Photoshop CS5 and over-saturation...

Hi everyone

Yeah yeah I know it’s been a few weeks since my last blog post but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been busy – quite the opposite actually. So, let’s have a quick recap. Hmmm, you know what? There are a few images to talk about in this blog post so I recon I’m gonna give the summarization a miss… kinda.

The one thing that I do want to talk about is the new version of Adobe’s Photoshop – CS5. Otherwise known as the photographer’s right hand. Or left hand if you are a gifted left handed individual like me! Well my mum always told me I was gifted – that was a compliment she was giving me, right?

I’m waffling already. Geez. Photoshop CS4 was/is already pretty good. It was/is fast, clever and once you get the hang of it, relatively easy to do all manner of creative edits to your images. I have never really been a big fan of manipulating one’s images to the hilt, but I did appreciate what CS4 could do.

Enter stage left CS5. It installed no problems at all (of course, nice one Adobe) and once I opened this new version I spent the obligatory 15 minutes or so arranging my workspace and re-doing a few of my favorite keyboard shortcuts. Then I opened up a random image to have a little play. Wow. Gasps and giggles of wonderment ensued. Content-aware fill, superior HDR processing, automatic lens correction, down-right awesome RAW image processing, Bridge integration (which I have mixed feelings about), the list goes on. I could continue to go on about how cool this puppy is, but this blog is not a CS5 review.

The screenshot to the right shows how I have set-up the palettes on my workstation. Clearly, I have dual monitors. I only say that to accentuate how beneficial having two monitors on your desktop workstation can be. As the view shows, it allows me to have one screen just for the working space to manipulate the image while the second monitor has all of the palettes easily accessible, but out of the way. You really can pick-up big-ish LCD monitors really cheaply these days, but like all things related to our passion of photography, make sure you get the best ones that your budget will allow. Anyway I’m digressing once again. Can you tell that it’s already 2am and I’m having trouble staying on point?

So, to the images accompanying this blog post. I have for a while now been regularly buying fashion magazines. Oyster, Black, Karen, Lulu and Fallen are some of the titles I really like. No, I don’t get them for the free perfume samples; but rather for the photography. These are such a great resource for photographers. The images in these magazines are sublime and a great inspiration.

Anyway I had seen a couple of shoots where the models were out in the middle of nowhere and everything was bright and very colorful. Really over the top colorful. Saturation turned up to 11. Cool.

Serena once again was happy to fill the modeling shoes for me for this short notice shoot. I had spent the morning prior to the shoot scouting around for a suitable location or two and as it turned out we ended up in Cardup, which is just next door to Byford. I couldn’t find any public spaces but I did however manage to find a couple of big open paddocks with wide open gates and no-one or livestock in sight. That’ll do I thought.

The images in the magazine that I really liked all had flash filling in shadows and bringing the background right down, almost as though the models were superimposed into a fake background. So I set out to replicate that look. I think I got it. I also wanted to try and play around a bit with natural light too, you know, to get two different sets of images that were polar opposites apart. One set with deep blue skies, bright green grass and lots of contrast on the model from the flash that I would bathe on her. The other set of images would have washed out skies and really shallow depth of field, but still the accentuated colors that I was going for.

It was a little bit windy that afternoon so that kind of killed any hopes I had of bringing out my enormous parabolic umbrella, as I was doing the shoot on my own and even the sandbags I have would not have held it down. So it was beauty dish to the rescue again.

Ok, the image at the top of the blog is a bit of a favorite image from the afternoon. I like the composition and the way the clouds are not directly behind Serena’s head. The sun was actually coming in over my left shoulder which was creating some weird shadows on Serena’s face. But not to worry, I just made sure that I over-powered the sun with the beauty dish. In fact, if my memory serves me correctly the ambient light was reading about 1/250^th second shutter speed @ f/8, ISO100. So I dialed in the beauty dish at 1/250^th second shutter speed @ f/16, ISO100. That’s two full stops of colorful goodness higher than the ambient. Cool. I love the blue of the sky in this one.

The next image was from the second location that we chose for the afternoon. I liked the way that the two parallel fence lines had a bit of a converging lines “runway” feel about them. So the D700 was set to about the same shutter speed and aperture as the first image. You may have noticed that the sky is a lot paler in this image. Remember how I said that the sun was over my shoulder for the last image? Well this time we were facing the other direction and looking right into the sun which in turn means that it is not nearly as deep blue as the last image. But, there is always a but, the advantage of this of course is that now we have a wonderful rim-light on Serena.

There’s another lesson to be had there actually. Don’t forget that my Bowens powered beauty dish is putting out four times (two f-stops) as much light as the ambient light falling on Serena. Yet you can still clearly see the accent or rim light falling on Serena’s right shoulder and across her chest. Now of course it all comes down to “artistic interpretation” and how much rim light you wish to place on your subject. But it doesn’t take all that much light to create a nice effect huh.

Ok it’s now obscenely late so I need to wrap this up quickly. At the risk of stating the obvious, the last three images are all taken using only the natural ambient light. I actually was using one of my Fujifilm S5 Pro D-SLR camera bodies and my Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens for these shots. All of the images are taken with the camera locked in manual mode, f/1.8 and the shutter speed was set to over-expose the scene by at least one f-stop. I had also set the in-camera processing to Fuji’s cool F2 mode, or in other words, the Fuji-chrome or slide film setting.

The first two images in the blog had the saturation pumped up a reasonable amount to make them pop, but for these natural light images I have hardly touched the saturation in post production at all – what you are seeing is coming pretty much right from the camera. Sure they look a bit muted in the thumbnail size that they are on this page, but click on them and you will see what I mean. I also love how soft the images are because I was shooting at f/1.8. It’s such a contrast to the top two images. Cool stuff. I hope you like the shots. I really do.

Well that’s it for me. Oh, for those of you who are wondering what happened to Sandy, fret not. She too has been a busy little puppy and has been out and about taking some great shots lately. You can have a look here at her Facebook Album, and then look here at another album. Nice work Sandy! Hopefully for our next blog post she will be back in the swing of things and making a contribution once again to the blog. Can’t wait.

Ok everyone, take care and keep shooting what you love. Bye for now.

A magical sunset in the middle of nowhere... and Codral flu tablets...

Hi again everyone.

I know I know – two blog posts in two days… what’s going on? Well despite #1 still gallivanting overseas and my body fast falling under the grips of a wicked dose of the flu, I managed to fill my day with some photography which was great.

This morning was spent down in Fremantle with my good mates @JBcamera and @jonathanpmh on a photo walk / excuse to drink lots of coffee / wander the streets with a camera. These are really fun outings and I wish we had the time to get out and do them more often. I did feel rather guilty about leaving my wife at home with two screaming kids but she has always encouraged me to pursue photography.

As it turned out we spent most of the morning frequenting a couple of well known coffee shops interspersed with a stroll down the Fremantle port photographing the old buildings and the ships that were coming and going from the port. Happy times.

Ok, to the images accompanying today’s blog. Today’s shoot saw me out in Jarrahdale, a little town about 40 minutes drive south of where I live in Kelmscott. It’s a really quiet place, surrounded by forests, both natural and forestry planted. Needless to say, logging had been a big part of the town’s history, but all of the timber milling has been moved to another location. That left behind some really cool, heritage listed ruins of the old timber mill. There isn’t a lot left, just a couple of undercover structures and a big open space full of, well, nothing but gravel really. The place has a fair bit of character but it can be a little hard to find “the spot”.

Anyway, this afternoon’s model was Tanayah. Like Dani, Tanayah has been a friend for a few years now and is also always eager to come along on a photo shoot where she can. Tanayah also brought a friend along; Cynthia, who is an upcoming fashion designer. The black dress that Tanayah is wearing is one of Cynthia’s creations. Cool.

Once we got to the location and set-up ready to shoot, we only had about an hour and a half until the sun was due to set. We started out under one of the undercover sheds, using its length and parallel converging lines as a runway of sorts. Because it was quite dark already and we weren’t in any sort of direct sunlight, I had to slow the shutter down quite a bit in order to bring in some of the background. It was actually a similar situation to that I found myself in a few weeks back when we shot Serena in the empty warehouse. Looking at the EXIF data from those shots, the Nikon D700 was set to manual mode, spot metering, shady white balance, 1/10^th second shutter speed, f/11 @ ISO800. Needless to say the camera was mounted down quite low on my Manfrotto tripod.

But anyway that doesn’t really matter as I want to talk about these images. It’s funny, we were in this pretty cool location and I end up setting up out in the open in the middle of the gravel; which for all intents and purposes could have been done anywhere, and not 40 minutes away in Jarrahdale. Not to worry. I had always intended to use this setting (out in the gravel, that is) as a fallback if it got too dark under the buildings on the site.

So there we were, out in the open and the sky started to turn that gorgeous golden color. These series of shots were taken in the space of about 5 minutes. The light is being supplied by; you guessed it, my beloved beauty dish. I did end up using the parabolic umbrella too when we were undercover and sheltered a little from the wind, but the beauty dish suited these images better, with the light being more controlled and not spilling too much into the foreground. Once again too I had my Bowens Gemini heads and TravelPak battery supplying the light, and the whole lot was being triggered with the ever reliable Bowens Pulsar radio triggers.

The Nikon D700 – Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM II combo was still mounted low on the tripod, at about Tanayah’s knee height, but I was quite a way back this time, about 15 meters away in fact. This really compressed perspective and kept the background nice and tight. Everything was still locked down in manual mode, but this time the shutter speed was at a much more comfortable 1/200^th second, f/7.1 @ISO 800. Love it. Just love the shots.

So there you go, a successful afternoon up in the hills. I really do enjoy location shooting, especially with everything locked in manual and with the Bowens equipment putting out lots of juicy, but manageable light.

Ok, past my bedtime again. Flu setting in badly. I, along with #1 who is back in a few days, will talk to you soon. Take care everyone.

PS - if anyone out there knows of a good watermarking program that doesn't turn all of your images a wonderful yet sickening shade of cyan, please let me know. Ta.

Still here... just...

Hi everyone

Just a quick blog post to let you all know that I am still alive and kicking, but just taking a bit of a break after my wife and I had our second child a couple of weeks ago. Oh yeah, #1 is on an overseas holiday (the lucky thing) so it’s just me for now.

So what I thought I’d share is a couple of images I took a couple of weeks ago for Dani, a local model. Dani has been a friend for a few years now and has been a great support to us here at Timography. Whenever I want to try something new or simply have a spot in my calendar and wish to fill it with a shoot of some description, Dani is always willing to help out.

This particular shoot was organized with the intention of showing another photographer and friend how to use studio lighting, as my friend had not had the opportunity to shoot in a studio environment before.

Ok, to the lighting in these shots. It was really simple, just one light and a foam core panel. The lighting diagram template that I use to represent the studio set-ups does not have a foam core preset so I have used a circular reflector to represent it but I’m sure that you get the idea. The umbrella was actually by beloved Paul C. Buff 86” Parabolic umbrella. I love this thing. Like my other favorite; the beauty dish, it provides a nice soft(ish) light that is really easy to control. But unlike the beauty dish, it lights your model from head to toe – literally. These umbrellas are not available in Australia as yet, but I rang the company in the USA and placed my order, their customer service was great and I had my umbrella in my hands five days later! Oh yeah, the whole thing + shipping only cost $168AUD to get it to my front door. Sweet.

So there you go. A simple set-up that gives pretty cool results. Sure, it’s not the most complex lighting set-up that you have ever seen, but that’s not the point. In my opinion, photography is about presenting the subject in the best possible light (pun intended). If the viewer starts to decompose your set-up and spends 2o minutes trying to figure it out, have you really done your job? Shouldn’t they be more interested in the subject? Lighting is the tool that we as photographers use to our advantage, but it’s not the star of the show; the subject is – right? Subtly is the key; it’s not a contest to see who can set up the most lights and make the image look like one big and expensive drivers license photo. That’s what I think anyway. It’s all about the subject – the end.

Speaking of the parabolic umbrella, I have been wanting to try it out on location ever since I got it, but being such a huge “sail” in a strong breeze I have been reluctant to do so. Have a look at the image on the right, which I posted shortly after I received the umbrella, as an indication of its size. The top of the umbrella is about 4 inches from the roof and the bottom of the umbrella is only about 12 inches from the floor. I have recently purchased a couple of hefty sandbags but I still am unsure that they would be of much use. I usually work alone for these random modelling shoots like the one I have tomorrow afternoon otherwise an assistant or two holding it in place would do the trick. Tomorrow’s location however is up in the hills in a bit of a valley so hopefully there won’t be much breeze around. I will take it and the beauty dish but the weather will determine which one gets used for the shoot. I’ll post some images of that shoot in the next couple of days. Wish me luck!

Keep shooting what you love and I’ll talk to you soon. Hopefully #1 will be back by then too…

Sun, sand and beauty dishes...

Hi everyone and welcome to another enthralling edition of our Timography Blog. To get you guys in the swing of things, my text looks like this and Sandy's text is in italics... just so you know... :o)

So, what’s happened since our last post? Well, we have received an overwhelming amount of positive comments and support for the series of images that we took down in Albany, so thank you for all who contributed. Warm fuzzies all round! Sandy is getting more and more amazing behind the camera with each new assignment. She is doing such a wonderful job and soon I fear it will be her teaching me a thing or two!

I must admit... that I do ‘come to life’ whilst working with children. I love the challenge of capturing something unique about a child. Jade, my daughter and probably THE most photographed child I know, is most of the time a very willing participant and although I photograph her all the time... I still manage to capture something that’s a little different and unique which just melts my heart.

So, to business. This weekend saw Sandy and I out in the sunshine with her daughter with the intention of taking some outdoor portraits in full sun, using the flash to overpower the ambient light and create a pleasing light on the subject. We wanted to stay pretty close to home for this shoot so we ended up choosing Champion Lakes Rowing Arena here in Kelmscott. This is a nice quiet area with (obviously!) a nice big lake that we could use in the background but it also has a new housing estate going up, which we thought would make for an interesting backdrop for Sandy’s daughter. I also wanted to keep things simple from an equipment standpoint, so we took only one camera body, a couple of lenses, a light meter, radio triggers and the lighting gear comprising of one head and a beauty dish.

When I first started setting up Timography and building our inventory of equipment I wanted to make sure that the lighting gear we purchased would be reliable, versatile, powerful and most importantly, portable. I have been so happy with the Bowens lighting equipment that we now have. It isn’t as cheap as some, but geez it is good. And they make an awesome little battery pack which means that I can power the strobe heads on location; and I have mentioned this many times in the past. Fantastic.

This is the first time Tim has let me drive the beauty dish on location. I must say I have become quite fond of using a strobe head on location for it’s simplicity and exposure stability. I have currently been using my built-in speedlight to trigger a remote flash with TTL metering and I’m very happy with my results. However, with a strobe head, I do like the fact that I can create a desired exposure and know it’s not going to change much which then gives me more time to focus on working with and getting to know the subject better. It still takes me a while for the cogs to start turning on setting it all up and establishing a flash to ambient light ratio... but step by step I slowly get there. I might also add that my son, who is only 18 months old, was also with us on this shoot and this made concentrating a little more difficult so big thanks to Tim for being so understanding and patient :o)

And now, to the images accompanying this post. As I said in the intro, the purpose of this shoot was to practice overpowering the strong morning sun. We started out at about 10am, and already the ambient was reading at ISO100, 1/250th second shutter speed @ f/11! So we ended up trying a few different variations with light ratios. The images with Jade at the water’s edge were all shot with the flash output at about ½ a f/stop above the ambient, whereas the images of Jade in the pink hat were all shot with the flash output almost two stops greater, or about f/16-f/18. The reason for this fluctuation is that for the pink hat shots, Jade was much closer to the light source at only about 1 ½ meters away. She was moving about a little bit (as kids do!) but mostly kept creeping closer to the flash, meaning stronger light was hitting her.

I really didn’t think we would end up with many good shots this morning. Usually Jade is very willing and the better shots are normally some from the beginning of a shoot. It was the other way today. Jade was hungry, and thirsty and wanted her lollipop that I had brought along as a bribe. She was fidgety and acting a little silly, even getting a tad grumpy. But hey, she is only 5 and it was very ‘stop start’ for her due to her brother continuously running in the opposite direction. You will not capture a child’s true personality if you force them or make them feel uncomfortable. You can only work with what you’ve got and if what you’ve got isn’t working... you move on and try something else. So we packed up and headed for the water.

So yeah, we were certainly overpowering the sun with the pink hat images. I really love how the beauty dish has again lived up to its name. It is such a versatile light modifier. It gives out more light than a soft box but is gentler than just a high-efficiency bowl reflector. The trade-off however with Jade standing so close to the light source is that her legs and feet were not quite getting the coverage they deserved. Still makes for a gorgeous shot though I think and helps to accentuate the light falling on her upper body.

The last couple of images here show Jade by the water’s edge. As mentioned we pulled the flash output back to be just over that of the bright sky, that being about 1/250th second shutter speed @ f/13 or thereabouts. The reason for this is that we wanted to make sure the highlights on the top of the water caused by the suns reflections were clearly visible. Both Sandy and I really love this last image. Jades pose is spot on; although she was not being directed at this point, from memory Sandy has just asked her to grab the bottom of her dress and swing her arms from side-to-side.

It was here that little Jade shone :o) You can see it in her face and body language that she was now comfortable and enjoying herself. And what a difference it makes. Jade did a great job, I learnt a little more and we all had a great morning. Oh, and the little man … well, he at this point was soaking wet and muddy so I can assure you he had a wonderful time too :o)

For the record, the "little man" is Sandy's son ok!

So that about wraps up another blog post from us. Thanks for watching. We’ll be continuing to use the beauty dish out on location in the coming weeks, so I hope to share some more images with you all soon. Keep shooting what you love and take care. Bye from us!

Road trippin' and wedding dresses...

Hey everybody.

Wow! What a weekend. What a great time was had by all. Happy times. Ok, let me rewind a little for the sake of those of you who think I have lost the plot a little (more).

For a while now I have wanted to get away for the weekend – for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I have wanted to head to a really nice beach location to capture some wedding images that I could use for promotional purposes. Now these beach locations that I had in mind just do not exist here in Perth. Sorry but they just don’t. Secondly I have been meaning to take Sandy out on a full on location shoot to give her a feel for how things go down and how to deal with situations that a location can throw at you at a moment’s notice. We have now done lots of weddings together but I really don’t get the opportunity to explain what I’m doing and why I’m doing it this way instead of that. So why not kill the proverbial two birds and all that?

It’s also at this juncture that I need to officially introduce Sandy; a.k.a. #1, to you all. She’ll be making some contributions to this blog post and many more to come – so, welcome buddy!

Well, okay ... my first addition. Where do I start and what do I need? Firstly, my life’s most important necessities ... super comfy tracky pants and chocolate! But equally as important I would like to thank my inspirational friend Tim for this opportunity.

So ... Road trippin’ & wedding dresses hey ... I consider myself an average person with average looks, opinions and life experience. I love photography and aspire to be amongst Perth’s best. When Tim and I started to plan this trip I was so excited. What a great adventure and what a great opportunity to share a location shoot with my fantastic mentor. I would model for him, no problem .. how hard could it be!

Thanks Sandy. Ok, back to the road trip. We had picked out a couple of likely destinations using only Google Earth as a reference, but as it turned out they were awesome locations. Important note here though; I usually without exception scout a location in person before heading there for the shoot itself, as local knowledge is invaluable in knowing the lay of the land, how many people are likely to be there at a given time, where the sun rises and sets and so on. Sadly, because we were heading all the way to Albany this was not an option this time around, and if we had our time again we would have swapped the morning and evening locations. But hindsight is a wonderful thing huh…

As it turned out, we were blessed with some really moody weather on Saturday afternoon at Shelly Beach, West Cape Howe and Sunday morning at Little Beach, Two Peoples Bay was simply gorgeous. I had gone on the trip with a shot list of images I wanted to try and capture; right down to the pose, the composition and the lighting. It turns out that we didn’t get to try all of the shots I had in mind as time, lack of daylight and excess goose bumps got in the way. But all in all it was a fantastic trip and one that I will not forget for a really, really long time. So, to the images…

The image at the top of this post is my favorite so far of the 1000+ images that we took. Mind you though, I have only thus far had the opportunity to scratch the surface and I am sure that there are lots more fantastic images to be found. It’s funny, but when you really get into it on a shoot you lose track of what shots you have taken and ideas that you had. It’s only reviewing them later that you think – oh yeah, I remember that – cool! But, I digress. This image was taken close to the end of our afternoon at Shelley Beach. Poor Sandy was freezing her you-know-whatsits off. You can see the rainbow in the distance. Although Sandy’s veil looks motionless here there was actually a cool stiff breeze blowing. The light source for this image was my tri-flash holder with 2x Nikon SB-900’s and a Nikon SB-800, fired by using the Pixel TTL triggers. My D700 was in aperture priority mode with my Nikon 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, 1/3200^th second shutter speed, f/2.8 @ ISO100. Exposure compensation was set to -1.7EV to really darken the sky and the flash compensation was set to +0.7EV to make Sandy glow in the image. It worked. Oh yeah, as usual I want you to know that all of the images in this blog post are shown as they were taken. The only post production applied was to fix a couple of crooked horizions. Thats it.

One more thing to point out here while I remember it. For the trip I had packed two different light sources, or generators if you like. The first was a bag full of Nikon speedlights. The other was my Bowens studio heads and accompanying battery pack that allows me to use them on location without the need for mains power. One light generator is small, light weight and a sealed unit. The other is large, heavy and full of moisture penetrating holes and cooling vents. So for the sake of convenience I kept the Bowens gear in the car for the beach shoots but I was hoping to get the opportunity to use it at some point on the trip.

The next image was the second last one we took for the afternoon. The sun had well and truly set behind the escarpment to Sandy’s left and it was starting to get really really cold now. Even with all my running up and down the beach grabbing this lens and that and then jockeying for position to get the shot I was feeling it. Sandy was turning a lovely shade of light blue - poor thing! So this image is still the D700/50mm f/1.8 combo, and still in aperture priority mode, 1/60^th second shutter speed, f/7.1 @ ISO400. As it was getting quite dark now I had set the exposure compensation to +1.3EV but pulled the flash compensation back to +/-0.0 to balance the ambient being brighter. I love Sandy’s expression here. From memory I had asked her to try looking directly at me but because of the cold breeze her eyes had started to water and she couldn’t do it. D’oh – sorry about that buddy!

I have, and I’m sure most of you have too, always thought that a model has a pretty easy job. It probably becomes easier with time, I don’t know but it really opened my eyes on what it’s like to be in front of the camera as opposed to behind it which is where I prefer to be; by far! I am the first to admit that I can’t multi task ... never been able to and have made more hassles for myself by trying to. Smile or not, just stand there, posed for a while and look gorgeous. Um, reality check big time. Guided by a great photographer, poses are neither motionless nor comfortable. Trying to walk whilst gazing in the photographers suggested direction was a real challenge. Not only because I normally like to watch where I’m walking or at least look at where I’m heading but I also had to remember my facial expressions. For me, bearing in mind my lack of multi tasking skills, a glamorous expression is not that goofy look where I’ve lost balance, stepped on my dress or felt the freezing cold water rush over my feet.

Ok I’ll have to start moving quickly through these last few images now as it is really past my bedtime! We left Shelly Beach feeling (albeit pretty cold) good that we had managed to bag some cool shots – I didn’t know how many exactly but I knew there were a few. The following morning saw us at Little Beach. What a glorious stretch of beach! But it does however get me back to my point that I made at the beginning of this blog post wherein local knowledge and a little bit of forethought go a long way, especially when you have come a long way in the first place to visit a location and you want to get it right while you are there. You see, as beautiful as Little Beach was, we actually scored a sunrise here over the water as the beach faces an easterly direction. This is great but goes totally against what I had in mind with my shot list. Kudos to Sandy here though who encouraged me to keep going and just wing-it despite it not being 100% what I had wanted to achieve – thanks buddy! I have posted a few images on the Facebook album from that location if you want to have a look.

Anyway, on the way down to Albany we had spotted a few really cool looking rural spots that, if time permitted we were going to try on the way back. As it turned out we left Little Beach early and headed back to Albany which in turn meant that we could head back early. We passed a few good looking places on the way home but when we stopped for a closer inspection they weren’t all that good. So we jumped back into the car and kept going. This spot is one that I didn’t actually see on the way down but I am glad I saw it at the last minute on the way back. The highway was only about 50 meters away and we were faced with a constant barrage of trucks and cars going past beeping their horns and yelling um, I don't think I want to know!

So, as we were now away from the beach and the waves and the salt spray I also made a point of using the Bowens equipment and my beloved beauty dish for the lighting in these images. And oh what a difference. I won’t run through the EXIF data for all of the bush images, suffice to say that for these the camera was locked down in manual mode, ISO100, 1/250^th second shutter speed and an aperture that varied from f/9 to f/13 dependant on the clouds that were passing over the sun with great frequency. We took a meter reading of the ambient light and then another for the flash output for each pose, then balanced the flash power output accordingly and made sure we shot the images in close succession to the last meter reading as possible to ensure consistent exposure whilst avoiding over-exposure.

I love the light in these images. I love the way that the beauty dish has bathed Sandy in this even glow of light and it hasn’t spilled too much onto her surroundings, despite the fact that I was not using the grid spot attachment for these images. I also love the fact that the big studio flash was able to pump out enough light to enable me to bring down the ambient background light in the way that it has. I love it, just love it. Finally, I also loved the fact that we were now dealing with a hot afternoon and masses of flies which made me feel a little better as Sandy really doesn't like the cold :)

For me, trying to keep my cool while 100 flies crawled over my face and up my nose on a hot humid afternoon whilst trying to look gorgeous while the sun glaringly invaded my suggested line of sight was… an experience! It’s not pretty, it’s not fun, I used and strained muscles I never knew I had but I did walk away with a much bigger appreciation for what models do for us photographers. What a trip!

Ok, gotta go. Thanks for staying to the end of this post, and thanks again to Sandy for your contributions. Take care, keep shooting what you love and I'll, I mean we'll talk to you soon.

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.