One light shenanigans... and lens flare...

Well hey there everyone and welcome to yet another blog post. I must find out how long this blog has been running now, but I think it’s somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2 years. Who said I didn’t have any staying power? Shame on you!

The purpose of today’s blog post is to share some images that I did recently for a long-time friend, Serena. She has been a great help over the past four or so years, and is always eager to help out when I need a model at short notice for a shoot. I had just finished watching the wonderful “One Light Workshop” DVD’s by the uber talented Zack Arias. As the name of the DVD’s implies, there’s about 3 ½ hours of lighting instruction using only one light source – but in multiple applications. Studio lighting. Location lighting. Day or night. Zack is da man!

Anyway, one of the examples he showed in the latter part of the first DVD was the technique that produced the images I shot for this blog post. It involves creating a high-key look using only one light source. Those of you who know me know that I love to use high-key lighting. I love the way it makes the subject leap out of the image. I love the crispness and the contrast it creates. I just love everything about it. But, like anything it can get a little bit too much after a while. So I was pretty stoked when I saw Zack demonstrate this technique. The end result is that it still, obviously, creates a high-key image, but because of the positioning of the light you can create some really cool lens flare and also it makes the subjects skin go all creamy and delicious.

It basically involves placing a single studio light directly behind your subject. The catch is however is that the flash tube must be exposed, and not hidden by any kind of light modifier. This also means that you really can’t use a speedlight to create this effect, as it isn’t going to throw enough light in enough directions all at once to pull it off successfully. If you haven’t already, have a look at the video below which shows the whole set-up from go-to-woah. Sorry that the audio isn't all that great - my eBay special video camera doesn't have any audio-in jack meaning that I just have to use the built-in microphone and speak in a loud voice. This works well when I'm right next to the camera, but as soon as a walk away from it things go a little pear shaped. Anyway, enough excuses from me, take a look at the video...

One more thing – and one that I touched on in the video. You really have to be careful with your lens selection with this. Let me qualify what I mean. You really have to use the best lens that you have. This is because better quality lenses utilize all manner of glass witchcraftery to aid in the reduction of lens flare. And this is one lighting set-up that produces a lot of flare. A lot of cheaper lenses really don’t deal well with back-lighting. The biggest degradation occurs when the entire image looks washed out and pale. The tell-tale “rainbow spots” are another sure-fire sign of lens flare, but these can sometimes look quite cool.

But there ain’t nothing nice about a pale, washed out image. You can recover a lot of contrast in post production, but if the image is too far gone to begin with, there isn’t going to be a lot to gain by trying to fix it. A bad image is a bad image. I was using my Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VRII and I was still struggling with a few images having too much flare. Point made...

So there you go. Nice and simple set-up that creates really cool images. This one is going to be on my play light for a little while to come. That’s it for now. Keep shooting what you love and I’ll talk to you soon.

Merry Christmas... and a few bikini's to boot...

Well hey there everyone, and Merry Christmas!

There’s no surer way to know the festive season is upon us – the weather is steamy and hot, the shops are sold out and the roads are full of people trying to get somewhere in a hurry. I can honestly say that tonight I have never been more grateful for refrigerated air-conditioning. Its 9.30pm, outside its still 30.2 degrees and 65% humidity. Here in my office, it’s a super comfy 23.6 and 30% humidity. Oooh yeah.

Anyway, to tonight’s quick pre-Christmas blog. I thought I’d quickly share a few forgotten images from the STM Swimwear Parade from this year’s Perth Fashion Festival. I had been given media accreditation for a few events at this year’s Festival but this wasn’t one of them. So a good mate and I were forced to buy tickets to the show and we just turned up with our cameras.

Now I have to admit that I may have stuffed up the seating allocation when I bought the tickets, and instead of being right at the end of the runway, we were in fact right at the beginning of it. This means that we were looking down the runway toward the photographers pit, with all the spotlights aimed to light the models perfectly as they walked… away from where we were sitting. D’oh. So those of you with an agile mind will then summarise that as the models were walking back toward where we were sitting, they were backlit and didn’t have any real usable light on their faces. Well that sucked.

So, I went in thinking that although we weren’t in the photographer’s pit, at least I might get some decent shots like the previous year at the Morrision Show. But instead we were faced with what looked to be totally unusable.

So call me a slow learner, overzealous or just plain keen to get some shots but I got my camera out regardless and set up ready to shoot. The house lights dimmed, the music started to crank and the catwalk was lit up like runway 27 at Perth International Airport. I ended up with my Nikon D700 at ISO-3200, f/2.8 @ 1/100^th second shutter speed, using my Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM Macro II lens. As that lens doesn’t have any form of Image Stabilisation and I hadn’t yet purchased my Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II I was wary of dropping the shutter too much slower, for a couple of reasons.

Of course number one was that I was conscious of the focal length -v- shutter speed rule of thumb. That being, if you are using a 200mm lens, if you want to get sharp images, don’t let your shutter speed drop below the longest local length; which is 200mm which translates to 1/200^th of a second. The second reason is that the models were charging up and down the runway at a fairly decent rate of knots, so if I had gone any slower the images would be blurred regardless of how steady I was holding the camera. As you can see, a couple of the images are a little blurry around the models feet and hands anyway, any slower than 1/100^th on the shutter speed and this would have only gotten worse.

So there you go. The images, while not perfect, are still a fairly good representation of the outfits that the models were wearing. And while it is still really hot weather I thought these images seemed to fit rather well. That’s it.

I hope you all have a blessed and happy Christmas, get spoiled rotten and take some time to think of those around you that have made your year so special. 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.

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.

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.

The old makes way for the new...

Well, I’m still here, just busier than the one legged man at the “you know what” kicking competition! It’s always funny, but as some of you know I keep a fairly close eye on my website stats. Its really encouraging to see the number of hits on my website steadily growing from one month to the next, and it continues to grow from one year to the next. That’s cool – and the number of clients that we book seems to grow in accordance with website visitors – makes sense huh. Well, every December for the last three years visits to the website drop dramatically but the number of bookings we take for the month are about triple for the rest of the year. Just though I’d share that…

So, while business is good I took the liberty of buying a few new goodies in the last couple of weeks. The first was a new Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 HSM lens from B&H Photo in New York. The second is a pair of newly released remote TTL radio triggers from eBay. I’ll get to the triggers in a moment but firstly, the lens.

For those of you who do not know, my workhorse lens is a Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8D EX DG. These are a good value for money lens that offer reasonably good optical performance for a great price. In fact, at last count I have owned three of them. However this lens does have a downfall, and that is at wide open apertures it is known for being somewhat soft – it really doesn’t start to get sharp until about f/4+, which kinda defeats the purpose of having a constant f2.8 aperture through it’s focal length.

Enter stage left the newly (well, it’s kinda new…) released HSM version of this lens. In fact, its full name is a Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX ED HSM. What do all the acronyms stand for? Well, the important ones are IF [Internal Focussing] which means to ensure stability in focusing, this lens moves the inner lens groups without changing the lens' physical length; and HSM [Hyper Sonic Motor] which means this lens uses a motor driven by ultrasonic waves to provide a quiet, high-speed Auto Focus. It’s also almost a full 100g heavier than its older brother and weighs in at about 800g. That means there's a lot of glass hiding in there...

Optically speaking – this new lens is a cracker. You can read a really good review written by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about here. Suffice to say when it comes to the optical performance of this lens, it is only marginally pipped by the awesome Nikon AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED (which costs $1000 more) but the Sigma totally out performs the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM which costs $500 more. Cool.

So what does all this mean? Well the comparison image above shows a pretty good example of what I am talking about. The two images were taken showing the somewhat grotty keypad from my fax machine, and they both show a portion of the middle of the image enlarged to 100%. For both of the images I was using the [V] on the keypad as the focus point. Both were taken using a Fujifilm S5 Pro D-SLR body set to manual mode. Both shots were taken at 70mm, f/2.8 @ 1/2 second shutter speed, ISO 100. There really is no comparison as you can see, the image at the top (the new lens) is sooo much better at f/2.8.

Why is this so important you ask? Well I like to do a lot of portraits at larger apertures and now it means I can go all the way out to f/2.8 and not worry about sharpness issues. I was also having problems at weddings with the old lens. This is because in the reception I like to keep the aperture around f/3.2, which at ISO 800 gives a nice bright exposure when coupled with my SB-900 bouncing light off the roof. However the images were still a tad too soft for my liking, with some images coming out looking like they were not focussed properly; but is was just the lens performing badly.

I shot my first wedding yesterday with this lens and I have to say; although I have just had a preliminary glance at the images, it was great. I think I am going to like this lens even more than its older brother…

And finally, I bought myself a couple of new triggers. In a previous blog post I gave a demonstration of the very reliable Bowens Pulsar triggers. These things are great and work without skipping a beat, and I have never been in a situation where I have gone out of radio range with them. But they are not an intelligent trigger. Let me qualify that – they are only good for triggering a device by sending a trigger pulse to what ever is plugged into the receiver at the other end. There is not a lot of mathematics involved in this process and it means that you have to set your camera and your flash unit both to manual mode. Now, when you have lots of time this is not an issue. But it does mean that you have to unpack your light meter, get a reading of the ambient light in the scene, set your flash to [x] power level, take a meter reading of the flash to see how it compares to the ambient light reading, repeat the process again once you have adjusted the flash output, and keep repeating this process until all is good according to your light meter and you have figured out in your head how much brighter (to make it the key light) or softer (to make it a fill light) the flash output needs to be in balance with the ambient light. This is of course time consuming but it works really well at giving you a constant exposure, shot to shot, as nothing is changing that is going to affect your exposure. The time issue is a big one however, especially on a wedding shoot where you HAVE to make it happen there and then, with the minimum of fuss as the bride has given you a list of 100 places they want to have their photos taken in that short space of time between the wedding ceremony and the reception.

So because of this, I usually leave my Bowens triggers at home and either use a reflector, simple (dare I say it) on camera flash, or if I can find some shade somewhere I’ll use the Nikon i-TTL system. i-TTL is brilliant. It allows you to get a full metered; i.e. automatic flash output to obtain optimum flash exposure, while using the flash wirelessly off-camera. It is instantaneous, requires no calculations or manual adjustments on your behalf and will give you a perfect exposure, well; the greater majority - about 95% - of the time. But under normal circumstances the flash on your camera (master) and the off camera flash (remote) have to be in line of sight, and have to be fairly close together so that the infra-red signal communicating between the two flashes can be seen by the units. This is virtually impossible in bright daylight unless you are within a few feet of the remote flash – which kinda defeats the purpose of having off camera flash to begin with. As I said earlier, the only other option is to go indoors or find some shade somewhere.

Enter the TTL flash triggers. I have been waiting a long time for PocketWizard to come out with their i-TTL triggers for Nikon, and there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. So, I took a bit of a gamble and bought these triggers. They have been causing a bit of a stir on some of the biggest camera/lighting blogs around the world. They apparently work really well in TTL mode (single flash unit) but I have not yet seen any results of how they will work in i-TTL mode. i-TTL gives you the ability to have more than one flash unit contribute to the exposure and also assign different flash units different power levels and even have different groups of flashes all operating at once. Very Cool.

I have yet to receive them but I am hoping they will be the answer to my problems. I will certainly let you know on the next blog post how they work and exactly how reliable they are, but initial googling have found some, albeit sketchy; encouraging results. Time will tell! I also intend to produce a video or two on how to use i-TTL to wirelessly trigger your flashes, sorry Canon guys you will have to look elsewhere for now, but I may be able to wrangle something in the near future.

Ok, I’m outta here, I’ll let you all know about the new TTL triggers (fingers crossed they work!) and I’ll catch you all soon!