.  Clients demand it and we photographers have devised a number of methods to deliver the goods.  In the ancient days we’d just run an extension cord to a big studio power pack and bang away.  The current rage is to apply the “Strobist” approach and use many small battery operated flashes sync’d together with a pocket full of Pocket Wizards.  But that approach is rarely enough to tame tough, Texas sunlight at midday so most image creation gets pushed back to the end of the day so the photographer can balance his/her flashes with the last wimpy gasps of the setting sun.  But hey, we’re professionals and we’re supposed to be able to get the job done on demand.  Midday.  One hundred and five degrees in July.  Without breaking a sweat.  Perfect performance every time

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