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.