Honey, I shrunk the images...

Well hey there everyone. What I wanted to share today are just a few of my favourite images from the "A Touch of Wool III" catwalk show from this year’s Perth Fashion festival. Yeah I know I am a little late getting these online but I have managed to finally catch up with all my backlog of post-processing work and I found myself with a little, yes that’s right, just a little bit of time to spare before things start to get crazy again... man, I love my job. Really, I do!

Ok, so to the images. On this particular shoot, I learned a very important lesson. You see, nine times out of ten I will shoot full resolution, fine detail JPEG’s. On rare occasions when the client specifically requests or I am in the mood then I will shoot in RAW. Why? Because I can. Because I can get four times as many images on a memory card. Because I, and I am being truthful here, have never really found a need to rescue an image that was "that" bad out of camera that it needed to be a RAW file in order to fix it. But mostly, because it saves me a bit of time in post production as even though I now have a brand new super dooper kick-butt light speed PC, working with JPEG’s is just, well... quicker compared to RAW files. Ok enough of that.

Anyway, for this particular catwalk show I decided that I would turn the resolution of my Nikon D700 right down, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, these shows are usually over before you know it and the action is non-stop so I didn’t want to be wasting time changing memory cards and potentially missing some of the show. But the main reason is that I knew I would not be printing any of these images larger than postcard size, and the majority would only be used for putting on the internet for promotional purposes. So I set my D700 to shoot 2120 x 3184px images, which is just over 6 megapixels, ISO2000, f/2.8 and a shutter speed that varied from 1/320th to 1/500th second depending on the amount of light falling on the catwalk at the time. But the kicker was that I turned the compression up so that the camera was spitting out "Basic" JPEG's. Oh dear.

Here’s the kicker though. Compressing the image size compresses the dynamic range of the image too. You know, in all my time doing photography I had never known this because until now, every image I took was at full resolution and fine detail. The end result I found is that my exposure had to be spot on for the entire show (with its changing lighting scenarios and all) otherwise I was getting blown out highlights all over the place. It took me a few minutes to figure it out but I decided to stick with it for the remainder of the show; what better way to test ones skill while shooting a fast moving show, with the camera in manual mode and keeping the exposure within 1/3 of a stop the whole time. It was interesting.

That’s all for now. Take care and keep shooting what you love.

Taking some time out...

Hi guys. Just a really quick post tonight. I haven't really got any images to share, other than the iPhone snap that you see to the right. I haven't got any new gear to talk about (but give it a couple of days for that one lol). No lighting tips or words of pseudo wisdom for you all.

Nope, tonight's post is just a little something insignificant that I wanted to share. Something that has really been lacking for me lately is the luxury of taking a little time for... me.

Between photography, family, day jobs and everything else in between it has been hard to sit back, take an outside view and think about our next step. Reflect on where we are thus far. Plan where we are taking the business next. So, what the [bleep] am I doing sitting in a coffee shop in the departure lounge you ask? Good question actually.

You see I came here to the Perth International Terminal a month or so ago with a good mate to shoot some time-lapse movies of the planes loading and unloading on the tarmac. That’s nothing special I know but I have been back now several times on my own and I have to say that I am addicted to the vibe of this place. Everyone is so relaxed. They're all going on holidays or have just come back and are rested and refreshed and relaxed. If I had to sum up this place in a word, it would be relaxing. Weird I know huh, but that’s exactly how I feel after sitting here for an hour or so. It’s really addictive I gotta tell you. I really wish I could explain it, but this place just keeps drawing me back.

The next couple of weeks are going to be really busy for me and Timography. We have a bunch of shoots booked and we are launching something really special. A whole new look. I think it’s going to be pretty special. The new proverbial leaf.

So I’m enjoying the break for now. I’m going to revel in sitting back, sipping my coffee and just bathing in the atmosphere of this place. I love it.

Take care, keep shooting what you love and I’ll talk to you soon.

An afternoon in the sun...

See, I am slowly trying to get back on track and post a new blog a little more regularly than I have been of late. Today I wanted to quickly share a couple of images from a shoot I did on the weekend for a young family.

The brief for the shoot was fairly straight forward. We would be shooting in the mid afternoon sun, about 3.30pm to be precise, and we would be on a privately owned fruit orchard. Cool! As it was private property I didn’t really get the opportunity to do any scouting ahead of time (as I often like to do) but none the matter; I’d have to put into practice all that “thinking on your toes” wedding stuff I have been raving about recently.

I did know two things that I wanted to do before I got to the shoot. Firstly, I wanted to use off camera lighting. Secondly, it was a gorgeous afternoon and the light falling through the valley that we were going to be shooting in was amazing so I knew that I wanted to use the daylight to backlight my subjects as much as practicable. I have been getting more and more frustrated with my Pixel i-TTL radio triggers to the point that I refuse to use them any longer, as the results I get from them vary so wildly that it makes them pretty much impractical to use. This meant that I would obviously have to use a different method to trigger my Nikon SB-900 which was firing through a 24” collapsible softbox. I could have utilized Nikon’s wonderful CLS to trigger the flash, but with the ambient light so strong it would have proven to be a little unreliable also unless I was within a few feet of the remote flash.

So, enter stage left a newly purchased but until now untried 10m flash extension cord. Yup that’s right, 10 meters. And I got say, right off the bat this thing saved my hide. It worked brilliantly. Yeah I know it’s not a fancy radio trigger “Radio Popper” but for now it suits me just fine. I know that Pocket Wizard are now in beta testing with their “Flex” and “Mini” TTL radio triggers for Nikon but there is still no firm release date for them. So 10m extension cord it is.

As for the camera settings for the images, it’s pretty simple. Manual mode. Matrix metering. ISO200. Use the camera meter to establish what correct exposure would be for the entire scene, no flash. Take a shot. Check your LCD to ensure that you are getting enough highlights around your subjects. If you aren’t, move your shutter speed back and forth until you do. Remember not to try using your exposure compensation dials here as we are in manual mode, and although the camera will let you make the adjustment to the dials it will have NO effect on your image. Only use exposure compensation when in Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority or Program mode.

For me, correct exposure ended up being 1/2000th second shutter speed @ f/2.8, ISO200. I then turned on the flash and left it in TTL mode and set the camera to high speed sync mode so I could still use the flash at this high shutter speed. Of course the trade off with high-speed sync is that you lose a little power. But this was ok as I had the flash positioned nice and close anyway, at only about 1 ½ meters away. That’s it. Take a shot. Wait a couple of seconds for the flash to recharge. Take another shot. Repeat this process. Job done!

We took a bunch of shots in some different locations around the orchard that afternoon, but these ones sitting in the grass were my favourites from the day.

Keep shooting what you love and I’ll talk to you soon.

The best thing that happened to me...

Well hello everyone. I wonder if any of you thought that I had dropped off the face of the earth or something? Not quite, but over the last couple of months it has been really hard to try and find the time to write a blog post. But enough excuses, it’s time to write something meaningful.

So, what’s been happening you ask? A whole bunch of stuff actually. Shooting, meeting clients, post production, more shoots, more meeting clients and on and on it goes. You get the picture. It’s starting to get back into wedding season so to be honest they have been taking up most of my time. But that’s a good thing right? Hell yeah!

You see, I used to loathe weddings. Not because I am some sort of sour puss who doesn’t like to see people be happy; but because I was quite frankly terrified of photographing the things. When I am in my studio I can set things up just the way I like them. I know how the lighting will respond and I also know how to set the lights to give gorgeous flattering shadows and highlights. Everything is very controlled. Safe. Once the lights are set my exposure will not change from shot to shot.

But I also love doing location modelling shoots. I love to use flash to overpower the ambient sunlight to create dramatic contrast and saturation. I am also learning more about using natural light to my advantage. It’s a challenge, but not a scary one. We only have one or two models at a time. I pick the locations. Even though we are out in the elements I am very much still in control if things start to go a little pear shaped. We can stop, change things around, try something a little different and it isn’t a really big deal.

Now as for weddings, not so much of this applies. Any of you out there that have done any wedding shoots will immediately understand what I am talking about. These are a different kettle of fish altogether. If things aren’t going well you have to... well, deal with it. No real second chances. Sure you may get a little time to try and change one thing if it really isn’t working but if you start to do this too much during the wedding the bride and groom are gonna start to get (understandably) a little cranky. Plus, it doesn’t really look great if you keep stopping and changing things around. In the worst case scenario I guess the bride and groom could completely lose confidence in your ability. And I am guessing once this happens it would be pretty much impossible to regain any kind of rapport with the couple that is of any meaning. Not good at all, would you agree?

So have I sold you on wedding photography yet? Gimme a couple of minutes and it will all start to come together. You see, what do you think will happen to your own ability and confidence if you are placed in this otherwise uncomfortable situation on a regular basis? How do you think it will affect your photography? Will you crumble into a sloppy heap in the corner, or will you start to (very quickly) learn what works and what doesn’t. I’m hoping that you are thinking option “b” is applicable here. And you know what, it is.

Now I am not for one moment suggesting that I am some kind of phenomenal photographer that is about to turn the world on its ear. Far from it. But when I sit back and think about things, about different scenarios I’ve been forced in to, different locations that have gone sour and times when my equipment isn’t producing magical images just like those in the advertisements that made me want the thing in the first place, I am truly pleasantly surprised. I realise that being thrust into these situations has made me a better photographer than I was before I started.

Now this is true of any situation that you find yourself in, photographically speaking. But what I am trying to say here is that I have noticed a visible, tangible improvement in my own abilities that has been fast-tracked since I started photographing weddings. I used to loathe them. Now I love them. I love the challenges, the people you meet and the locations that you get to go to on a regular basis.

I used to think that there were famous photographers living the high life and doing wonderful things, and then there were the rest of the poor slobs stuck photographing weddings. The guys who really couldn’t make it in the real world so they settled for second best. Oh how my mindset has changed. There is something about being put in a situation that does not offer second chances. You arrive on location, assess the situation, the lighting and the environment. And then you have to make it happen, in the best way you know how. Sure it does not go according to plan all the time. But the times when it does fall in a heap are less and less. We are human, we make mistakes. The trick is to actually learn from them and move on, knowing how to recognise them in the future and not make the same ones over and over again.

I’m getting off my soap box now. I have a bunch of images to post from this week’s Perth Fashion Festival, so stay tuned for those. Take care everyone and keep shooting what you love.

Blinded by the light... a "how-to" marathon...

Well hey there everybody and welcome to a gargantuan blog post. Yes, you had best get settled in, make a fresh cup of coffee and get comfortable because this is gonna be a long one! We might actually get to see if my new little laptops batteries really do last 8 hours as I am sitting here at my local Dome Cafe writing this and I didn’t bring the power supply... ok hopefully it won’t take quite that long...

So, to business. As some of you may know Sandy and I recently posted a couple of videos on YouTube which demonstrated how to shoot images using high-key lighting. These videos were a direct result of emails that you guys, yeah that’s right – you – had sent in and requested that you wanted to see. The image at the top of this blog is one of the resulting shots. They are all done in our little studio down here in Kelmscott.

“Well that’s fine for you Tim, but I don’t have a studio” I can hear you say. Fair enough; but in the words of Scott Kelby - if you have four walls and a roof no matter where you are – you have a studio!

Ok before we get too much into this blog, it’s probably best that you go and watch the first video... so here it is!

Ok so we covered quite a bit there in a short space of time but I thought that was best rather than going into information overload on you poor viewers. Rather, we covered the bare essentials and left it up to your own creativity to push the envelope a little further and get really creative. What I will do now however is run through each lighting set-up in a little more detail than we did in the video. I'm doing this so you can choose the images you really like best and just read that bit, or if you are a real glutton for punishment then just read this whole post! Up to you...

Example 1a – Softboxes as key lights on a white background

So this is one of the images from the first lighting scenario. As you can see it gives pretty good coverage on the backdrop and also, depending on how you set the key lights, shadowless lighting on your subject. This example is probably the closest that you are going to get to achieving full shadowless lighting without the use of the foam core panels that we discuss a little further down the page.

Example 1a – Softboxes as key lights on a white background

With this example, the hardest thing is to adequately light the floor so that it does not get too dull and grey which will of course detract from the whole high-key effect. It works best if the softboxes (which are on either side of the model) are at the same power; or in a 1:1 lighting ratio. This is also probably a good time to explain a little about the lighting ratios used in these examples.

In all the images you will see in this post, the background does not change. It’s a 9ft wide white paper seamless roll being lit by two strobes with bounce umbrellas – one on each side of the backdrop. The whole idea of high key is to blow the background out, or basically put so much light on it that it turns pure white; in much the same way if you have ever taken a photograph outside in the midday sun and metered the exposure for the subjects face and the sky gets completely blown out too and turns white.

So, the key to obtaining really good high key lighting is to make the background about two f-stops brighter than the key lights on the subject. Now, you might be thinking how on earth are you gonna be able to take a photo with such a difference in light levels between the background and foreground – but it really is quite easy. Let’s continue and explain. Ok, so with your light meter you want to aim for about f/13 to be read on the middle of the backdrop. You will find that the edges of the backdrop will be much brighter than this (as much as f/16 or even f/18) but that is ok. Please ensure that you do not have the key lights (Softboxes) turned on during this because they will add to the light hitting the backdrop and you will ultimately struggle to get enough separation or brightness into the background. Trust me on this one.

Once you have the background set you can now turn your key lights on. This is where the whole thing starts to come together. To keep the two f-stops of separation, and assuming that our background is set to f/13, meter the key lights so they are no brighter than say; f/7.1 on your subject. All you need to do now is set your camera to f/7.1 and 1/125th second shutter speed and you are set! Easy.

Example 1b – Beauty Dish as key light on a white background

This one is probably my favourite as it is possible to get a little contrast and shadow on the subject whilst still having a high key background. It is however the hardest to clean up in post production as the floor will not be a bright white colour. This is because the beauty dish is positioned only about 2 feet from our models head; and to achieve the same exposure on our model of f/7.1 on her face, if we use the light fall-off rule of thumb "the intensity of illumination is proportional to the inverse square of the distance from the light source" by the time the light hits the floor it is only going to be registering about f/4 or so, possibly even around f/2.8.

Example 1b – Beauty Dish as key light on a white background

This is a small price to pay however as I really do love this light and the contrast and shadow it creates. And furthermore as you will see by the time you reach the end of this blog post, it is not too difficult to fix up these little shadow inconsistencies on the floor anyway with a swift little edit in Photoshop. Problem solved!

In the video we kept the grid spot grill on the beauty dish to really accentuate this light fall-off, but there is of course nothing to stop you from experimenting with different placement of the beauty dish by moving it farther away or taking off the grid spot. It really is up to you and whatever type of effect you are trying to achieve.

Example 1c – Parabolic Umbrella as key light on a white background

Ok, are you still hanging in there? Now we are introducing a much larger light source for the key light. And it doesn’t come much larger than our huge 7ft parabolic umbrella. As Sandy states in the video, because it is a much larger light source than the beauty dish it is also a lot softer than the last example. And because it is directional (only on one side of the model) we are still able to achieve the full length shadow down the models left side.

Example 1c – Parabolic Umbrella as key light on a white background

One thing that will become immediately apparent as you start taking photos using this lighting set-up is how well the floor is lit compared to the beauty dish, but it is still not quite as good as using the two Softboxes as we did in example 1a. I really do like how the key light spans the height of the model, and in this example our model Tanayah is pushing the 6ft mark with those heels on!

So if you need to concentrate on full length fashion shots this light would work a little better than that shown with the beauty dish in example 1b. But as with all things photography related, it is entirely up to you and the final look you are trying to achieve.

By the way - I have placed lighting diagrams for the above-mentioned studio set-ups on my website here. Please feel welcome to download them for future reference!

Congratulations – you have made it past the half way mark! Must be time to watch another video. This time you are going to see the second video we shot wherein we demonstrate how to set up the studio for true high key lighting by taking advantage of the 4ft x 8ft foam core panels.

Easy huh! So now you have seen how to get truly shadowless lighting in the studio.

Example 2 – Lit foam core panels as key lights on a white background

From the image above you can see that you can still achieve a little contrast on the model depending on how she is positioned but there aren’t any real shadows in sight. The key to pulling off the lighting set-up is the positioning of the key lights.

As you saw from the video, the key lights are only about 3 feet behind the foam core panels. The stands the lights are on are positioned on the floor so that they are parallel to the outside edge of the foam core, but angled in at a 45 degree angle so that they will bounce off the middle of the foam core and back into the model. This is the same on both sides of the set for both left and right-hand lights.

Example 2 – Lit foam core panels as key lights on a white background

Make sure that you pay close attention to Sandy’s tip here and stay outside of the “V” shadow that has been created on the floor by the key lights. As I had mentioned in the video, the key lights are in fact pointing directly towards your camera shooting position and the foam core’s actually serve double purpose here. Not only are they reflecting the key lights back at the subject and basically making the area between the foam cores and the backdrop one giant light-tent, but they are also serving as two rather large but effective flags which stop the light being reflected right down the barrel of the lens... provided you stay on your side of the “V” shadow that is...

As for the metering in this set-up, well it is pretty much the same as in the first video. The background still has a strobe head at either end being lit by bouncing the light off a reflective umbrella. You still aim for f/13 in the middle of the backdrop and you still meter the backdrop with the key lights turned off.

But because we are now in this aforementioned light tent as it were, the metering on the subject isn’t quite the two f-stops of difference as was the case for the first three examples. Again, you season to taste but I have found that about 1 to 1 ½ stops of difference between the backdrop and key lights works pretty well here, which means that you can start with metering for f/9 on your subject and see how you like it from there. If you aim for the two f-stops difference I have found that sometimes the light reflecting off the background is a little too hot and starts to create blown out rim-lighting on your subject. This is trial and error and up to you as to how you want the image to turn out. Because we are in a pretty small studio space the distance between the backdrop and foam core panels is only about 8 or 9 feet. Ideally you would want to have about 10 to 15 feet of separation between the two, but you really can just tailor this to your particular situation.

Finally, I have also placed the lighting diagram for this studio set-up on my website here. As before, feel welcome to download it for future reference.

So there you go – you made it! Good for you. One final thing though – there’s one more video to watch. In this last video I show you a quick and easy way to post process the images in Photoshop.

Easy huh. Once you get the hang of that technique, you really can do the edit in a minute or two – flat. Yeah there are 100 different ways to achieve the same effect in Photoshop but after trying many of them, I have found this way to be the most painless.

Ok, so that about does it for now. I’ll be posting a few more images in the next couple of days from a modelling shoot we did in the city yesterday with an old mate that we had not worked with for a while. It was a fun afternoon...

But until then; keep shooting what you love and Sandy and I’ll talk to you soon. Take care.

PS - we need to give a huge thank you to JB @ ViWest Video Instruction for all his help in producing these videos. Without his help these videos would not be possible. You're a champ mate!

Underpants and VR lenses...

Well it's a gorgeous Saturday afternoon here in Perth. Must be time to write a blog post. Last weekend #1 and I headed into the City to the Perth Exhibition and Convention Centre for the purpose of shooting the fashion shows at the 2010 Brownes Every Woman Expo. It is at this juncture that I should welcome back Sandy to the blog. After a very busy few weeks she is back on deck. For the first time reader out there, my text looks like this, Sandy’s looks like this.

I have been a regular at this event, having photographed the shows for the past four years. The guys and girls from Metro Modelling Academy do a great, albeit hectic, job on the catwalks. It has been fantastic to see the models progress from year to year. Well done guys!

When Tim first mentioned that the Expo was coming up I was apprehensive but excited at the same time. This would be such a different situation to what I am used to shooting. Well not so different in the fact that I am used to trying to capture fast moving children, but I could see this was a whole different ball game. There are no second chances with photographing a fashion show. You get it right the first time or you miss out! No pressure though...

In years gone by the fashion shows were a 60 - 40 mix of clothing and underwear, but this year it was mostly lingerie. Not that I am complaining mind you, it was just a surprise thats all. But then again, I guess the organizers must have had more requests from underwear exhibitors. How times change.

This weekend I decided I would try out the much praised and publicised best lens in the world (sorry Canon guys, even you have to concede to this one!) so I hired a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VRII telephoto lens. Wow, what a piece of glass! I usually shoot with my Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM II telephoto. This is a great lens for its price at about $1800 cheaper than the Nikon, but even the Sigma is well over the $1200 mark. One thing that it is sorely missing is some sort of Vibration Reduction system; although Sigma have recently released an OS (Optical Stabilization) version of the lens. No such worries with the Nikon lens though – the VRII system built into this lens is awesome. It is possible to get pin sharp images, hand held, at 200mm with as little as 1/16th second shutter speed. I kid you not. Sorry I need a moment...

Ok, back to the blog. So, armed with my Nikon D700 and 70-200 Nikon lens we started shooting. I left the VR turned on, even though I was using a monopod as I still had some vibration and camera shake due to the fact the the monopod does not completely stabilise the camera but just slows it down a little and also keeps your arm from falling off! The weight of the camera body, battery grip and lens was pushing 5.5kg! Doesn't sound like a lot but try holding that weight steady at eye level for more than 10 minutes and it feels like a ton.

So as Tim was using that funky Nikon lens it meant that I could use the Sigma. Like the Nikon lens, it is quite heavy to hold for long periods but not totally unmanageable. I chose to shoot the parades from the side of the catwalk, about 45 degrees off to one side. This gave me a good vantage point to capture the models as they came up and down the runway. I had seen fashion shows before, but the Metro Modelling guys were moving around quite fast and doing pretty complex routines which all means that it was hard to predict where they were going and who was going to do what!

In previous years I had all sorts of difficulties shooting this particular event. You see, most fashion shows are set up so that the lighting is purely for the show itself and the models wearing the garments on show. Not this event however. They usually place brightly colored lights down the edge of the stage pointing back to the audience and therefore my camera position. Everything is set up (lighting wise) to make the catwalk look colourful and the models seem to be an afterthought.

For the first couple of years I brought my own lighting along with me; but this in itself has its own inherent issues. I had used a technique where I had metered the lights for a point on the end of the catwalk, which is fine if the models are coming out one at a time, walking down to the end of the catwalk and then turning around and heading back again. No problems – right? Wrong. Although the routines that the Metro Modelling guys were doing looked cool from an audience perspective, from a photography standpoint it was like trying to photograph a footy match – people going every which way at once at great speed! Not really a desirable situation when using studio strobes as you spend the entire show with your thumb on the control dial dancing up and down the aperture scale hoping that you are getting the exposure right as the models are doing their thing. Stressful.

Anyway this year I thought I’d go back to the basics. Manual mode. ISO 1600. No fill-flash. Cross my fingers and hope for the best. And what do you know – it worked! Last year I had shot the whole show using aperture priority to try and maintain some kind of consistent exposure latitude and even that didn’t work. But time is a great teacher and I learned a while ago that the only way to shoot these events is in manual. I ended up shooting the entire show at 1/200th second shutter speed, f/3.5 @ ISO1600.

Not having done one of these shows before I was an open book when it came to technique. I followed Tim’s lead, set my Nikon to manual mode too, ISO 1250 and 1/200th second shutter speed at f/2.8. I also set the white balance in the camera to tungsten as the majority of the stage lights were tungsten bulbs with the exception of a few LED floods along the edges of the catwalk. Because these LED floods were so bright and colourful you could not really notice any pronounced color shift in the image captured by the camera which was cool, and made my life a lot easier too.

So anyway, we had a great time and took lots of images. Quickly on that, my Nikon D700 has a native frame rate of 5FPS. This is not too bad for a full-frame, full-resolution image. But I have added the Nikon MB-D10 battery grip to my camera body. This battery grip comes with two battery trays. One for the standard Lithium-Ion EN-el3a (who comes up with these model names?) battery and an additional tray that takes 8x AA size batteries. If you fill this tray with Sanyo’s eneloop lith-ion rechargeable batteries it jumps the cameras frame rate up to a whopping 8FPS. Very cool. After only 2 hours of shooting it is amazing how many images you can capture. I was being conservative and I still ended up with almost 3000 shots. Wow.

I think thats enough from us for now and I’ll finish the blog with a few images. I hope you like them. Keep shooting what you love and Sandy and I will talk to you soon. Take care.

Quick update - a simple headshot...

Good evening everyone.

This is another quick on the fly update just for the purpose of sharing an image from a shoot we did yesterday for a local hairdresser. The owner of the business wanted to approach one of her suppliers for the purpose of showcasing her hairdressing and styling skills. That’s cool.

So the lighting for this shot was just a single Nikon SB-900 shooting through a portable Lastolite collapsible Ezybox 60cm softbox. The flash was being triggered using another SB-900 on top of my Nikon D700 using CLS.

The lens however was one that I don’t use very often, but it’s a great bit of glass and an awesome portrait lens. It was my Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro. I’d use this lens more often but it is too long to use in our studio as we cannot get full length shots with this focal length; 70mm is the longest focal length for that. Oh yeah, to clarify, this shot was taken on location at the hairdressers premises. We simply used one of the walls as the backdrop.

The lighting style is just a simple Rembrandt set-up. One light. No fuss. Just make sure that you get the model to turn their head slightly to the direction of the light. No, wait – thats not entirely correct. Where the model positions their head is entirely up to you and the particular effect that you are going for. I have done some awesomely attractive shots in the past where the model is looking down and away from the light and the end result has been really yummy. So – its up to you. But... you can see how the end result looks when the model does turn their head to the light.

So this shot is wide open at f/2.8. Click on the image at the top of this post to see it a bit larger - it does it better justice. I like it. Just wanted to share that. Good night.

Quick update - guide numbers and grey skies...

Hi guys.

Just a quickie to show you all an image from today’s Bridal shoot all the way down south in Yarloop. I’ll keep this one short as we will be posting some more images soon – once I have had the opportunity to actually have a good look through and pick out some of my favourites from the 400+ images we took today.

So the image you can see was taken in a paddock that was vacant and had a “For Sale” sign on it – a good candidate we thought as it was unlikely that anyone would worry about us being there.

As I said this is only a quick post – but I wanted to briefly share one thing. Today I took out with us my newly acquired Bowens GM250 monoblock studio strobe heads. I picked up a couple of these as part of a whole packaged kit by Bowens from a colleague and fellow photographer of mine. They had very little use and I got them for a very reasonable price. Awesome.

The main reason I got these heads however was to give me something smaller and more portable (and also a helluva lot cheaper) to use on location, rather than the Bowens GM500 monoblock heads that I also have. The GM500 heads are awesome but I am always very wary of taking them out of the studio – mainly because these puppies are so expensive and I really do rely on them for our everyday studio shooting requirements. What I am trying to say here is that I can’t live without them! But would the GM250 heads be able to put out enough light in a location photography environment?

But anyway, getting to the point... I was really impressed with the power output of the GM250 heads. They have an output, or “guide number” of 54. It’s a pretty exact science but it roughly translates that at 1 metre distance from your subject they will put out f/54 @ ISO100. For comparison, the GM500 heads have a guide number of 80. For the geeks out there, the next two paragraphs may interest you...

“The guide number for an electronic flash measures its ability to illuminate the subject to be photographed at a specific film or sensor sensitivity and angle of view. A higher guide number indicates a more powerful flash.

For example, doubling the guide number means the flash can illuminate an object at twice the distance, or for an object at the same distance can be used at one quarter the sensitivity. Doubling the guide number requires a quadrupling of the flash's power, as the area to be illuminated increases as the square of the distance. (cf. inverse-square law).”

Easy right? So far as to say the GM250 heads didn’t skip a beat. Yes it was overcast and most of the time we weren't shooting over about f/9, but we also kept the flash about 5-6 meters away from Tanya (our model) the whole time. And the really best bit – I was using the Bowens Travel-Pak battery to power the heads. This thing is rated to give you 200 full power “pops” of flash when using a 500 watt/second flash head at full power. We took 400+ shots today, mostly at around ½ to ¾ power on the GM250 heads. At the end of the day, the battery indicator on the Travel-Pak was reading >75% power remaining. Fantastic.

Gotta go. Keep shooting what you love and we’ll catch you soon.

Good things come in small packages...

Hi everyone and welcome to another enthralling diatribe from us here at Timography.

I know I say it every post but this really is a quick one tonight! I have been putting in some late nights recently in order to get some post production out of the way and it is starting to take its toll on me. I must be getting old huh... wait, don’t answer that. Gone are the days when I could stay up past 2am on consecutive evenings without trouble. These days, not quite the case. I’m rambling again huh.

Ok, so to tonight’s post. I have had a mobile broadband thumb-drive modem with a certain phone carrier for a while now, and this week saw it was ready for renewal. I often use the thumb-drive if I am out and about seeing clients and I need internet access, or if I am just out and feeling bored and happen to have my (albeit large 18” Toshiba) laptop with me I’ll kill some time and surf the web. I’m sure that a lot of you have similar devices with other mobile phone carriers and they are a cool peripheral to have at your disposal.

The plot thickens. For a while now I have wanted to get myself a netbook. Why you ask? Why not an iPad? Well that is a whole other blog post in itself. Back to the netbook. I have always loved the idea of taking my laptop with me. Yes, I love to embrace my inner geek. But as I mentioned, the Toshiba is large and heavy; but it is very powerful and capable of any task or program that I throw at it. The downside of all this computing power and that huge 18” screen is that the battery life is 2 hours tops, 2.15 if I turn everything (including the screen brightness) down. You would be amazed how quickly that passes once you get into it.

So I thought the netbook would be perfect for allowing me to do simple things like browse the web, watch a movie or two on iTunes and maybe act as a backup photo storage device on larger shoots. The super long battery life of a netbook certainly appealed to me. I started looking around and did quite a bit of research and it turns out that a netbook wasn’t really going to cut the mustard as far as my needs were concerned. Then I discovered that one mobile phone carrier was bundling their mobile broadband plans with some funky little netbook computers. I looked a little further and I discovered that they also were offering the very cool and certainly very capable Acer Aspire 1410 laptop. Yes that’s right, laptop. Although this thing is only tiny with an 11.6” screen (although larger than a netbook’s 10.1” screen) this puppy certainly packs a punch, and it’s running a full version of Windows 7 Home Premium, not Windows 7 Starter or ~gasp~ Windows XP SP3 like on some current netbooks on the market. I have loaded on Lightroom 2.7 and Photoshop CS4, both of which run just fine thanks very much. It even plays 1080p HD movies – smoothly – without dropping frames. And the best bit; the 3G modem is built in so no more thumb-drive to get in the way and the battery life on this thing is 10+ hours. Oh my God. I’m a happy camper.

To the images accompanying this blog post. Katie is a model that contacted me through our website. She had done some modelling in the past but was looking to get back into more regular work. For this shoot we headed back to the old timber mill at Jarrahdale that we used a while back with Tanayah at sunset; the images from that shoot turned our really well indeed.

The image at the top of the page was amongst the last few shots that we took after the sun had set. I was using my Fujifilm S5 Pro and Nikon 85mm f/1.8 combo. The light for this image was being supplied from a single bare headed Nikon SB-900 mounted to camera right, and was being triggered by using another SB-900 on top of my camera in i-TTL mode using Nikon CLS. I wanted to keep the image, or more specifically the background, fairly light so the camera was in [A] Aperture Priority mode, 1/60^th second shutter speed, f/2.8 @ ISO200. Unlike our last blog post where the saturation was pumped up to 11, everything was zeroed as far as the in-camera processing was concerned.

The next image shows Katie being lit again by my beauty dish. The S5 Pro was this time locked in manual mode, 1/250^th second shutter speed, f/7.1 @ ISO200. I like the subtleness of the lighting here. This image was one of the first of the shoot and Katie has done really well I think with this pose. She was feeling very nervous (which is natural, of course) and it did take a while for her to loosen up. But by the end of the shoot we were getting some great shots. Thanks Katie.

I wanted to finish this post with a quick look at a new iPhone app that was released in the last couple of weeks, Camera +. I have to admit that I am a bit of a sucker too when it comes to apps for my iPhone. At last count I have downloaded about 150 from iTunes and have at any one time about 80 or so on my phone. I was a great fan of Chase Jarvis’ “Best Camera” app as it allowed you to do everything you needed to from within the app. That is, you can take the photo, edit it and upload it without leaving the application.

Camera + adopts this theme but takes it to the next level. You see, Best Camera has about 13 presets that you can play with to manipulate your image, and you can stack multiple effects multiple times on the one image to give you literally billions of combinations; but sometimes it was hard work to push your image in the direction that you wanted to – creatively speaking.

This app however makes things very easy. You select the image you wish to edit, or take a fresh one. You can then select “scenes” which mimic flash patterns or other in-camera presets such as “portrait”, “landscape” , “sunset” and so on. You can then go on to apply a number of different one touch color tonings, crops or photo borders. The cool thing is that it will give you a small thumbnail preview of how each effect will look on your particular image which makes the whole process very quick and easy. And when you are doing this kind of thing on your phone, isn’t that the whole point? Finally, if you enter your Facebook or Twitter information into the app it will upload the end result for you as well. Job well done!

Ok, time for us to go. Take care and keep shooting what you love. Oh, speaking of good things coming in small packages – this entire post and everything in it – the images, Photoshop work, watermarking, the lot – was done on my new little laptop. I love it so much!

I’m going to get a life now... :o)

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.