A quick video and something a little more annoying...

Just a quick update tonight. Basically I just wanted to share a new video blog that my mate and I have produced regarding how to use the brilliant Nikon CLS [Creative Lighting System] (including i-TTL) wireless flash system. This video is the first in a three or four part series covering all aspects of the CLS system. This introductory videos shows the following information;

1. Setting your camera menu to turn on Commander mode if you are using the pop-up flash on your Nikon D700, D300s, D300, D200 etc. We also show how to set the on-camera menus for a Fujifilm S5Pro,

2. How to set your Nikon SB-900 to Commander mode,

3. How to set your Nikon SB-900 to Remote mode,

4. How to set your Nikon SB-800 to Commander mode,

5. How to set your Nikon SB-800 to Remote mode, and;

6. How to set your Nikon SB-600 to Remote mode,

In order to appease the YouTube gods I had to stop there as our 10 minutes were up. In the next couple of videos we will show how the system works in practice and how you can use different groups and channels to your advantage. We even plan to throw a bone to you Canon guys (as I feel a little sorry for you!) and demonstrate how the Canon E-TTL system works over on the other side of the fence. But you’ll have to wait a little while longer for that one…

Anyway, have a look at the video.

And finally, as I mentioned last week, I regularly look at my website stats. I do this for a number of reasons. I like to see how much traffic is passing through, how many new and unique visitors there are and what pages are being viewed over others and so on. I also like to look at whom the referring sites are that referred traffic to my site, or which sites have directed visitors to my site.

I had noticed a somewhat familiar name coming up on the list for a little while now, but I mostly ignored it. Tonight however I decided to look a little closer. It appears that this person has decided to basically copy ALL of the text from certain pages on my website and paste it on theirs. And not just any pages, but the ones describing the packages that we offer our clients. That’s just not on in my book. It seems that there are still people out there with so few brain cells that they feel they have to steal someone else’s ideas and hope that nobody notices.

I sent them a polite email this evening suggesting that they change or remove the wording from their website. Let’s see if I get a response… I’m not getting my hopes up. Damn Rockingham bogans!! Ok I’m done…

The old makes way for the new...

Well, I’m still here, just busier than the one legged man at the “you know what” kicking competition! It’s always funny, but as some of you know I keep a fairly close eye on my website stats. Its really encouraging to see the number of hits on my website steadily growing from one month to the next, and it continues to grow from one year to the next. That’s cool – and the number of clients that we book seems to grow in accordance with website visitors – makes sense huh. Well, every December for the last three years visits to the website drop dramatically but the number of bookings we take for the month are about triple for the rest of the year. Just though I’d share that…

So, while business is good I took the liberty of buying a few new goodies in the last couple of weeks. The first was a new Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 HSM lens from B&H Photo in New York. The second is a pair of newly released remote TTL radio triggers from eBay. I’ll get to the triggers in a moment but firstly, the lens.

For those of you who do not know, my workhorse lens is a Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8D EX DG. These are a good value for money lens that offer reasonably good optical performance for a great price. In fact, at last count I have owned three of them. However this lens does have a downfall, and that is at wide open apertures it is known for being somewhat soft – it really doesn’t start to get sharp until about f/4+, which kinda defeats the purpose of having a constant f2.8 aperture through it’s focal length.

Enter stage left the newly (well, it’s kinda new…) released HSM version of this lens. In fact, its full name is a Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX ED HSM. What do all the acronyms stand for? Well, the important ones are IF [Internal Focussing] which means to ensure stability in focusing, this lens moves the inner lens groups without changing the lens' physical length; and HSM [Hyper Sonic Motor] which means this lens uses a motor driven by ultrasonic waves to provide a quiet, high-speed Auto Focus. It’s also almost a full 100g heavier than its older brother and weighs in at about 800g. That means there's a lot of glass hiding in there...

Optically speaking – this new lens is a cracker. You can read a really good review written by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about here. Suffice to say when it comes to the optical performance of this lens, it is only marginally pipped by the awesome Nikon AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED (which costs $1000 more) but the Sigma totally out performs the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM which costs $500 more. Cool.

So what does all this mean? Well the comparison image above shows a pretty good example of what I am talking about. The two images were taken showing the somewhat grotty keypad from my fax machine, and they both show a portion of the middle of the image enlarged to 100%. For both of the images I was using the [V] on the keypad as the focus point. Both were taken using a Fujifilm S5 Pro D-SLR body set to manual mode. Both shots were taken at 70mm, f/2.8 @ 1/2 second shutter speed, ISO 100. There really is no comparison as you can see, the image at the top (the new lens) is sooo much better at f/2.8.

Why is this so important you ask? Well I like to do a lot of portraits at larger apertures and now it means I can go all the way out to f/2.8 and not worry about sharpness issues. I was also having problems at weddings with the old lens. This is because in the reception I like to keep the aperture around f/3.2, which at ISO 800 gives a nice bright exposure when coupled with my SB-900 bouncing light off the roof. However the images were still a tad too soft for my liking, with some images coming out looking like they were not focussed properly; but is was just the lens performing badly.

I shot my first wedding yesterday with this lens and I have to say; although I have just had a preliminary glance at the images, it was great. I think I am going to like this lens even more than its older brother…

And finally, I bought myself a couple of new triggers. In a previous blog post I gave a demonstration of the very reliable Bowens Pulsar triggers. These things are great and work without skipping a beat, and I have never been in a situation where I have gone out of radio range with them. But they are not an intelligent trigger. Let me qualify that – they are only good for triggering a device by sending a trigger pulse to what ever is plugged into the receiver at the other end. There is not a lot of mathematics involved in this process and it means that you have to set your camera and your flash unit both to manual mode. Now, when you have lots of time this is not an issue. But it does mean that you have to unpack your light meter, get a reading of the ambient light in the scene, set your flash to [x] power level, take a meter reading of the flash to see how it compares to the ambient light reading, repeat the process again once you have adjusted the flash output, and keep repeating this process until all is good according to your light meter and you have figured out in your head how much brighter (to make it the key light) or softer (to make it a fill light) the flash output needs to be in balance with the ambient light. This is of course time consuming but it works really well at giving you a constant exposure, shot to shot, as nothing is changing that is going to affect your exposure. The time issue is a big one however, especially on a wedding shoot where you HAVE to make it happen there and then, with the minimum of fuss as the bride has given you a list of 100 places they want to have their photos taken in that short space of time between the wedding ceremony and the reception.

So because of this, I usually leave my Bowens triggers at home and either use a reflector, simple (dare I say it) on camera flash, or if I can find some shade somewhere I’ll use the Nikon i-TTL system. i-TTL is brilliant. It allows you to get a full metered; i.e. automatic flash output to obtain optimum flash exposure, while using the flash wirelessly off-camera. It is instantaneous, requires no calculations or manual adjustments on your behalf and will give you a perfect exposure, well; the greater majority - about 95% - of the time. But under normal circumstances the flash on your camera (master) and the off camera flash (remote) have to be in line of sight, and have to be fairly close together so that the infra-red signal communicating between the two flashes can be seen by the units. This is virtually impossible in bright daylight unless you are within a few feet of the remote flash – which kinda defeats the purpose of having off camera flash to begin with. As I said earlier, the only other option is to go indoors or find some shade somewhere.

Enter the TTL flash triggers. I have been waiting a long time for PocketWizard to come out with their i-TTL triggers for Nikon, and there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. So, I took a bit of a gamble and bought these triggers. They have been causing a bit of a stir on some of the biggest camera/lighting blogs around the world. They apparently work really well in TTL mode (single flash unit) but I have not yet seen any results of how they will work in i-TTL mode. i-TTL gives you the ability to have more than one flash unit contribute to the exposure and also assign different flash units different power levels and even have different groups of flashes all operating at once. Very Cool.

I have yet to receive them but I am hoping they will be the answer to my problems. I will certainly let you know on the next blog post how they work and exactly how reliable they are, but initial googling have found some, albeit sketchy; encouraging results. Time will tell! I also intend to produce a video or two on how to use i-TTL to wirelessly trigger your flashes, sorry Canon guys you will have to look elsewhere for now, but I may be able to wrangle something in the near future.

Ok, I’m outta here, I’ll let you all know about the new TTL triggers (fingers crossed they work!) and I’ll catch you all soon!

Taking time out... and staying in control...

Hi everyone. Hey can you guess what kind of week it has been? HA. Yep – flat out.

The entire latter half of this week was spent at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre shooting the WALIS International Forum 09. This was basically three full (and I mean full) days of shooting seminars, keynote speakers and an Awards night to boot. I pretty much used the Nikon D700 as my main camera, shooting inside the conference rooms and theatres at ISO1600, no flash, and hand holding my 70-200mm telephoto lens with shutter speeds of about 1/40th to 1/80th second. Rest assured I have perfected my “sniper grip” and was able to get shake free images even when zoomed all the way into 200mm. Cool.

The highlight (pun intended) of my week however was today I was able to participate in a wonderful workshop held by the awesome Louis Pang. Louis is an award winning wedding and portrait photographer who is sought after the world over by his prospective clients. Have a look at his website if you have not done so already. Wonderful stuff. What made this particular workshop better than any I have been to is that Louis is such a nice approachable guy. Some courses and workshops I have attended have had good content teamed with an arrogant or egotistical teacher. Bad recipe. Not the case today! All of you really missed a good one today…

Anyway, now that I have made it pretty clear what a nice and approachable guy Louis was as well as being a phenomenal photographer, lets quickly talk about the images in this blog post.

It’s a sad reality for me that in the day to day photography I do lately is pretty safe. Safe in the fact that I have learned what works well to get good images with the minimum of fuss. I have discussed this in a previous blog post for those who really care to remember. The point of the matter is that when the pressure is on and the client has their money on the table; right there and then is not a good idea to try and get all creative. Just deliver what the client wants – thanks very much and have a nice day.

Therefore, invariably I tend to live in [A] Aperture Priority mode on all of my cameras. I set the aperture to the effect I wish to achieve and then let the camera figure out the actual exposure all by itself. And it usually does a reasonable job. So with this in mind it was really refreshing when the very first thing Louis told us to do was to put our cameras into manual mode and leave them there. Ok.

Oh yeah, I should point out that each and every image in this blog post is how it was straight out of the camera. No Photoshop or any sort of manipulation other than to apply the watermark and reduce the file size for the web. So what I want to do now is just give you all a quick run-down on these images, how they were taken and what/where the light source was.

So, the first image in this blog shows Jess from Chadwick’s up against one of the tall pine trees on the grounds of UWA. I love the way the natural light looks on Jess’ perfect skin in this shot. So, do you think it is over exposed? I thought so too, but now think about it again. What really is over-exposure? Am I loosing any image detail in Jess’ skin, eyes or face? No. Is the background blown out slightly? Yes. So what – it’s all about the effect that you are trying to achieve right? This shot was taken with my 70-200mm f/2.8 telephoto at 200mm and f/2.8, 1/200th second shutter at ISO400 with 100% natural daylight. This was two full stops over what the camera thought was “correct exposure”. There are no reflectors or foam core panels in this shot. I love the way the image appears to have had the diffuse glow / Gaussian Blur filter treatment in Photoshop. Not the case folks. Like I said, this was straight out of the camera. The gold hue to the image was achieved by manually setting the white balance on the camera to [Cloudy].

The next image shows Terrance (forgive me if I have your name wrong – can someone help me out here?) in one of the hallways in the building we were in. He is standing directly across from an open window. This image was taken once again with the 70-200mm f/2.8 telephoto at 155mm, handheld, f/2.8, 1/40th second at ISO200. I like the way here that the white wall he is leaning against is filling in the all of the shadows on the right side of his face, and how the background is nicely blurred by the bokeh of the lens.

Moving right along, this is Jess back out side against the exterior of the building. Can you tell what the light source is in this image? a) The sun or b) artificial flash? The answer is ‘b’! I purposefully set the white balance on the camera to cloudy in this shot to make it look like late afternoon sun. This shot was taken at 2pm. This time I used my 24-70mm f/2.8 lens at f/2.8 and 70mm, 1/250th second shutter at ISO200. The camera was set to +1 stop over-exposure according to the in-built meter and the flash was set to -1 stop under-exposure. The flash was a Nikon SB-900 shooting through one of Louis’ Lastolite Softboxes and was being triggered by another SB-900 on my camera in i-TTL mode. The whole soft box/flash assembly was placed on a monopod and held up about 1 ½ metres above Jess’ head. I love the way the light is particularly soft on Jess and also the overall warmth of the image made simply by making the aforementioned white balance change. Cool.

Next image. This one was pretty much the same scenario as the previous one with the exception that the metering was reversed; that being the camera was set to -1 under-exposure according to the in-built meter and the flash was set to +1 stop over-exposure. This was in an attempt to bring the background down a little, which was a little hard to do in the afternoon overhead sunlight. So yeah, the flash was fired through a soft box, which was on a monopod and this time about 2 meters away from Jess so it would spread a little bit more. I used the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 26mm, still at f/2.8 at 1/640th second shutter speed at ISO 200. I do like this image but it isn’t my best for the day. In hindsight I could have used my 12-24mm ultra wide angle lens and got the blue sky and top of the building into frame. But still, it isn’t that bad…



Ok, almost done. And thanks for reading this far down the page. Good for you! We were running out of time so we headed back inside for a change of scenery. Also because of the time issue (we were shooting in groups of four and only had limited time each to photograph Jess) we stuck with the flash/soft box/monopod arrangement as it was working so well. I am not really happy with how Jess’ hair is all bunched up against the railing here – alas I did not notice that when I took the shot. This again was my 24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 46mm, f/4.0 at 1/100th second shutter speed at ISO1000. The camera was set to -1/3 stop under expose according to the inbuilt meter and the flash was set to -1 stop. I originally took the shot at ISO200 but the background was too dark for my liking. So the shutter and aperture and flash were all left alone and I only upped the ISO.

Oh yeah, I think it relevant to clarify it here, but you may have noticed that I have been quoting camera over/under exposure “according to the inbuilt meter”. This is for very good reason. When you are shooting in Aperture (AP) or Shutter (SP) priority modes, if you wish to shift the whole exposure up or down you can use the exposure compensation function on your camera which automatically shifts the shutter speed up or down if you are in AP mode or the aperture up and down if you are in SP mode. So clearly; if you have everything locked down in manual mode this exposure compensation is NOT going to work. The camera will let you make the exposure compensation adjustment with the controls but it does not have any effect on your aperture and shutter speeds that have already been locked in and will therefore not affect the image. So you have to do exposure compensation manually also by adjusting your aperture (for controlling the amount of flash in your image) or shutter speed (for controlling the amount of ambient light getting into the image). Simple!

Ok, last one. I had actually finished my allocated time-slots with Jess but this was a bit of an opportunistic shot! One of my fellow workshop attendees was struggling with her manual camera settings, so while Louis gave her a hand I made a couple of posing changes to Jess and managed to snap this shot. I’m glad I did, it’s my favourite from the whole day. I used my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 85mm, f/3.5 at 1/100th second shutter speed – handheld, and ISO 320. In hindsight the background is a little distracting and I could have dropped the ISO down to 100ish… but I LOVE the light on Jess’ face in this image. Gorgeous.

So, there you go. Thanks again to Louis and his wife for putting on a fantastic day – and one that I will remember for some time to come.

Ok, well I think that well and truly wraps up this blog post. Take care everyone and I’ll talk to you all soon!

Still alive and snapping...

I know I say it every blog – but bloody hell time files when… you have lots to do!

This week’s blog post sees me back at the beach – but this time I was photographing a local clothing designers outfits for children; and she also imports jewellery.

Some of you may have seen the Facebook photo I posted showing the set-up for the kids shots. It involved a single speedlight shooting thru my new softbox that I had not had the opportunity to use. I initially had my Nikon SB-900 set up in the softbox, but it would not trigger using Nikons brilliant i-TTL wireless trigging. Hmmm I thought; and a few other things. Ok, so I turned off i-TTL, set the D700 and SB-900 to manual, grabbed a couple of my Bowens Pulsar radio triggers and tried again. Still nothing. I started to sweat! This is not good; and the clients were not all that impressed judging by the looks on their faces as I kept running back and forth to my camera bag getting this thing and that in an effort to fix the situation.

Then it clicked – pun intended. It seems that the speedlight mount on the softbox was shorting the hot shoe contacts on the SB-900, meaning that the flash was refusing to trigger due to conflicting information it thought it was receiving through the hot shoe. So, I switched out the SB-900 for my Nikon SB-800 and everything started to work.

It’s funny – I have heard and read a thousand times that you should never try out new things when the pressure is on and you have to get the goods. I guess I was just a little lazy. I had tried out the softbox prior to the shoot, but only for about 5 minutes the day before at home, and in hindsight I must have been using the SB-800 because everything worked perfectly.

So anyway, back to the shoot. For the children’s shots the sun was out and the glare from the white sand meant the flash only had to deal with the shadows around their eyes caused by the overhead sun. I ended up positioning the soft box only about 1.5 meters away from the subject and used it in manual mode, setting the power to full whack; 1/1 output to cope with the bright conditions. And it worked pretty well.

As it turned out, the model in the images attached to this blog post (who’s name I forget – sorry!) was quite late and we had already gone over the allotted time for the shoot. The great thing about this was however that the sunlight was quickly fading and the clouds started rolling in. So I put away the Pulsar triggers, got my SB-900 back onto the D700 and turned i-TTL back on also. The clouds were rolling in fast and we only had about 15 minutes of usable sunlight left so I had to move quickly but I have to say I am pretty happy with the shots. I love the way that the soft box has controlled the spill from the flash. It is evident on the models face that she is being lit by the flash but there is no shadows being cast by the flash on the sand behind the chair.

I managed to finish the shoot, thank the client, pack up and hike back to the car, load the car and get in. And then it poured with rain. A lot of rain! That pretty good timing I think!

Catch you all soon. Take care.

Thank God that's over... but I miss it already...

Hey – guess what? It’s another quick blog post! I think I have had sufficient time to catch my breath from this weekends activities. As some of you know, I ended up getting a slight reprieve in that two of this weekends six shoots got postponed due to models being ill or otherwise unavailable. That’s fine, the client has re-scheduled for a couple of weeks time, so that’s good.

The wedding shoot went well, even though I ended up getting soaked – twice – while shooting the bridal party in the middle of Kings Park. The chauffer came to the rescue of the bridal party with a swag of huge golf umbrellas under his arm, but nothing for the lowly photographer I’m afraid. Suffice to say that I can tell you all with full confidence that the Nikon D700 D-SLR camera body and SB-900 Speedlight are definitely 100% “weather-proof”!! As for the SB-800 speedlight being used as a remote off-camera light via Nikon i-TTL and my Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 lens – well so far so good but I am keeping an eye on them; especially the lens. I really hope no moisture managed to work it’s way inside the body of the lens. I took it, along with everything else out of my (damp) camera bag as soon as I got back, letting it just re-acclimatize to room temperature without excessively altering its temperature in the hope that any potential moisture issues will just go away. I used that lens for two studio shoots this morning and again this afternoon for the beach shoot and all was ok, I did not notice any unusual flare or distortions, so fingers crossed…

Oh yeah, the beach shoot. As those of you with a keen eye may have noticed, the image I have attached to this blog post was taken from the last shoot of this hectic weekend. Layla is a brand new model whom I was happy to provide a start to her portfolio. I tried to keep the lighting as subtle as possible for this shot and I think I did it pretty well. Layla is being lit on her left side by my Nikon SB-900 in wireless i-TLL mode. I wanted to keep the aperture fairly wide open for this shot, so I used the high speed flash sync (AutoFP is I think what it's called) feature Nikon are famous for. The camera was set to aperture priority mode, ISO 200, 1/1600^th second shutter speed @ f/4.0. I dialled in -1 stop exposure compensation for the flash. I like the way this image looks naturally lit, only the shadow thrown by Layla’s left arm against her torso gives it away. It was quite bright this afternoon so I wanted to use a really fast shutter speed to tone down the exposure instead of having to resort to shooting at f/22. I think I managed to achieve that!

I really had fun, amongst all of the stress this weekend. I really am disappointed that it’s back to the grind in a few short hours. Needless to say I am looking forward to doing it all again, very soon; this coming weekend is looking almost as busy at this stage! Bring it on I say… After all, one only becomes a better photographer by taking more images, and more… and more… you get the picture (pun intended).

Ok, I’m outta here again, catch you all later.

On the fly update...

Yet another quick blog post to let you all know how this weekend of shooting is going. The first of six shoots between now and Sunday evening took place this evening at our Perth based Photography Studio, a shoot with Amee. She is a new model who has just signed up with Perth’s own Xtreem modelling agency.

Amee has only done a couple of photo shoots before so she did very well considering. The pose you see in the image was one that she chose to do; and I think it works well with the lighting of the set.

No prizes for guessing the lighting scenario… it’s my favourite White seamless (yes, that’s right – it’s white!) backdrop with a single overhead light source with the beauty dish modifier with the grid spot attached. Simple yet effective… and it takes about 2 ½ minutes to set up…

I’m outta here. I’ll try to post more updates over the course of the weekend.

No rest for the... busy photographer!

Hey everybody. Well as usual it has been a busy week and a half, and I have to say – I love it. But, and mercifully for you all, it means that this will be a pretty short blog post!

The images I have included are a selection of shots taken from a fashion shoot I did last weekend. The vision (pun intended) was to use the long straight stretch of road as the runway, but the road edge also serves as a nice set of lead in lines drawing the eye to the model.

Lighting was a little tricky for this shoot. As Google limits the number of images I can put on the blog, I have placed a couple of images on my website here of the rig I used. The tricky thing about it is that I did not have an assistant for the shoot, so everything had to be pretty much “Set and Forget”.

At the risk of stating the obvious, for a fashion shoot the hero of the image is the outfit, the models are (sorry girls!) mere hangers for the outfits to hang on. Of course though I wanted to light the models face a little more than the outfit to create a more balanced image. I guess the point I am trying to make here is that for portraiture or modelling photography, the lighting is primarily (as a rule) only on the subjects face.

I wanted to try and position the models in the shade created by the trees and overpower the shadows using artificial and reflected light. For lighting the models outfit I used the reflector mounted on the boom stand. This had to be repositioned/double checked for every outfit as of course the sun was slowly setting in the late afternoon sky. I basically aimed the light from the reflector at the models hip, but in reality it was lighting from their ankle to their shoulder.

This left my beloved beauty dish to light the models face and shoulders. I took the grid spot that is almost permanently attached to the beauty dish off as I wanted a little more spread on the light to give a more natural feel, and if you look at the images you cannot see any shadow on the road from that light source which would otherwise confuse the shadows on the other side of the models being created by the gorgeous afternoon sunlight. I was pretty happy with that. Point to note: as you look at the image, the beauty dish and reflector were on the left (models right side). The flash head itself was a Bowens Gemini 500WS powered by a Bowens Travel Pack battery pack, and the whole thing was triggered by using Bowens Pulsar radio triggers. All of which leads me nicely into this week’s video…

We have mentioned a few times in previous videos about how I always trigger the studio lights by using the Bowens Pulsar radio triggers, so this video goes into a little detail as to how they work and are configurable for a variety of uses and multiple lighting set-ups at once.

Well, that’s it for this blog post. Take care everyone and I’ll catch you next time!

Are you Hungry?

Hmmm… what to write this week. One thing is for sure – it has been hard to try and do anything photography related in the last few days. My day job has been crazy busy and is taking up pretty much all of my time lately. I had even brought home stuff to do over the weekend while I would otherwise be perusing photography related activities… that’s gotta stop!

One good thing to come of all this though is that it has really fuelled my enthusiasm for photography. I’m hungry for more. Right now as I am typing this I am hatching a little plan in my head to do a location fashion shoot this coming weekend. I have had a spot picked out for some time now that has never really come to fruition but I think I have procrastinated long enough… so more on that soon.

Time to do a little preaching; to myself, just for a minute anyway. I hope I am not the only one out there that feels this way. If you are honest with yourself I hope you can relate to this for a moment too. But whenever I am away from photography, even if it is just for a short time, I tend to get in a bit of a hardcore rut. I start to take a look back through recent shoots, recent clients and recent personal projects. I start to get down. I think that I am the worst photographer in history. None of the images I take look any good in my opinion. I try different shoots – different ideas and with different models. Nothing seems to work. Can you imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon a video by one of my peers Zack Arias. He had made a fantastically inspiring video called “Edit: Transform”. It appears that I am not the only one that feels like this from time to time after all. Have a look…

The strange thing is that Zack is a phenomenal photographer. Have a quick look at his blog. One word describes his work; awesome. Awesome in the biblical sense. Wow. How can this guy feel the same as me? I guess we are all human huh.

So, with Zack’s narrative soundtrack lingering in my mind, I plan to get out there as much as I can this next week. Like they say – when you feel like you’ve been bucked off the horse, the best thing to do is get back on. That’s me. Hi-ho Silver!!

I’m going to finish this weeks post with a quick little tutorial video. It describes how to do a quick 5 minute make-over on a portrait image using the Spot Healing Brush tool in Photoshop CS4 and then the Soften Skin Adjustment brush tool in Lightroom 2. Why do I use both programs to edit one image? Well, Lightroom has a spot removal tool, but it’s more for removing sensor dust spots from a series of consecutive images. What I want to do is a unique in-depth edit on one image; that requires Photoshop. Anyway I hope the video tells a story for you. I know the sound is really awful... just turn your headphones up a little bit... sorry!

Ok everybody – have a great week ahead. I might see you out there. I’ll be the one with the camera around my neck…

The greatest photographer you know is... you!

Well, unless you have been living on Mars for this last week – you would know that there was a new all-singing, all-dancing, and all-kickassing app released for all of us iPhone users. The Best Camera app is the brainchild of Chase Jarvis and his creative team. The name comes from his long running campaign that the best camera you have is the one that's with you. Very true.

This app is great. It allows you to capture, edit and then share an image all within the one program. Gone are the days of having to use this app for cross-processing, that app for saturation and this app for applying a cool vignette and finally uploading it with yet another Twitter or Facebook app. So Chase, kudos to you.

I have spent a bit of time playing with the app this weekend and it is pretty cool. It’s not the messiah for me, I still find myself going to my beloved CameraKit for more subjective image editing; but I do like the way Best Camera is a one stop shop for when the creative urge strikes… which will do as my lead in for tonight’s blog post.

This particular topic has been bugging me for a little while; and although I am mostly over it, I thought it was still worth a mention.

You see, I have mentioned before that I follow a few of my peers on Twitter and Facebook. A couple of them like to post silly meaningless images like I do. Sometimes they are a waste of space and sometimes they might be a snap of something strange in the street, a peculiar situation or literally just a pile of poop on the sidewalk. The thing that amazes me though is that just by the mere fact that the image has been uploaded by one of these guys, the world at large seems to be in amazement of the photographic prowess of the person in question. Come on! It’s a pile of crap, literally! Then I read the comments posted by readers next to the image… “no one can photograph poop like you can”, or “wow, that is the most amazing twig in the middle of the road that I have ever seen”. But my favourite is when someone says “you see the most amazing things [insert famous photographers name here]”.

I don’t wanna get too much higher on my soap box so I’ll back off! The fact of the matter is that we all see these sorts of things every day. A totally empty parking garage. A drink can in the middle of the freeway. Yes, a steaming fresh one in the middle of your favourite park. So what’s the difference between you and these photographers? Nothing. Absolutely nothing; except they grabbed their camera (i.e. cell phone) and took advantage of the situation.

I still make an effort to take an interesting snap whenever I can. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know this already. I guess all I am trying to say here is that I encourage you to do the same. Chase says it the best in his intro video for Best Camera when he says “right now, there are 10 amazing shots all around you just waiting to be taken”. He’s right. Does anyone remember the old blog post I wrote about taking five photos in five minutes within five paces? Well, the same rules apply. I’ll admit, sometimes it’s hard. But sometimes it’s really easy. We all carry our mobile phones with us, and 99% of them have cameras. Put them to use. Start to look for interesting things in your everyday surroundings. On the way to work, on the bus, or stuck in traffic like me. Train yourself to be on the lookout. You’ll be surprised how much you’ll see!

Ok, that’s enough of a rant from me for now. Normal programming will resume next week; I’ll try to have a new video for you all. Until then take care… and keep snapping!

Less of the “how” and more of the “why”…

Here we are again, another week has gone. This last week has been full of just about every different aspect of photography that you could imagine… almost. Probably the most stressful part of the week gone was the fashion shoot that we held at our Perth based photography studio, here in Kelmscott.

Overall I am pretty happy with the images and the client was over the moon – so that’s good. A very brief collection of images are shown above.

As you saw in the previous blog posts, I was very eager to try out the new parabolic umbrella that I had just received from the wonderful folks at Paul C. Buff in the Nashville USA. In the days preceding the shoot I had tried a few different scenarios – moving the umbrella from one side of the studio to the other, focussing the beam, this angle and that and I have to say I was a little worried that it wasn’t going to live up to the very large expectations that I had heard of it.

This all went away though once Chloe from Chadwick Models stepped in front of the lens. I remember looking through my somewhat extensive catalogue of fashion magazines; which I often do for inspiration and to nick the odd pose or three, and wondering how the photographers were able to achieve a gorgeously soft full length light that encapsulated the model and at the same time left basically no shadows behind the models except by their feet. I for a long time thought it was achieved by using a strip softbox, so I went a bought one to try it out. It was close, but there was way too much shadow behind the models. Hmmm. Then I saw a video about a fashion shoot and the photographer was using one of the Profoto Parabolic Umbrellas. Problem solved!

After a little bit of finessing I was able to get the light positioned just were I wanted it to produce a lovely full length light. It was amazing too, that despite it’s 7 foot span, it was actually focussing the light so much that I was getting quite a bit of fall off along the top of the backdrop!

I was listening to one of my favourite photography podcasts the other day and I remember the photographer saying that his followers wanted to hear less of the “how” and more of the “why”. So, here goes. Why did I use the parabolic umbrella? Well if you want to produce beautifully even wrapping light with minimal shadow this is the puppy for you. Why do I like the umbrella? Despite its size it is not overpowering. I love the catch lights it gives in the subjects eyes. I love how soft it is. I love how the light wraps around my subject.

On this shoot I also used my beloved beauty dish with its grid attachment. It gives a very similar light on the subjects face to the parabolic umbrella but it falls off quite quickly. I really like the way the light from it totally falls off towards the edges of the backdrop. From the images above – you can tell that the ones on the left are from the parabolic umbrella and the ones on the right are from the gridded beauty dish.

Finally – why did I give the images a green cross-processed and de-saturated finish? Well the client and I decided that this finish really suited the same green-and-grey colours in the fabric of her designer garments. I ended up doing a couple of other different sets of tonal effects on the images but these were my favourites. If your looking at an un-calibrated monitor right now you are probably missing the whole effect and are just seeing a grey and green mess... its a shame really, they do look great I assure you!

And to finish; this afternoon I had a really great artistic nude shoot with a local model. It was a little bit different as the theme of the shoot was “anonymity”. Hence in almost every image you can see the models head but it is turned away or in shadow so you can’t really tell who it is. I was inspired by the work of Pascal Baetens and wanted to try and interpret his ideas - which I think we ended up doing fairly well… stay tuned for those images in the coming week or so.

Take care everyone. Bye… for now.

Super Quickie Pre Shoot Update...

This is a super quick pre-shoot update for today’s fashion shoot.

The client has requested that we use a white paper backdrop, but just rolled down to floor level, the model will be standing on the floorboards instead of the paper. I have set up four different lights as shown in the somewhat dodgy iPhone image. All are single light set-ups for simplicity of lighting and shadows on the models. We wanna showcase the designers clothes not how good I am at setting up multiple lights in the studio.

Parabolic Umbrella

Beauty Dish with Grid attachment

Straight bowl reflector for harsh shadows on the backdrop

Ring flash

I’ve made a very quick and VERY low-tech video showing all of these set-ups which I’ll post along with images from the shoot itself later this evening.

Wish me luck!

Playing with the Parabola...

I know what you are thinking – three blog posts in three days… what’s going on?

Well today my 86” Parabolic Light Modifier Umbrella (PLM) showed up from Paul C. Buff all the way in Nashville, Tennessee USA. It only took 72 hours to get here too – well done UPS! The image here should give a little bit of an indication of the sheer size of this beast.

Now, I am a little restricted in my studio space with it's eight and a half foot ceilings but after a little bit of playing around with positioning angles and heights I was able to get a few nice single light set-ups. Shadows can be controlled depending on how close or far the light is from the subject and the angle to which it is positioned. Nice. David Griffin has done a wonderful review of this product on the Studiolighting.net website; some of which reads –

“The light pattern and quality created by the PLM is nothing short of incredible. Paul C. Buff has created something that's amazingly CHEAP, versatile, and even practical! From the smaller 42" PLM to the larger 86" PLM this is THE light mod to own. Imagine this, go out on a non-windy summer day under 12 o'clock devil light… you need to overpower the sun but don't have a flash over 160 watts. Pull out a sandbagged PLM 42" or larger and Get Ta Shootin! In my test I could pretty much overpower the sun with F16, ISO100 at 1/250th with a 100 watt bare bulb flash from about 4.5 feet away or closer! Its safe to say that this is my new favourite light modifier. I'm shocked that it’s not being hailed all over the net. But that's okay I'm a trailblazer anyway - you'll see what I've done with it in my next magazine spread!

The PLM is by far the most revolutionary light modifier I have seen. I without a doubt or restraint challenge everyone to find a more versatile 7ft light modifier for $112.91 or less!!! If you do, send it too me so I can A) review it and B) start using it! As this item quickly goes to the top of my cheap list… I say hey… GET THIS tool… and you know what… GET TA SHOOTIN!”

So there you go; a versatile light modifier that has a multitude of uses, and it's about $5000AUD cheaper than the Profoto alternative. I have a fashion shoot for a client this weekend that I am eager to try this puppy out for! I will be posting images from that shoot so you can see the results of the light produced by the PLM

The last image below shows the cool and rather unique catch lights that the PLM makes in the subjects eyes – which I like very much. I think I am going to be using this thing quite a lot…

How to shoot a fashion show when you're not supposed to be shooting a fashion show...

Just a quickie again tonight… this evening my friend Jonathan and I headed out to see the Morrison show at Perth Fashion Festival. We bought tickets and thought we would just show up and take some photos like we did on Sunday gone. Not so.

First we had to get past the girl on the door; kind of the assistant organiser (she actually reminded us of Anne Hathaway’s character in “The Devil wears Prada"!) then we were faced with the “security guard” who looked more like he should be in a Benny Hill movie (showing my age??) and then the event co-ordinator herself came out to talk to us. We were told on no uncertain terms that there was no room and we would not be able to shoot. Great.

Anyway we got inside finally and discovered we must have got the last 2 tickets on sale as we were right up in the far corner of the room and the view was mediocre at best. Nonetheless I was determined to take some images come hell or being thrown out so these images are the result. I realise they are far from perfect but they tell a story… kinda…

Oh, and BTW once the show got underway there was more than enough room to fit about 4 more photographers on the shooting platform - yet instead I had to sit up in the top corner of the room taking mediocre shots when Jonathan and I could have been on the shooting platform taking awesome shots. Go figure.

PS – please do have a look at the image gallery on my website – www.timography.net. Once again I was blown away at just how clean the images are that the D700 took – I was at ISO2000 and I challenge you to find a bit of chroma noise. The images are just so squeaky clean. Love it. Seriously love it.

No time to scratch one's self... and some new stuff...

Holy cow – I know I say it like every blog post – but geez it’s been a busy couple of weeks! Clients, shoots, new equipment, new software, new studio accessories, physiotherapists, more clients, more shoots, post production coming out of my… well, you know what.

So am I forgiven for not posting a new blog entry for a week or two? To summarise the last couple of weeks; my new Nikon D700 arrived freshly packed from those good guys at B&H Photo in New York. I am still getting to grips with it but it is awesome, but we already knew that right. I still love my old Fuji’s but the D700 is a welcome addition. This also meant that I had to look for some new tethered shooting software. I have been using Fujifilm’s Hyperutility Software in the studio and I have become very attached (pun intended) to the idea of shooting tethered in the studio. It is invaluable for a number of reasons. Once you have tried it you will not go back.

So anyway, I had to find a new alternative. I found it in the shape of Phase One’s newly revised Capture One Pro 4.8 software. It’s amazing. But more on that later…

Today saw me and a very good friend at the Perth Fashion Festival 2009 – Style Oasis fashion parades. Together we had applied for media accreditation but due to the "overwhelming number of applicants we were unsuccessful." That didn’t mean that we couldn’t still show up with our cameras though!

Having been busy with clients lately I was eager to try out the D700 at a fashion show that was actually properly lit for photography, unlike the downright awful lighting at this years EveryWoman Expo, as I covered back in this blog post. And I can safely say I was gobsmacked by the results! I spent the whole show in ISO1600, f/3.2 and the shutter speed was hovering around the 500^th to 1000^th of a second range. Autofocus was set to AFS-C in Dynamic 51 point 3D Tracking mode. Wow. Oh yeah, I have the release mode set on the camera so that the shutter will not fire unless the subject is in focus. An invaluable feature that is essential in a fashion catwalk show when the models are pacing up and down the catwalk at a great rate of knots. I found out today that some Canon cameras do not have that feature… that’s too bad!

So yeah, apart from a few exceptions where the models walked directly in front of one of the overhead spot lights, the D700’s metering was pretty spot on. This was also partly my fault as I did not realise until halfway through the first show that I had the cameras metering in evaluative 3D Matrix metering mode (where the camera samples the entire scene to obtain an “acceptable” exposure) instead of centre-weighted. After I made the switch I noticed much fewer images were being blown out.

So, all in all it was a successful outing. I hope you all realised that the images I have posted in this blog entry are from today's fashion shows. I have tickets to see the Morrison show tomorrow evening so stay tuned to more images from Perth Fashion Festival 2009. I have placed a couple of image galleries on my website here. Have a look and don't forget to have a look around the rest of our Perth Based Photography website while you are at it! (shameless google plug there...)

And to finish this weeks blog post, I have made a short video which gives a quick overview of the aforementioned Capture One Pro 4.8 software. As I say in the video, it is just a brief summary of the features of the package and not a full-blown instructional video as I do not know the software well enough at this point to do so… but here’s the video anyway.

Well, I hope you liked it and the video told a little bit of a story.

Ok, I’m outta here. It’s getting really late and it’s going to be a super busy week again (déjà vu?) so take care everyone and keep taking pictures!

Video Blog #5 - Shooting Portraits in a Light Tent...

So it’s another week and time for another blog post. This week has mainly been a family affair with photography taking a bit of a back seat for a few days. It was nice and kind of weird all the same… on one hand it was great not to have to worry about clients, accounts, web updates or pending shoots; but on the other hand I did really miss not doing all of those things. Is that normal?

This week also saw some great news in that I finally ordered my new Nikon D700 & accompanying MB-D10 Battery Grip plus a few other extra goodies including a couple more of the brilliant Bowens Pulsar Radio Transceivers from B&H Photo in New York. It took a phone call (from my cell phone!) to the US to sort out the price but it’s finally on it’s way. I can’t wait.

But the most important thing about this blog post is our latest Video Tutorial. Sadly this will be the last one for a couple of months as my good mate and he who owns all the video equipment and has the expertise to put the whole thing together is going out of town for a while. Not to worry, please click on the window below and enjoy the video. I will briefly explain the set-ups in the video after…



Ok, for all of these set-ups, my camera settings were – ISO100, 1/125th second @ f/8.0. when we recorded the intro we were planning to show the set-up using a high key background – but alas time got away from us and to keep the video under 10 minutes to appease the YouTube god’s we had to cut that bit out. Never mind.

Set-up #1 – Single overhead softbox. This is enough all on its own to create a nice headshot. Nothing too complicated just simple, elegant light. You could have any colour backdrop behind your subject, just be aware that it will be quite a lot darker in the final image as it is not being directly lit.

Set-up #2 – Single overhead softbox augmented by a reflector. This makes such an unbelievable difference without actually adding any extra light; rather we are just bouncing the available light around even more. Cool huh.

Set-up #3 – Single overhead softbox augmented by a background light. In a similar manner to the technique shown in Video Blog #2, we are using a single light on the backdrop which is controlled by using a grid attachment. It was set to meter at f/5.6, or 1 stop less than the key light (at f/8.0 remember). This is not so critical on a white background but becomes more apparent then you are using a coloured backdrop, once again as covered in my blog post Video Blog #2.

Set-up #4 – Single overhead softbox augmented by a background light and using subtractive lighting with the foam core panel. Wow that’s a mouthful. This is where things start to get cool. Take notice of the two still images that are shown on the video. Note that there is shadow on the left side (models right side) of Jaylee’s face, even though we are still only using one overhead light. This is because the white panel on her left is reflecting light but the black panel on her right is absorbing the light. This is so easy to achieve and you could even substitute a piece of black cardboard of you don’t have a foam core at your disposal. Once again the backdrop light is metered to f/5.6 so it doesn’t stand out too much.

Set-up #5 – Single overhead beauty dish augmented by a background light and using subtractive lighting with both of the foam core panels. This goes further to enhance the shadows produced by the black foam cores. Another bonus is that the grid reflector on the beauty dish is now killing the spill from the key light that was falling onto the backdrop in the previous set-ups, hence the reason the backdrop appears much darker; even though I have not changed the metering from the last set-up. The backdrop light has been moved however from the floor stand directly behind the model to off to the side wall of the studio, but it is still aimed at the same spot on the backdrop and still metered at f/5.6 to make the backdrop appear to be a darker red than it actually is; remembering that our key light is still metered at f/8.0. Easy!

So there you go - some really simple lighting set-ups to achieve some nice looking headshots in the studio with only one or two lights. I hope you got something out of it! See you in the next blog post...

Less is more...

Wow – yet another week has been and gone – I think I blinked and missed it.

As usual there has been lots’ going on this last week. Not so much behind the camera; although I did do a couple of low key commercial shoots. But over-all, this week has been more in the office than in the studio. We have been discussing and planning some changes for our website – http://www.timography.net/ and in the interim I have uploaded some new images to the home page to give our little Perth based Portrait, Fashion and Glamour studio a fresh appearance. Also, after months of lying dormant – I managed to get our VoIP phone up and running; albeit after a little bit of bother because the NetComm VoIP connector and iinet didn’t want to play nicely together, but after a stern talking to they are now behaving nicely.

Anyway, down to tonight’s topic. For those of you who have seen our Video Blog Post #1 you would know that I like to use prime lenses. What’s a prime lens you ask? Well that’s a good question in today’s consumer based market that is ruled by zoom lenses. Well, a prime lens has a fixed focal length. They are commonly found in 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm and 105mm focal lengths, plus a few more, but those are the more popular ones.

So what’s the advantage of a prime lens I still hear you asking? Well, it’s distortion, or gross lack of it. You see, a prime lens has a lot fewer optical elements to make it work – and the more lens elements you put into a lens (e.g., a zoom lens) the more distortion and aberrations you have to deal with which need to be corrected. Prime lenses are also physically lighter than zoom lenses for this very reason. But the best bit is because there are less lens elements the light can pass through a lot easier so all of a sudden you find that without too much trouble you can get a relatively cheap lens with a minimum aperture of f/1.8! Cool.

There are 100 other reasons why a prime lens is optically superior to a zoom, but I’ll give you just one more. As I hinted to earlier, the best benefit other than a super-fast aperture is that your images are going to be a lot sharper. Let me explain. Every single lens ever made has a sweet spot. This is usually (at a given focal length) two or three stops from “wide open” or the largest aperture your lens is capable of. Now with most entry level kit lenses that come with your D-SLR this minimum f/stop is anywhere from f/3.5 to f/6.3 depending on the focal length of the zoom. So, in a worst case scenario you are looking at about an aperture of f/8 or even f/11 before you start to get really sharp (from edge to edge) images. This is fine if you are in a studio situation and have 1.21 gigawatts of flash power at your disposal to light the scene but pretty much useless for anything else except for outdoor photography in pretty decent sunlight. Also, the depth of field or “bokeh” at f/11 isn’t all that great and you will have a pretty hard time getting a pleasant blur from your background.

Now think of your prime lens with it’s minimum aperture of say, f/1.4. At the risk of complicating things a little more, because of the fewer optical elements within the lens it is already going to be a lot sharper wide open than a zoom, but by the time you stop the lens down to say f/2.8 or f/3.2 you are going to be able to cut yourself on the image – it’s that sharp! Not to mention the awesome depth of field and creamy bokeh that you will be getting. So this is a recipe for some fantastic natural light indoor photography that otherwise would be impossible with a zoom lens, as well as fantastic optical quality in just about every situation that you throw at it.

And to finish – the downside of using a prime lens. You have you get off your butt and move around, as your legs are now the zoom mechanism of the lens instead of those light-robbing and distorting extra elements in a zoom lens. You have to look for the right shot, the right composition, not just by twisting your left wrist. You have to make it happen. Sometimes it’s hard – but it’s always worthwhile when you see the end result.

I dare you, go out and get yourself a cheap little 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. Nikon, Canon and Sony – they all make one. They are light weight, small and totally awesome! You will not regret it. Unlock your potential!

PS - todays image was taken with my iPhone - another camera with a prime lens!