Silver linings and let loose in a warehouse...

Hi everyone. So, what a week – as usual! My good friend and mentor @Jonathanpmh had encouraged me to enter the AIPP (Australian Institute of Professional Photographers) “Mini Merits” competition this last week. I have never entered any photo competitions in the past so this was a bit of an eye opener for me. I didn’t go in with high expectations, but rather I was keen to hear the thoughts of some very famous photographers and judges regarding my images. And wow, they didn’t hold back!

But this was a good thing. A really good thing. You see, as a photographer I have never been very good at the “artistic/conceptualizing” side of things; but I find the technical aspect very easy. So in turn whenever I look at the images after a shoot, my eye is drawn to the technical aspect of the photo; is it lit, how’s the exposure and so on. How the model actually looks, her facial expression, composure and so on is something that I have to make an effort to see. I’m getting better all the time but it is still sometimes a struggle as far as exactly what I should be looking at.

Back to the AIPP. Ok, so the images were placed in front of the judges one-by-one in an anonymous fashion, they were not aware of who’s images belonged to whom. And they gave an honest, off the cuff assessment of exactly what they though of the image in front of them.

After the first couple of comments really seemed a little harsh, I made a point of listening subjectively to their remarks. And you know what – they were right (for the most part!) with everything they said. You see, I was only looking at the technical qualities of the image and I thought I did a good job.

The first thing they said when my first image came up was “well technically this is a good effort, but…” and then the barrage began. Oh, for the record I entered a couple of images from the Rockingham Beach shoot I did a couple of weeks ago as they were fresh in my mind and I really liked them.

Anyway they went on to say things like the model isn’t looking in the right direction, there is too much seaweed, they could not get the story behind the image, why is there a seagull in the sky (on the beach, are you kidding me?) and how the print quality of the images could be done 15 different and better ways. Wow.

So these were all things that I didn’t really pay that much attention to in the past. I would take the shot, look at the camera and instantly decide whether I liked it or not, but I would not go much further than that. But I really appreciate the feedback I got from these judges now as it has shown me what others think about when they look at an image. There is no right or wrong answers when it comes to interpreting someone else’s (or your own for that matter) work, but next time really try to step back and see the big picture so to speak. Ask yourself all those way-out questions. Don’t hold back – it might be the silver lining you have been searching for!

Anyway, to the title of tonights blog post. As you may have noticed the shots shown here are of a similar theme. That being open space, lots of open airy space.

My awesome friend and #1 assistant/upcoming kick-ass photographer Sandy and her family own a large retail store down here in Kelmscott. It’s huge, a massive industrial unit. But I was surprised to hear Sandy say that the current space is not the one they started in. "Oh?", I said. She then pointed out the (now empty) tenancy two doors down in the same complex. Hello!!! We had the keys and the power was still on - groovy...

I have always wanted to shoot in a space like this, so I pounced upon the generous offer to use the space for a shoot. I didn’t have any clients that day so I arranged for Serena to join us again at short notice and she was happy to join in.

Everything I had learned about lighting in my studio pretty much went out the window here. Let me explain. In the studio I always shoot at 1/250^th second shutter speed, and usually around f/8 or thereabouts at ISO 100. So, I unpacked my gear, set up the lights and metered for just that, 1/250^th @ f/8. Woah. Overkill. There was absolutely no background bleeding into the image, she was just standing in a pool of light in the middle of a black hole. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it did look kind of cool. But the whole point of using a 1000+ sq/ft empty space is that I wanted the viewer to see that we were in an empty warehouse. I wanted some of the background to be visible, to see junk on the floor and fixtures on the wall.

So, guess what exposure settings we settled on? A very scary and slow 1/10^th second shutter speed, f/7.1 @ ISO400. As you can see from the images, this allowed just a little of the ambient to bleed in to the background, just enough to make out some details. It also meant that I had to mount my Nikon D700 – Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 rig on my Manfrotto tripod and set it all down quite low so I could achieve the perspective I wanted. I actually spent the entire time shooting sitting on the floor with the camera mounted just above Serena’s knee height.

I alternated the primary light source between my two loves, the 18” beauty dish (wide open this time, no grid attachment) or my 8ft parabolic umbrella from Paul C. Buff. The top image of Serena in pink is lit by the beauty dish to her left, and clearly the umbrella is providing a gorgeously soft edge light and creating those super soft shadows leading toward my camera position.

The next image down I didn’t really like to begin with, but it is growing on me. The main light is the parabolic umbrella, set up quite high to Serena’s left on a hefty boom stand so it was about 12 ft high and 45 degrees from Serena. You can clearly see one of the kicker lights here as that was the effect I was going for, with lots of lens flare to create the mood, but there is actually another kicker light just to the left of the frame to which you can see some of the flare from it, but also the three sets of shadows leading away from Serena allude to that third light source.

The next image was just a quick set-up, using the beauty dish again to Serena’s left and the single kicker light immediately behind her creating that flare coming over her shoulder.

Moving right along we have my second favorite image from the shoot (the pink dress being my favorite). It is a very similar set-up to the pink dress image with the exception that the umbrella is moved to the right of frame and angled more toward me. It is turned up a little bit more too in this image. We were actually metering the main light (beauty dish) at f/7.1 and the umbrella was hitting Serena’s back at f/8. Once again that beautiful edge light is just… well it’s amazing as far as I’m concerned, and the beauty dish compliments as the main light to create the overall look. I like it a lot.

And the final image – oh dear! This was a test image taken by #1 to test the levels for the previous image set. She said, “do a pose…” So I did. Ah, what the hell, we were having fun. I recon it’s a cool image too… Well done Sandy :)

Ok, it’s so far past my bedtime it’s not funny so this is another characteristically short wrap up. Have a great week shooting – whatever it is that you photograph. Please keep your comments coming, I value all of your thoughts and ideas. Take it easy.

On the fly update...

Hi guys

Just a quick update today, so I could share a couple of images I took this evening of Sonia from Xtreem Agency.

Sonia is a brand new model and had not done any shoots before – so she did extremely well. Oh, Sonia has three young children too – wow.

Whenever we get a new model into the studio I make sure that I give them my little spiel about how “Modeling is like acting but without having to remember any lines…” and my personal favourite, “Out in the studio, I’m (the photographer) just a button pressing monkey really, how the shot turns out is pretty much up to the model and how he/she carries themselves…”. Right off the bat however, Sonia was confident and put in a real effort – despite telling me how nervous she was – and just got right into it. Good for her!

If only all the models we shoot were this enthusiastic…

Hopefully I’ll have a complete new blog post for you all by tomorrow evening; if I have the energy after tomorrow afternoons artistic shoot. I tend to feel pretty drained after those as so much time is spent concentrating, getting the set right and generally just trying to get everything perfect… wish me luck!

At the beach... and loving the light...

Hey everybody.

Well this was a weekend of firsts. Today saw me down on the beach at Point Peron, Rockingham. I had a couple of models lined up to shoot some images for my catalogue that I have been wanting to finish for a while now.

I have been down to Point Peron before – but that was a while ago. So I took my new #1 assistant (and great photographer in her own right) Sandy down there yesterday just to have a look around and suss out a few locations, and we finished the day with a photography lesson on the beach. It was a great arvo. But I am really glad we went down to have a look around…

You see, the last time I was there the beaches were great. Nice rocky outcrops and (mostly) clear blue water. But not yesterday. Noooo. Instead there was seaweed. Lots of stinky smelly seaweed. Seaweed everywhere. Ok, you get the point. So my perfect little spot was ruined. Sandy and I looked at a few alternate locations but I was not really happy with any of them.

It was only by chance that whilst waiting for one of the models to turn up this afternoon I spotted a little teeny bit of clean(ish) beach just a little bit off the beaten track that was surrounded by dead trees. It looked pretty cool from the access way so we all hiked across the sand until we reached the spot. And it was worth it.

Ok, so that’s not really revolutionary right? We’ve all seen photos of nice models on the beach. But you see, I was never really game to tackle this kind of photography without bringing a barrage of flash equipment with me. Triggers, softboxes, beauty dishes, the whole nine yards. But for this shoot I was determined (and with some encouragement from #1) to try and utilize the natural light and step right out of my comfort zone.

I have long been envious of guys like Chase Jarvis, Louis and Jonathan Pang who seem to be able to work with natural light like it’s no big deal. They just seem to be able to make the most amazing pictures with just their camera’s and a bit of white cardboard. Jonathan has become a dear friend and mentor to me of late so I was kinda determined that I would give it a go this time, embrace the natural light.

Ok, so for now that’s enough ramblings of a sleepy photographer. Time for a quick run-down of the images. The shot at the top of the post is my favorite from the afternoon. This wasn’t a posed shot. I had merely asked Serena to walk up the beach to a pre-determined spot so I could photograph her on the way back down the beach toward me – backlit all the way by the now heavily setting sun. So this is actually one of a series of test shots. I had set the camera to manual exposure, f/4.5 @ 1/400^th second shutter speed and spot metered off Serena’s back. I had locked the camera in manual as I knew that as she walked back down the beach toward me as planned the setting sun would be somewhere in the frame, but it would move about a little bit as I took the shots depending on how I rotated the camera as she walked toward me. So this just ensured that the exposure would remain consistent as I took the images – simple.

The next image in the blog was taken momentarily before the first image. We had been working down the other end of the beach and I could see the sun setting quite low in the sky. The camera was also in manual mode for this image; still at f/4.5 but I had backed the shutter speed off to 1/250^th of a second as Serena wasn’t quite behind the sun as I had hoped. So, spot metering again, this time I set the camera +1 stop over exposed according to the inbuilt meter as I really wanted to see the edge light from the sun around Serena’s body. It worked!

The image just to the right was one of the first for the afternoon. Once again – this is 100% natural light. No flash – no fill. My Nikon D700 was in [A] Aperture Priority mode with the aperture set to f/2.8 with the lens zoomed in all the way to 70mm. I kept the metering mode to [Centre-weighted Average] for this series of images as I was using the flash on and off depending on the composition and where I was standing in amongst the trees. It also had the effect however of allowing a little more brightness into the scene to which this shot is the result.

So, thats three for three so far that do not include a single pulse of flash on my behalf. I could get used to this!

The last shot in today’s blog post is also the last shot I took this afternoon. Literally. And yes, as you can plainly see, I used flash for this one. You see those hills behind Serena? Well they were blocking the sun which had now set behind them, so no more direct yummy sunlight was being cast on the models. So with the camera still in manual mode, I set the shutter speed to 1/250^th of a second. This ensured that the sky would remain fairly dark as the sun was really low and out of the way by this point. Aperture was set to f/7.1 to keep the flash under control and hey presto – we have a winner. Easy peesy – right?!

To finish up for today – I have to say I am kinda sorry. Sorry that I didn’t try to use natural light more affectively sooner. Sure – the images in this blog post are not perfect – but I really like them. A lot. Go to my Facebook Page to view a few other images taken on today’s shoot; some with flash and some without. I have a couple more shoots coming up in a week or so that I plan to try using natural light a bit more. Like they say; practice makes perfect. I really did love the light at the beach this afternoon…

Video Blog #10 - Using Nikon CLS on location...

Hi everybody. Welcome to another thrilling – edge of your seat blog post. Ok, so maybe it isn’t quite that exciting but I’m sure that both of you that read this will get something out of it! Ha.

So, to tonight’s video. Right off the bat I want to send a big thank you to John at ViWest Video Instruction for all his help and enthusiasm in getting these videos out there. This is our first episode using a green screen background which allowed us to use the virtual apartment backdrop. Cool stuff.

The location we used for the video is an old disused dairy milking shed! It turned out to be a superb spot and there really was somewhere cool to take a shot almost everywhere you turned your head. Very cool stuff.

Anyway that’s enough from me for a little bit, have a look at the video…

What I’ll do now is just give you all a quick rundown on the lighting set-up that was used for each set that we did in the video.

This is probably my favorite image of the afternoon. It was actually the last shot that was taken on that segment of live shooting on the video. I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this, but in this shot the hair light positioned at the rear of the set has actually gone off a little over-cooked. It was actually dialed in to be quite a bit softer than it is in this image. But this is actually a good point to remember when it comes to using Nikon CLS out in the field, or in any location for that matter.

My point being - the CLS system only works well to a point. Let me now qualify that statement. Is it relying on the fact that the camera’s metering system can get a clear view of all the light that is being added in to the shot. This is obviously very easy for the key light (softbox) as the light it is emitting is filling the foreground; i.e., Serena, very clearly. CLS works by incorporating Nikons wonderful i-TTL metering system wherein a series of usually unperceivable “pre-flashes” occur momentarily after the shutter button is pressed but before the image is actually taken. Now, in this particular image the camera’s meter must have been dissatisfied with the amount of light it could see coming from the hair light during the pre-flash so it just dumped everything into the shot. In this instance I recon the result is quite pleasing, but it is not strictly what I told the camera to do.

So this is something to keep in mind; wherever possible make sure that the light coming from each remote speedlight is clearly visible to the camera’s meter… unless you don’t want it to see…

Anyway, to quickly recap on the video, the main light is coming from a Nikon SB-900 shooting through a collapsible Lastolite softbox. The rear light is a Nikon SB-800 mounted on a shelf on the back wall by using a Manfrotto spring clamp. That light is also gridded using a newly purchased Premier Flex Adaptor System and a Honeycomb diffuser or grid. I have only just heard about the Premier flash accessories and I have to say that they work really well. They also do a Beauty Dish for a speedlight that I intend to purchase tomorrow and give it a good workout. More on that in the coming weeks…

This next shot is just a really simple set-up. This was taken using only the shoot through umbrella and SB-900; the hair light was not on for this particular exposure. In hindsight I think I would have liked to have the umbrella a little closer to Serena as although an umbrella is a soft light modifier there are a few harsh shadows in the image simply because of the way we took the shot and due to the narrowness of the room we were in, I had to position the umbrella on the other side of the room; as you can see in the video.

That actually brings up another lesson for the younger players out there. A light source is only as “soft” as the distance between it and your subject. That same umbrella placed 300mm from Serena’s head would produce virtually no shadows whatsoever but rather it would wrap around her face enveloping it in a wonderful soft glow. But, move that same light source and modifier (the umbrella!) 3000mm from the subject and this is the result; the shadows are much more pronounced. This goes for absolutely any light modifier too, whether it is an umbrella, softbox or silk. The closer the light source is to your subject, the softer it will appear.

And now, the final image for today’s blog post. We were running out of time and had to do one more lighting scenario to wrap up the video. We actually took a bit of time getting the last scenario (with the umbrella) right. All the while the sun was setting right behind us, but we could not see it directly from the room we were in. When we finished though and came out into the light – my word it looked cool! There was only one thing for it; place Serena in the huge doorway at the end of the shed with the sun right behind her.

I made mention of this next fact in the video, but I’ll say it again. From experience, especially in bright light scenarios like this one, I find it beneficial to be as close to your light source as possible. This is because we are only using light, or in this case infrared light, to trigger the flashes. In really bright light this system does not work at all if you are more than a few feet away which is why in the video I don’t use anything else other than a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. Ideally I would like to use my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens for portraits but this would mean that unless we were in total cover (like the first scenario for instance) the remote flashes simply will not receive the signal from the commander flash on top of my D700.

Anyway, this last set-up is just using the Lastolite softbox again and a SB-900. I set the metering on the camera to [Centre Weighted] and took a meter reading from Serena’s face and then re-composed the scene and took the shot. This ensures that the camera will send enough flash to correctly expose Serena’s face. I had actually set the camera to manual exposure for this shot. I pointed the camera at the background and took note of the exposure meter in the viewfinder. From memory it was something like 1/2000^th second shutter @ f/4.5, ISO200. I then set the exposure +2 stops, or about 1/500^th second at f/4.5 to really blow out the background. This also produces another effect; it means that all that sun-setting goodness will produce a nice natural rim light on the subject as it has done here. Point to note on this one – i-TTL works with Nikons no matter what shutter speed you have selected when you have [Auto(FP)] sync speed set in-camera. Sorry Canon guys! But the end result is quite nice as you can see.

Ok, well I think that is enough from me for one sitting. Have a great week everyone! Oh, don’t forget to keep your comments and suggestions coming – I really appreciate them.