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Tangents

direction of light & choice of background (part 2)

August 21, 2010

positioning your subject – direction of light & choice of background

Taking cover from the rain under this awning, we ended up in the same spot where I took this available light portrait of Anelisa previously.  Looking along the wall at the same angle, the black paint of the wall reflected the light from behind, completely changing the character of the background.  Since the available light was low level, and not flattering, we added some light from an off-camera flash in a softbox …

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direction of light & choice of background (part 1)

August 20, 2010

posing your subject – direction of light & choice of background

Reinforcing the ideas from a few previous posts,
we’re going to look at that intersect where everything comes together:
- direction of light,
- choice of background,
- posing your subject,
- positioning yourself.

When we work with our subject – whether a family member or a model or anyone we’re photographing – then we have the opportunity to control at least a few aspects to make the final photograph more successful …

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sequence: setting up the lighting at a photo shoot

August 6, 2010

analysis of the lighting setup during a photo shoot

The photo above of Jessica, my assistant, shows the final lighting setup during a recent commercial shoot.  I had to photograph various people at a medical technology imaging company for use on their website and promotional material.  I had to show some of the workplace, but put the accent on the person I am photographing.

Of course, it is much easier to work with my assistant, and do test shots and changes in the setup beforehand.  Then we can change the lights and anything else we need to, until we’re happy with the results.  Then only do we call in the people we are actually photographing, and place them in position.

With this post I want to show the thought process in setting up the lighting for this photo.  There were a couple of dead ends, and a couple of adjustments as we went along …

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looking for the light

July 31, 2010

photography technique – looking for great light

This afternoon I walked around the Princeton campus with a couple, Renee and David, looking for cool spots to photograph them.  I noticed the spread of light on a wall coming through an entrance way …
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available light portrait (model – Anelisa)

July 22, 2010

photographing people – available light portrait

While unloading lighting gear from the van to shoot a last few images for a certain section for my next book, I turned around and noticed the way the light fell on Anelisa.  Beautiful portrait light.  The (cropped) pull-back shot will show why ..

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photographic composition – look at your background!

July 18, 2010

improve your composition in photography – be specific about your background

The impact in this photo of Jessica relies equally on her looks and pose, the lighting, and the background. The background was very specifically chosen by how *I* position myself in relation to my subject. The background was out of focus neon lights in Times Square. I composed the photo very tightly with a 70-200mm lens, set to 200mm. With this, I can select exactly what I want to include in the image.

For comparison, here is the wider shot, so you can get an idea of the mélange we had as a background …


[ click on the photo to see a larger image ]

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using a neutral density (ND) filter with flash

July 16, 2010

using neutral density (ND) filters with flash to control depth of field

Working in bright light, the limitation of having a maximum flash sync speed forces a small aperture on us.  That small aperture means more depth of field than we might like.

There are two ways to force a high shutter speed / wide aperture combination:
- go to high speed sync (HSS) mode. But this dramatically cuts down our power of our flash;
- use a neutral density (ND) filter …

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overpowering hard sunlight with flash

July 14, 2010

For this part of a photo session with Johannie, we worked in an alley.  The light was very uneven, with some swathes of sunlight falling directly on her.  (See the image below for the photo without flash.)  To get rid of this uneven sunlight falling on her, we have to add at least as much light on her as the brightest areas lit by sunlight. In the example above, our exposure is set to 1/250 @ f13 @ 200 ISO and we can see from the bright patch of light on her shoulder, that we’re at the edge of acceptable exposure. Any wider on our aperture, or higher on our ISO or slower on our shutter speed, and we’ll start to lose detail in the sunlit areas.

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Sarah S – an informal portrait

July 9, 2010

A quick informal portrait of a photographer friend of mine, Sarah Smith.

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photo session – Modern Gypsies – Bird Girl

July 7, 2010

Before we went in to Times Square with the Modern Gypsies, we did a quick portrait session with one of the Modern Gypsies performers, Bird Girl …

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