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Tangents

photo session in New York: Sarah Raley

December 18, 2012

photo session with model New York

photo session in New York – model: Sarah R

I have already showed part of the photo session with Sarah Raley, in the article, vintage photo session w/ off-camera flash. It was part of a longer on-location photo session in New York. With four changes of clothing, we aimed for a diverse look during the photo session. I’d like to share some of them here, along with some of the lighting techniques, and post-processing.

Most of the photos were taken with the Canon 5D mark II (B&H), and two zooms:
the Canon 24-70mm  f/2.8L II (B&H), and Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II (B&H).

What made the photo session easier in terms of the lighting, was the built-in radio capability of the superb Canon 600EX-RT speedlights (B&H).

With a $400 rebate until Dec 31, the Canon 5D mark II (B&H) is available right now for an incredible $1,600 from B&H. Of course, with the release of the new Canon 6D (B&H) for $2,100 it is a tough decision. Then there is also the Canon 5D mark III (B&H), which is in my opinion the best value for awesomeness.

Onto the photographs …

Lighting equipment used:

The lighting in nearly all images were with a Canon 600EX-RT speedlights (B&H) in a  Lastolite Hot Shoe EZYBOX Softbox Kit (24″x24″) (B&H) held up on a monopod by my assistant for the day. I controlled the Canon 600EX-RT with the Canon ST-E3-RT Speedlite Transmitter (B&H) on my camera.

 

photo session with model New York

camera settings:  1/125 @ f/3.2 @ 800 ISO … TTL flash
Canon 5D mark II (B&H);  Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II (B&H)
Canon 600EX-RT speedlight (B&H); Canon ST-E3-RT Transmitter (B&H)
Lastolite Hot Shoe EZYBOX Softbox Kit (24″x24″) (B&H)

I didn’t need a back-light here, since the photo was taken in Times Square, and the place is usually awash with light. So it was a matter of finding an out-of-focus background that was complimentary to the glitzy evening dress.  Doing portraits down in the crowd, there were a lot of people milling around. Wide apertures, shooting a lot, and being purposeful about my composition, gave me clean backgrounds in the images I chose from this part of the session.

The post-processing was as described in the article on Photoshop tips – retouching for portraits. However, the image’s saturation was too much, so I changed the look of the image further with a Gradient Map Adjustment layer in Photoshop. A further adjustment layer to pull down the Saturation helped too.

model photo shoot

camera settings:  1/200 @ f/5.6 @ 800 ISO … manual flash behind
Canon 5D mark II (B&H);  Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II (B&H)
Canon 600EX-RT speedlight (B&H); Canon ST-E3-RT Transmitter (B&H)

A photo from the start of the session – still trying to find a rhythm. As you can see, I over-did the backlighting a bit. (It was a flash on a light-stand behind Sarah.)

 

camera settings:  1/200 @ f/4 @ 100 ISO … TTL flash
Canon 5D mark II (B&H);  Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II (B&H)
Canon 600EX-RT speedlight (B&H); Canon ST-E3-RT Transmitter (B&H)
Lastolite Hot Shoe EZYBOX Softbox Kit (24″x24″) (B&H)

Standing on a chair, to get an elevated view, I tried to eliminate distracting background elements such as cars and buildings. I wanted the receding repetitive pattern of the brick-road as a background. But with this one image, someone walked by with a dog … and for me, the B&W image just works. The black outfit also worked with the monochrome treatment.

 

camera settings:  1/200 @ f/4 @ 100 ISO … TTL flash
Canon 5D mark II (B&H);  Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II (B&H)
Canon 600EX-RT speedlight (B&H); Canon ST-E3-RT Transmitter (B&H)
Lastolite Hot Shoe EZYBOX Softbox Kit (24″x24″) (B&H)

The boldly colorful opposite of the B&W image.

camera settings:  1/200 @ f/4.5 @ 400 ISO … manual flash
Canon 5D mark II (B&H);  Canon 24-70mm  f/2.8L II (B&H)
Canon 600EX-RT speedlight (B&H); Canon ST-E3-RT Transmitter (B&H)
Lastolite Hot Shoe EZYBOX Softbox Kit (24″x24″) (B&H)

With this image, I changed the post-processing up a bit. The basic start to most of my portrait retouching, is the use of two Photoshop filters – Shine Off and Portraiture. This is described in detail in the article, Photoshop tips – retouching for portraits. That version is shown below.

The final image (shown above), had another layer added to it though. This additional layer was selectively brushed in for parts of the background, as a Soft-Light layer. What makes it different is that it was a tone-mapped version (done via Photomatix). This brought in a semi-HDR effect on parts of the background.

The straight version:

The test shot without flash:

The pull-back shot to show the position of the light. I had to instruct my assistant to hold the softbox noticeably lower than I normally would, because I needed to get some light in under the brim of Sarah’s hat.

]

camera settings:  1/160 @ f/4 @ 800 ISO … manual flash
Canon 5D mark II (B&H);  Canon 24-70mm  f/2.8L II (B&H)
Canon 600EX-RT speedlight (B&H); Canon ST-E3-RT Transmitter (B&H)
Lastolite Hot Shoe EZYBOX Softbox Kit (24″x24″) (B&H)

This set of images had camera settings which differ slightly. This is because the light was changing, with clouds coming in, and then opening up slightly again.

Keep in mind here that with these images, the flash isn’t lighting up the entire scene. Just my subject. So this really is an exercise in balancing flash with available light.

The simplest approach is to under-expose the ambient light on my subject somewhat. Around -0.7 EV or 1 EV. And then add TTL flash to clean up the light on her.

 

 

camera settings:  1/125 @ f/4 @ 800 ISO … manual flash

model photo shoot new grok

camera settings:  1/200 @ f/4 @ 800 ISO … manual flash

These two images are amongst my favorite images during this shoot. It shows Sarah’s personality. I also love the background here – a doorway.

camera settings:  1/200 @ f/5.6 @ 400 ISO … manual flash

For this part of the photo shoot, Sarah wore this vintage dress and had a hatbox which she carried.

camera settings: 1/200 @ f/2.8 @ 640 ISO … manual off-camera flash

The details for this image is described in the separate article,  vintage photo session w/ Sarah, including the camera and flash settings.

This, and the other images in this set, were enhanced with numerous of the built-in Stylets to give a warm Vintage  feel to the photograph. I saved this as a recipe for future use and further tweaking. You can download the Vintage recipe from this link.

I changed the post-processing between these images, so they all have a slightly different look. Normally, I would aim for a consistent look and feel to the images, and keep the post-processing the same.

camera settings: 1/200 @ f/4 @ 800 ISO … manual off-camera flash

camera settings: 1/40 @ f/3.2 @ 800 ISO … manual off-camera flash

By now it had turned considerably darker, so I dropped my shutter speed. I also opened my aperture (and adjusted my flash output accordingly.)

Here is the straight image as comparison.

camera settings: 1/20 @ f/4 @ 800 ISO … manual off-camera flash

Even darker still, I dropped the shutter speed even more to bring in the available light. In the full-rez image, you can see some blur around the edges of her, where the ambient light smeared against the slightly brighter sky. But since my subject was in darkness, the flash was able to freeze camera movement in general. It’s just that it still shows up against a brighter background.

The question as to whether flash freezes action and movement, always has a complex answer … it depends. We’ll come back to this topic over time.

As you can see in the image above, there is dramatic light fall-off to the bottom of the image. This was purposely done. I asked my assistant to point the softbox upward, so that Sarah was lit only by the edge of the cone of light emanating from the softbox.

The pull-back shot, and the two comparison images so the light fall-off can be seen, compared to a more straightforward shot. As you can see, the unattractive gravel paving is too prominent in the “well-lit” shot.

Finally, Times Square! The image at the start of this article, was taken during this later part of the photo session. For a last few photos of Sarah, (on her own and with her friend), was shot with the Nikon D4  (B&H), and Nikon 24-120mm f/4 VR (B&H) lens. For this sequence, I relied on the flood of available light in Times Square.

camera settings:  1/30 @ f/4 @ 1250 ISO … available light, hand-held
Nikon D4  (B&H), and Nikon 24-120mm f/4 VR @ 24mm

With the 15 main images selected here, I wanted to show some of the thought-process during the shoot, as well as the influence post-processing has on the final result.

 

related articles:

- photo sessions with Sarah R
- flash photography essentials
- so what are your camera settings?

 

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