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April 29, 2011
random found available light as portrait lighting
With the recent trip to California for the workshops, I was also keen to meet up with another favorite model, Bethany. We were allowed to shoot in a night-club on a Sunday afternoon when it was all quiet with no one there. It’s an interesting place to work with a beautiful model, finding interesting spots and then figuring out how I might adapt my flash setup. I had 4 speedlights with me and 2 softboxes and a slew of the new PocketWizards.
The first series of photos of Bethany however, was shot with just the available light there. But first I had to recognize the light as being interesting light for a portrait. I had to “see” it first. As it happened, I only saw that this might be useful light for a portrait when I did a few test shots while Bethany was having her hair and make-up done.
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April 28, 2011
MiniTT1 & FlexTT5 for Nikon by PocketWizard on Vimeo.
using the PocketWizard MiniTT1, FlexTT5 and AC3 during photo sessions
While in Vegas earlier this year during WPPI 2011, PocketWizard recorded a video clip of me while photographing two photo sessions.
The first part of the clip shows the sequence while I work with my friends, Natalie and Chris. The final image was a dramatic B&W portrait of the couple, in the vein of old Hollywood Glamor style portraits. My description of this photo shoot appeared in that article on Tangents.
Afterwards I photographed model, Shawna, still with the idea of getting a dramatic and glamorous portrait of her, using the new PocketWizard MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 units.
In watching this clip now, I realize I was speaking too fast. A combination of nervousness and my usual manner of speech. So be ready for a rush of words.
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April 27, 2011
Continuing the photo session with Ulorin, we worked inside the hotel room for the next part. The photo above is a candid shot of Ulorin fixing her hair between changes in clothing. Ulorin’s next outfit shown in this article, was more revealing than the previous outfits during the photo session. (Just a heads-up for the Tangents readers who are surfing from their workplace.)
Photographing inside the room, I initially tried to work with just the window-light, but hit a small snag. The indirect light through the window kept changing on me as clouds moved in and out. Instead of changing my settings continually to match the light, I decided to revert to using flash to mimic the window light. This would give me consistent light.
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April 26, 2011
Ulorin Vex was one of the two models that we used in the recent workshops in San Francisco. Having seen Ulorin Vex’s personal site and portfolio on Model Mayhem, I jumped at the chance of working with her again with a photo session the day after the workshops. Working with a model as professional and striking-looking as Ulorin, was an experience. We shot several sequences with different looks and backdrops and lighting, and I’ll share more of these over the course of the next few days.
The photographs shown in this article was from a sequence we did in the passage outside my hotel room. The lighting was surprisingly simple, but I had to improvise with the limited space we had …
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April 24, 2011
manual off-camera fill-flash, controlling the contrast
In using a softbox outdoors on location, we easily get beautiful soft light. When we work indoors however, where the flash dominates, then the results can look very contrasty. The reason for this is that outdoors, the available light acts like a fill light. This is especially true when we consider our available light in our overall result and balance our flash with the available light. With the softbox being the only light source, the light, while still soft, can be too contrasty for our liking. Still, that single softbox is a lot better than hard direct off-camera flash … but it can be improved with some fill light.
The photo above of Ulorin, our model at the recent workshop in San Francisco, was lit with the 24×24 Lastolite Ezybox softbox. But we did lift the shadows with some more off-camera fill flash, bounced into the room.
Here’s the short explanation and a longer, thorough explanation of how we went about it …
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April 21, 2011
model – Ulorin Vex
A favorite image from today’s workshop in San Francisco.
Our one model, Ulorin Vex, on location.
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April 20, 2011
using two LED video lights for effect
A favorite image from today’s workshop (Dana Point, CA), was lit by two LED video lights. Our one model, Virginia, was posed against the back of a waterfall display in the hotel lobby.
When I first saw this display in the lobby, and saw how it looked when backlit by the available light in the front, I knew it would make for an interesting backdrop. Flash would even out the light too much though – especially bounce flash – so I knew this would be an ideal place for a dramatic portrait with video light. So in the late afternoon, the workshop group photographed Virginia against this display.
We resorted to two LED video lights though, since we were able to minimize a specific problem we had in using just one light …
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April 19, 2011
The webcam seminar that I presented on April 12, 2011 – Don’t Fear Your Flash!
is now available for download from the ClickinMoms website, as a 112 minute movie file.
The price: $30.00 – purchase & download via the CM site.
Don’t Fear Your Flash! Getting the Best Results from your On-Camera Flash
Webcam Seminar featuring Neil van Niekerk (April 12, 2011)
A photo session is often be a rushed, fast moving event with less than ideal light. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have great light indoors that approaches studio-quality lighting. Join Neil van Niekerk as he explains the techniques to create beautiful images while working fast, yet still getting exceptional results from equipment you already have – your on-camera speedlight.
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Last year this time, Stephanie Zettl, a more-than-occasional guest on Tangents, wrote an article with instructions on how to turn your D-SLR into a digital pinhole camera. The article was quite successful in that Gizmodo USA, Japan and Australia referenced the article! Well, Stephane is back with a follow-up article.
Stephanie is one of the top wedding photographers in St Louis, MO
digital pinhole photography day
I know what you were thinking. You were worried that we would forget World Pinhole Photography Day. But fear not!
For those of you that want to put it on your calendar, World Pinhole Photography Day is the last Sunday of April. It will take place on April 29th in 2012.
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April 18, 2011
A regular follower of the Tangents blog, Andrew Reese, posted this humorous graphic in the flash photography Flickr group.
Andrew wrote:
Got the book today. It will be much more helpful than having to look stuff up in the blog all the time, although comments and other posts are still go-to.
I got a little excited and had some fun at my own expense in PS (quick edit/composite) to show how Nerdy we can all get about OCF. It’s a composite of a quicky self portrait and a landscape from Lake Erie that I took last year. Few actions and the liquify tool in PS.
Andrew, thank you! It certainly raised a smile with me.
And if anyone is interested, here are the links for the two books:
on-camera flash _ off-camera flash
Neil vN
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