As much as I am a firm believer in getting it as close as possible in camera, by using proper exposure and proper camera settings, and good light .. most often an image can be enhanced in Photoshop with a few simple techniques.
There is an entire industry built around software and plug-ins and add-ons and action sets for Photoshop to enhance and manipulate images in Photoshop. However, I’d first like to go over some of the simpler ones that you can use in Photoshop without additional software.
These Photoshop techniques are well-known to the more experienced digital photographer, but I thought this might make a great on-going series on simple Photoshop techniques. As always, I’d love to hear everyone’s input, especially since my own Photoshop skills can’t quite be regarded as skillz yet. ; )
The first technique that I’d like to cover, is quite simple:
- you add an adjustment layer (such as Levels) to your image;
- change the blending mode to Soft Light, and then
- adjust the opacity to taste.
- erase the layer mask of any areas you want to bring back (or close) to the original.
Here it is in a bit more detail. Starting with this image ..
Video lights as a way of lighting still photography portraits is something that I’ve mentioned more often on this blog of late. When the subject and setting is such that a more dramatic way of lighting would work, then I quite often use video lights.
Here is a photo using a single video light:
This image is from the recent workshop in Philadelphia, and someone held a single video light to the right and above me. The angle that the light should be held at, is guided by how I want the shadow under her nose to appear. I prefer the shadow to appear as loop lighting or as butterfly lighting, instead of having the shadow of her nose fall across her cheek or mouth.
It looks dramatic and beautiful. In this case, with Nikiya standing so close to the background – an elevator door – we can get away with a single light. Similarly, if we had positioned her so that she is against an out-of-focus background with some colour and detail, then a single light would also work. Then the background would be light enough to create separation so that the model pops out.
With this image of Nikiya, I positioned myself so that the hot-spot on the metallic doors created a natural halo around her.
But when there is a background that would appear dark or even black, with no separation, then we need to make another plan. In this case, another video light to throw some light pattern on the background …
Here the second video light was held to camera left, and flagged with barndoors so that the light didn’t fall on our model.
Camera settings:
1/160 @ f3.2 @ 1250 ISO for the top image, and
1/125 @ f3.2 @ 1250 ISO for the second image.
White balance was Incandescent / Tungsten, adjusted a little bit as part of RAW workflow.
With these settings, similar results could be achieved at f1.8 or f2 and a lower ISO if you are using a camera that doesn’t have great high-ISO capabilities.
The beauty of the video light again is that with the quick fall-off in light to the edges, it creates a pattern and not just a flood of even light. Then there is always the ability to use the barn-doors to flag the light even further to create a swathe of light or just a streak of light in the background. That light on the pillars there give enough separation between the model and the background, and still creates a natural vignette around her .. adding to the dramatic look of the image.
I want to add this update on how I use the (in)famous Black Foamie Thing. In essence it is just a simple little device that I use to shield my speedlight’s output from directly hitting my subject when I bounce my flash forward. It has another benefit in that since I usually fasten to the ‘underside’ of the flash-head, it blocks light from hitting people in the face that are standing behind me or next to me. It really does help with being more unobtrusive with flash.
- soft, directional light
This is the main reason why I use this piece of black foam on my speedlight when I use flash indoors. The moment I start bouncing my flash ‘towards’ my subject, instead of over my shoulder, away from my subject … then I stand the chance of there being too much direct flash on my subject. This usually results in hard shadows and specular reflections on skin. The light from direct on-camera flash rarely looks good. Yes, and in my opinion that would include ring-flash - ugly light which somehow has become trendy again. But that’s another story.
What I am trying to achieve in bouncing my flash when shooting indoors, is directional light that is also soft. I get the light to be directional in not bouncing the flash directly behind me, and also not bouncing the flash off the ceiling above me. Bouncing flash off to the side, and even slightly ‘towards’ your subject can give you strikingly dramatic light from just an on-camera speedlight. Here’s an example from a recent workshop:
To my eye this looks surprisingly good for merely one on-camera speedlight (and allowing some of the ambient light to come into play.) What we’re mimicking here is ‘short lighting’ as it is usually achieved in a studio.
Then there is an additional side benefit to using this piece of black foam to shield my light:
- blocking flash light from directly hitting other people in the eyes
This becomes important too. In bouncing flash behind you, or off to the side, you are wasting a huge amount of light from your flash. It really isn’t the most efficient use of your speedlight’s output .. but it does look pretty. With this, you are dumping a lot of light .. and this can be hugely annoying to guests and other people standing close to you.
If you look here, you can see that the light from the flash is now directed upwards, and very little will be able to sear the retinas of people next to you.
Now, what I also wanted to show with this post, is that I manipulate this piece of black foam.
The original post on my favourite flash modifier, showed a neat piece of black foam .. and also longer than I usually have it when I actually shoot. In practice, I fold it, and shape it the way I want it to be .. juuuust enough to block the light in the way I want it to be. The piece of foam can be slid around the flash-head, and it can also be slid up and down the flash-head. I position this half-snoot / flag in whatever way I need to at any particular point .. depending on what I want to do with the light from my flash.
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And finally, another benefit ..
- it is inexpensive and simple.
This little device is all about the best quality of light you can get from your on-camera speedlight. There is no expensive ver.2 that needs to be bought again next year. It is a cheap piece of black foam held into place by two hairbands. That’s it … oh, and the thought you need to put into HOW you use your flash.
In the end all this is NOT about a specifically shaped device with an a fantastically designed strap; and manufactured to tight specifications and enginereered perfectly … this revolves entirely around technique. HOW you use the light from your speedlight.
It divorces the gear-head approach; (“this device on top of my flash will solve all my flash problems!”) .. from an artistic approach; (“what do I want to achieve with my light?”)
At the very center of all this, this is about technique in lighting.
I want to share this hilarious clip, created by David Getson, a member on the Digital Wedding Forum where this was first posted. David has started to create animated clips about forum members that apparently are .. *cough* *cough* .. superstars. Thank you David – I had tears in my eyes from laughter. And I only wish I were half as good as this made me out to be.
(btw, the DWF is the forum to be on if you are serious about wedding photography.)
The final workshop of the year! And what a wild interesting ride it’s been the past two years with the workshops. Wonderful people that I’ve met; interesting cities and places .. and some adventures. (Those who attended last year’s workshop in Dallas, will remember the belligerent cowboy!)
The workshop in Dallas was a great way to end up this series of workshops – two fantastic models in an interesting venue, and a great group of people. As always, it felt really good seeing how things click into place for the photographers who attended. Thank you to everyone!
The image above was from the session where we played around with video lights. In this case, finally getting the two models together in a dramatic pose; then lighting them with a video light from either side. The sconce lighting on the walls then helped make the image more compelling that a bland background would have. A few tweaks in Photoshop, essentially bumping up the contrast and saturation, also helps give the image more impact.
I always like visiting Austin with its vibrant music scene and night life, so it was good to visit again. I also met up again with Juliana who was our model at last year’s workshop. That’s her crazy self there on the right-hand side of the image, along with her friend Tatiana who also modelled for us at the workshop.
Some techie details:
The photo was taken during the practical session where we work with manual flash (via speedlights in softboxes). In this instance we had both softboxes in use, one on each model. Both were set for the same output. The flash output was chosen such that the ambient light is under-exposed by a stop. It allows us to get clean controlled lighting on our models with the diffused flash. My final camera settings were: 1/250th @ f5.6 @ 250 ISO .. but I had to pull back the exposure in RAW by 1/3rd stop.
Thank you to everyone who attended – it was a nice group of people and it was great meeting all of you. Also, a thank you to our two models.
Regarding the workshops in general – The Austin workshop was the penultimate workshop of the year, and also the travelling workshops. Next stop is Dallas .. and then from next year, a restructured revamped 2-day workshop on lighting which will include more practical sessions with on-location lighting.
My favourite image from this weekend is this one. It is one from a series of candid (or semi-candid) portraits of various guests and their kids at a Bat Mitzvah party I photographed. Aside from the obvious photographs that need to be taken during these kinds of events, I also try and grab more candid images with a telephoto zoom (70-200mm f2.8)
By going wide open on this lens, you can really isolate your subject .. and also draw in more of the available light. In this case the background is a mixture of out-of-focus balloons and the DJ’s lights and stuff. The best of these images are usually those where I am fortunate in getting a nice expression .. while still being able to position myself so that the background is complimentary or interesting.
My settings: 1/160 @ f2.8 @ 1600 ISO
My gear: Nikon D3 / Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S / Nikon SB-900
and of course, this image could’ve been taken with any equivalent gear,
such as the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS
My settings were chosen such that enough of the background shows. Lighting is quite simple as usual, and was just one on-camera speedlight, flagged with the black foamie thing to give directional light on this boy’s face. I did have a 1/2 CTS gel on my speedlight to help match it with the tungsten lighting in the reception venue. As such my white balance was set to 3700K. As an aside, that image is straight out of ACR with no further adjustments from my usual defaults for the RAW file. I did no editing in Photoshop to it.
And there you have it .. a simple semi-candid portrait, with simple yet effective lighting, while shooting “on the run”.
I love sharp images. Crisply sharp. However, I’m not stuck on the idea that the image has to be sharp over the need for an image to have impact. Images that draw us in usually have emotional impact of some kind. But still, I like sharp.
How sharp your subject appears, is a balance between a bunch of factors we have to balance, whether with careful forethought, or just intuitively. Shutter speed, choice of aperture, subject movement, your own movement, choice of equipment, and our own technique. All of these things splinter further into numerous choices we have to make at the moment we take the shot.
I offer the following as an anecdote about recent problems I had with soft images. There’s no real advice here, except perhaps that we sometimes need to step back from our habits, and look further to find the source of a problem.
I noticed that when I shot vertical portraits with my Nikon D3 and Nikon 24-70mm lens, that I would often have soft images. They would either be slightly back-focused or slightly front-focused. The horizontal images though would be pin-sharp. I even tried a second copy of the lens on my other D3 body in a way to isolate the problem, and see whether it is my camera or the lens that were causing the image softness. Big surprise … the same thing would happen. I’d randomly get unsharp vertical photos. I just couldn’t entertain the thought that two lenses were faulty in exactly the same spurious way.
Then during one shoot, I noticed something in my handling of my camera and lens ..
The two truisms regarding flash photography that get thrown around most often, are:
ambient exposure is controlled by shutter speed,
flash exposure is controlled by aperture.
I’ve railed against this before in a post on what I called the urban legends of flash. My take on it is in that in over-simplifying, and bandying around those two statements in a perfunctory manner, we actually lose understanding of how flash exposure and ambient exposure inter-relate.
My problem with the first statement is that it disregards that aperture and ISO both control ambient exposure as well.
It is essential to understand that with TTL flash, things change a little. Actually, things change a lot, since exposure control for manual flash and TTL flash are entirely different.
This specifically is where I feel that the second truism there: “aperture controls flash exposure” is entirely misleading.
With TTL flash, your camera and flash work together to control /calculate flash exposure .. and then adjust the power the flash emits, to give you (what it deems to be) correct exposure … regardless of your choice of aperture, or your choice of ISO, or the distance of your flash to the subject. Of course, these things have to be within reason. You have to work within the capabilities of your flash.
Let’s see how this works. Here are two images that I used in my book on flash photography techniques .. and I’d like to use them with a slightly different take.
With our model, Jackie, positioned in front of a window, we have two things to expose for:
- we have the ambient exposure to consider for the outside background,
- and we have flash exposure to consider for our subject, Jackie.
Ambient exposure for the background – shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Simple enough.
Flash exposure settings to light our subject – well, this will depend on whether we are using manual flash or TTL flash.
As mentioned, if I had used manual flash here (for example with a softbox), then I would have to meter my manual flash for the specific aperture and ISO and distance and power setting of my flash. And then juggle those four things to give me correct exposure as metered with a flashmeter. (Or perhaps checked via histogram.)
But in this case, I used TTL flash that I bounced over my left shoulder into the room.
And I purposely set out to use TTL flash here in a way to illustrate a point:
With TTL flash, aperture effectively becomes transparent. In other words, with TTL flash, our choice of aperture, (within reason), has no effect on flash exposure. (This is also true for our choice of ISO.)
This favourite images from a recent wedding, is one which I’d like to analyze a little as to what went into creating it.
First of all, I am usually quite specific about my backgrounds. A cluttered background can really bring down an image which might otherwise have worked. So in a case like this, when creating the romantic portraits outside the venue with this couple, I was on the look-out for something interesting to work with. When I saw the twinkly lights in the trees outside, I knew that it would definitely make a great out-of-focus background.
I then needed to position the couple in relation to the background – and in this case use a lens with a longer focal length to help place them. A wide-angle lens would’ve given too wide a field of view. I need a tighter composition.
But in how I wanted to position the couple, I also knew the light on them wasn’t ideal. I would have to add on-camera flash as a quick fix for the lighting. Since I was working alone, I couldn’t rely on an assistant to hold a reflector or an umbrella / softbox. I therefore looked for something to bounce my flash off .. and I figured that I could bounce my flash off the outside walls of the venue. I did so at an angle, that I could still have a measure of directional light on them.
These two things then combined to make it this particular spot that I used:
- an interesting background, and
- an area I could bounce flash off.
Since I knew I would be losing a lot of light from my on-camera speedlight in bouncing flash off a large wall outside, the short telephoto that I wanted to use, also needed to be a fast optic.
