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June 30, 2011
multiple off-camera flash – adding some pop with back-lighting
Lea is a model I’ve worked with on previous occasions. With her striking looks and easy demeanor, she is just a pleasure to photograph. We spent some time this afternoon in down-town Manhattan, looking for interesting spots as backdrops. Jessica, (my infamous assistant with an attitude), spotted this dramatic gate and interesting glass front. It seemed like the perfect place to start the photo session, but it needed something extra to give the photos some drama.
The final image is shown here at the top, but let’s look at how we got there …
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June 1, 2011
photography exposure metering – expose for your subject
In preparation for my upcoming review of the Fuji X-100 camera, I met up with Anelisa to see how this little camera performed during an actual photo shoot. The image above was one of the photographs we ended up with. Now, there is something specific about it that I wanted to explain in a separate article, instead of it being glossed over deeper inside a camera review.
The composition is simple – I do like my compositions fairly central, it seems. Similarly, the lighting is simplicity itself – all available light. There were two main sources of light – the light inside the shopping mall entrance; and some very strong back-lighting flooding the place.
While the technique here hinged on specific exposure for the available light, there are a few crucial ideas here that I’d like to underline:
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May 9, 2011
mixing the white balance of different light sources
While we would do well to gel our flash when working in a very warm or incandescent spectrum, (such as when shooting at a venue bathed in Tungsten light), the last few articles showed how we can use it to our advantage when using different light sources with different color balance. The effect can be quite dramatic.
The examples shown have been varied:
In the first example (with Bethany as our model), we looked at using random found available light as portrait lighting. With the next example, the effect was purposely sought by gelling our flash for effect. A similar contrast in white balance can also be found by using a Tungsten-gelled LED video light in a non-tungsten environment, forcing all the daylight colors to go toward a bold blue tone. The most recent example showed how we could use the modeling light in the studio with additional flash as rim light, to give a punchy image with warm colors.
Those four examples all had entirely different scenarios, but the same idea was used in all of them to get punchy colorful images – using light sources with different white / color balance.
This image here at the top was shot with a similar set-up as the sequence where we gelled our main flash with 1/2 CTS gels to allow the background to go blue …
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May 4, 2011
using a gelled LED video light for a change in color balance
Continuing with the theme of combining dramatically different color balances in a single image, there is this striking portrait of Rebekah. She is one of our models at the workshop at Treehaven, WI, this week. Working in the fading evening light, I had Rebekah pose somewhere in the middle of a large clump of trees. I knelt down so that I could shoot up and catch the last remnants of the evening sky as the background.
The blue light filtering through the trees was then exaggerated by using an LED video light with the deep Amber gel on it. LED video lights are balanced for daylight, so the light from them is quite ‘cold’ compared to Incandescent light. By now using the specific gels that are supplied with it, you can change the color balance of the video light to match Incandescent / Tungsten light. It is normal to work with the Amber gel to shift the LED video light towards the warm spectrum of Incadescent light.
In photographing our model here, I wanted to use the warm light from the Amber-gelled LED video light to create a big jump between that and the color of our background light. (I specifically didn’t want to use the LED video light as daylight-balanced light source.) This now caused the blue-ish tones of the evening light to go to a much deeper shade of blue. The rapid fall-off in the light from the video light, gave that typical spot-light effect. This really accentuated her face.
The pull-back shots reveal just how big a jump it really was in the color between our surroundings and the video light …
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May 3, 2011
multiple off-camera flash – gelling your flash for effect
All the light you see in this image here, is from two speedlights. The blue color in the background is because I gelled my one flash. While that might give you the idea that I gelled the background flash with a blue gel, what I actually did, was gel my main flash with two 1/2 CTS gels. That’s all I had with me, but I wanted those hard cold blue tones to the background.
A single 1/2 CTS gel would take the flash to 3700K. Adding a 2nd gel didn’t take it as far as a full CTS would’ve, but closer to 3350K, going by my settings with the RAW file.
By having my main speedlight (in a softbox) now at a color temperate of around 3350K, meant the background shifted towards blue in comparison. Intended effect achieved!
Now, about the placement of the speedlights, and to explain what the spectactular background actually is ….
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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 8, 2011
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March 30, 2011
photo session – Jess B – various 85mm lenses
A fast 85mm lens is an essential addition to any camera bag, whether an f1.8 or f1.4 or even an f1.2 aperture. With their shallow depth of field, and the pleasant perspective for portraits (when not used with a super-tight composition), these lenses will have your subject just pop from the background.
Jessica and I are busy with a new project – testing various 85mm lenses – specifically for how their bokeh appears in comparison. It is proving a tad more difficult than I had hoped for to show when poor bokeh is truly distracting, and when a lens with great bokeh is immediately superior. But then, the deep-freeze temperatures here recently hasn’t helped us either in scouting for locations. But we’ll still get there. (So this is not the comparative review yet.)
In the meantime, I wanted to show a few images off. They were all shot at wide apertures, using only the available light wherever we were.
The photograph above was taken on the steps inside a train station, using only the available light streaming in. In posing Jessica, I made sure that the direction of light made sense in creating open light on her face.
1/250 @ f1.4 @ 800 ISO
Canon 5D mk II (B&H); Canon 85mm f1.2 II (B&H)
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