Beach Cottage and Small Flash

There are some really interesting little hotels in Indonesia. I was staying in this cool little A-frame cottage just a few steps away from turquoise waters of the Gili Islands. It was a great little room with a beautiful outdoor bathroom (Bali style).
It was midday with the sun high, which meant a lot of shadows and not much color in the sky. I used the nice foliage to frame the cottage to give the impression that it was shrouded in a lush garden. By doing so, I also filled in the uninteresting sky with green leaves.

Because the entire front deck was lost in hard shadow, I added a few small remotely triggered flashes set out of view of the camera: one aimed up to light the peak under the roof and the other to light the furniture on the deck. One flash was triggered with a radio slave that triggered the second optically. Both lights were bare and I just experimented with the manual power settings to find a natural looking balance with the ambient light.

Gear: Nikon D2X / Nikon 12-24mm F4 lens / Nikon Sb-28 speedlight / Vivitar 285 Flash / Pocket Wizard Radio Slave / Wein Ultra optical slave

Exposure: ISO 200 F5 1/60th
As always, click any image for the larger version. TR