A book I picked up back in the mid ’90s changed the way I saw and photographed subjects in nature [flowers, plants, insects and also landscapes]. After having read and re-read this book, it was John Shaw’s “Closeups In Nature” I went on to his “Landscapes Photography“, “Nature Photography Field Guide“, “Focus On Nature” and “Complete Guide to Professional Field Techniques” and all the other books of his that I could find…. besides the inspiration, the learning of composition and framing techniques, two of the very important technical things that I learned from his books was how to be completly in control of the camera exposure and flash in closeup and nature photography. Off-camera flash, to be precise.
Why do I write about this, now?
Because I got completely caught up with wireless off-camera flash techniques when “Mr Strobist” hit it big-time – and forgot that I learned it from John Shaw’s books first. I was using TTL and non-TTL cords to fire off-camera flash units [SB12 and SB16] with a Nikon F3 and later a Nikon F5 [and SB80DX]. The process was sort of a ‘seat of the pants’ approach, though armed with Shaw’s very in-depth knowledge the “chance factor” was pretty much ruled out. Manual camera with manual flash [and no way to adjust the power output on those SB12's and SB16s] meant everything depended on the aperture and control of the flash to subject distance. The film-cameras have no instant preview in any LCD 
but yet the results were great. I went digital in 2005 with a Nikon D2Hs. I still stuck with the SB12 [and of course the SB80DX was also used]. I bought adaptors to wire the SB12 flash units to the D2Hs. I used John Shaw’s flash techniques even after I switched over to digital. I had a lot of fun doing this, and got great results too. It was all done by controlling the aperture and adjusting flash distance, not flash power [that is Strobist territory].
Then I heard/read of the STROBIST [David Hobby] and I became a Strobist follower [still am]. Went wireless. Forgot that I had learned the basic techniques from John Shaw’s books.  Whats new, is that I learned from David Hobby how to adjust the power output and control the flash of the newer Nikon SB units and be more in control of the results.  Also to be able to get the flash units much further away by using a wireless trigger.
So, this post is a sort of a “thank you” to both John Shaw and David Hobby – but more of a tribute to John Shaw and a “sorry that I forgot to remember where this all started from”. I would have been in the dark [excuse the bad pun], if it had not been for John Shaw and learning how to put the flash off-camera via a cord and a DIY flash-bracket.
To sum this up: The image of the tiny mushroom - around 1/3 rd of an inch across the top –  growing between blades of grass was first shot with a F3 + Nikkor 105mm Micro lens + off-camera SB12 using the exposure and flash technique learned from Shaw’s books. That image was on Fuji Velvia film. I have no idea where the original slide is now. So, I had re-shot the same image [shown above] in 2005 with a D2Hs and the same 105mm lens with the same SB12 flash off-camera via a cord. Same old technique, and I got the same result as I had on film.Â
It is now ‘second-nature’ for me to put the flash off-camera and continue to experiment with the quality, quantity, color and direction of light. Lots to learn yet!
Here is another image [made with D2Hs + Nikkor 50mm Micro + SB80DX off-camera] using John Shaw’s approach:
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