Last weekend as a thank you for one of my long-standing MUA's (that’s Make-Up Artist...) I held a freebie shoot for Jodie @ Je Mode Styling and Make-up.
Jodie has been a great find. She called me out of the blue one day a couple of years ago and introduced herself as a local (to me) MUA who had just finished up with a prestigious Perth based hairstyling chain. After a week of texting back and forth to arrange a suitable time she visited our Perth based photography studio here in Kelmscott – and the rest is history. The greater majority of the models in my photo galleries at www.timography.net/portraits.htm are the work of Jodie.
So anyway, this particular image was taken using a technique that I have wanted to try for sometime now. I have a small home based studio that I work out of. I have a flock of Bowens 500w/s monoblock heads. If I keep the light source close to the model, which I like to do to keep it soft, I really can’t shoot anything less than f/8 @ ISO 100 – which isn’t usually a problem. But lately I have been really taken by the work of Zack Arias and David Bean who do a lot of portrait work at really big apertures.
So I set up my SB-900 on a light stand with a shoot through brolly “strobist style” and put a SB-800 behind her as a separation light. I turned my on camera flash into a master trigger flash that did not contribute to the exposure and the flash mode to i-TTL or Nikon Creative Lighting mode; and set my 50mm f/1.8 at around 3.2 to pull it towards it’s sweet spot and started snapping. I got brave and opened right up to f/1.8 - keeping the camera in Aperture Priority mode (which freaked me out a little bit, I am so used to shooting manual mode in the studio); and the above image was one of the shots that resulted. I hadn’t tried my speedlights in the studio before, let alone in i-TTL mode. I am looking forward to the PocketWizard Flex and Mini being released for Nikon compatibility so this was a little taster.
Overall I think the image worked, but I still wanna try a few more shoots using this technique to hone my skills further. I don’t subscribe to the “I’ll fix it in Photoshop later” methodology. I don’t like to tweak an image until it is over-cooked yet somehow under-done. I really really try to do everything in-camera.
I still have a way to go to perfect this. I want to be able to shoot at f/1.8 or f/2 and still make a really nice shot. This is easy enough to do in natural light and look awesome but a little trickier in the studio for some reason. But practice makes perfect. Ok, pens down – I’m done.
Jodie has been a great find. She called me out of the blue one day a couple of years ago and introduced herself as a local (to me) MUA who had just finished up with a prestigious Perth based hairstyling chain. After a week of texting back and forth to arrange a suitable time she visited our Perth based photography studio here in Kelmscott – and the rest is history. The greater majority of the models in my photo galleries at www.timography.net/portraits.htm are the work of Jodie.
So anyway, this particular image was taken using a technique that I have wanted to try for sometime now. I have a small home based studio that I work out of. I have a flock of Bowens 500w/s monoblock heads. If I keep the light source close to the model, which I like to do to keep it soft, I really can’t shoot anything less than f/8 @ ISO 100 – which isn’t usually a problem. But lately I have been really taken by the work of Zack Arias and David Bean who do a lot of portrait work at really big apertures.
So I set up my SB-900 on a light stand with a shoot through brolly “strobist style” and put a SB-800 behind her as a separation light. I turned my on camera flash into a master trigger flash that did not contribute to the exposure and the flash mode to i-TTL or Nikon Creative Lighting mode; and set my 50mm f/1.8 at around 3.2 to pull it towards it’s sweet spot and started snapping. I got brave and opened right up to f/1.8 - keeping the camera in Aperture Priority mode (which freaked me out a little bit, I am so used to shooting manual mode in the studio); and the above image was one of the shots that resulted. I hadn’t tried my speedlights in the studio before, let alone in i-TTL mode. I am looking forward to the PocketWizard Flex and Mini being released for Nikon compatibility so this was a little taster.
Overall I think the image worked, but I still wanna try a few more shoots using this technique to hone my skills further. I don’t subscribe to the “I’ll fix it in Photoshop later” methodology. I don’t like to tweak an image until it is over-cooked yet somehow under-done. I really really try to do everything in-camera.
I still have a way to go to perfect this. I want to be able to shoot at f/1.8 or f/2 and still make a really nice shot. This is easy enough to do in natural light and look awesome but a little trickier in the studio for some reason. But practice makes perfect. Ok, pens down – I’m done.
No comments:
Post a Comment