A Little Behind...

I am nearing the end of my 365 project for 2010. Tonight's image was 362 of 365. The last few images of my project all had one thing in common. The light was coming from behind the subject.



In the first image of the tea cup, the single light source was directly behind the subject and above, just out of the frame. For the tea cup image a piece of white foam core board was used to reflect just a touch of light to remove some of the mystery. The second shot with the female subject the light is behind the subject but more so to camera right rather than directly behind. And in this third image, the light is again directly behind the subject just like in the first image with the tea cup. However, in this case the shutter was slowed quite a bit to bring in some of the ambient from the candle.



It was fun to experiment a bit moving the light behind the subject to see what different looks, moods and imagery I could create.

Keep shooting.

Proof of Concept

I met a couple of guys for the first time today for the purpose of checking out a location and doing some "proof of concept" shots for some future work. It was great to hang with fellow photogs who share a passion for the craft and enjoy experimenting.

We set up just a couple of lights on stands and occasionally used another handheld flash. Cactus V4 triggers tripped the flashes today - something I had never worked with before but they worked really well. We even had a Nikon flash in there too! The cool thing about the Nikon flashes that Canon should pick up on is that the Nikon flashes can be used as an optical slave. Canon flashes can only trigger other Canon flashes.

Today was great fun and I even managed to grab a pretty good frame along the way.



Keep shooting.

Fun With Christmas Lights...

I have been experimenting for the past week with LED Christmas lights and managed to get quite a few interesting shots. I started with simple, still shots such as the one below.



And then I built up to longer exposures with the LEDs moving in the background like this next one.



That shot was a four-second exposure to give the LED lights time to paint the background and then at the end of the exposure a small flash was popped to expose the subject. The same technique was used for this portrait.



The only subtle difference between the two exposures is that in the first shot the lights are hanging from a C-stand on one end and just before the exposure begins they are stretched away from the C-stand, raised up as high as they can go and then released. As you can see in the result they just paint diagonally across the background. In the second example, the chain of lights is being held by a person on either side of the background and they are raising and lowering the whole stand, somewhat in unison. The effect is more like a fountain, which I thought was pretty cool. I suppose there is no limit to the ways to move the lights with each one creating a unique effect.

Tonight, I went back to still life and shot a close-up shot of an eye, which was lit with only a handful of LED lights taped in place very close to the subject. Again, it produced a very interesting effect, catch lights and almost a make-up look on the face. Pretty neat.



Keep experimenting and keep shooting.

One Day With Joe

Today was day one of a two day weekend seminar style workshop with Joe McNally. The even was sponsored by CAPIC and The Camera Store. This was my second time with Joe. Back in July of this year I spent a day with Joe at his workshop in Dobbs Ferry, NY. I gotta say each day I spent in the company of Joe, I learned a bunch and I came away with tons of energy and inspiration.



The highlight of day one of this weekend workshop happened after we came back from a fifteen minute break. Joe had an idea. We had two female models, both pretty done up but one was in character as Marilyn Monroe. So Joe's idea was to create a paparazzi type scenario. He had the two girls in front of the stage facing away from the audience. Way at the back of the theatre he had one light stand with flash on either side of the room pointing towards the stage. Each of those flashes was gelled yellow. They were to be the "Hollywood search lights". In front of the models he had two strobes in Lumiquest Mini Soft Boxes. The killer addition was he pulled a half dozen Nikon shooters out of the audience and set each of them up with a hot shoe strobe. The fake "paparazzi" were told not to turn on the cameras as Joe was working his TTL magic from his camera. It took him about two or three tries to get the lighting right and then he ended up with this amazing shot!



Wow! I think I got goosebumps on that one. OK, now my picture of his creation projected on to a big screen does not do the image justice but you get the idea. It was truly incredible to see Joe create that one out of thin air and end up with such an awesome shot. That was definitely a show stopping moment for me. And, I would be very surprised if a shot from that scenario does not show up in a blog post. It was so good.

I honestly can't say enough about Joe. It is twice now that I have had the privilege to see him work his magic and I am never disappointed. He is gracious, he is willing to share all what he knows and he does it without any ego and with so much humour and humanity. This guy is the real deal.

The best part about today is I get to do it all over again tomorrow. So good.

Keep shooting.

Football Fun!

This past weekend was a busy one. Shooting family portraits on Saturday and an Atom football game on Sunday. The coolest part about Sunday's football shoot was I was able to rent Canon's 300mm f/2.8L IS lens. That thing is a beast! It's about ten inches long and it weighs in at almost six pounds but let me tell you, this is ten inches and six pounds of pure awesome! Super sharp and super quick to focus it captures beautiful images, well, as long as I'm doing my part. Check out the lens shot below.



I don't shoot a lot of sports on a regular basis but I can share a few of the basic tips I use. First off, I start by taking a few shots of a grey card. This allows me to find proper exposure and the grey card image can be used to set (with software) correct white balance during post-processing. Once I have my exposure I just lock in the settings by switching the camera to manual. That way I never have to worry about the camera making incorrect exposure choices due an abundance of dark coloured jerseys or other scenarios that fool the camera's light meter.

With the help of the grey card I was able to establish a baseline exposure of f/4, 1/1000th of a second at ISO 400. I want to keep my ISO as low as possible while still maintaining a 1/1000th of a second shutter speed. Shooting outdoors on a fairly sunny day affords me that luxury. Indoors or at night under artificial lights I would have had to crank my ISO up to 1600 or beyond and shoot wide open at f/2.8.

Having my exposure locked in leaves me one less thing to think about however if you have a partially cloudy day like I did, you need to be cognizant of changing light conditions and adjust accordingly. I just check the LCD from time to time if I sensed that the light was changing. On this particular day it took no more than a 1/3 to 1/2 stop adjustment to get back to a proper exposure.



Another essential tool for handling a lens as big and heavy as the one I was using is a monopod. With image stabilization you could probably hand hold a big lens and get decent results but after a while arms will get fatigued and likely the quality of the pictures will suffer. Monopods are cheap and they work great. Just get one that can easily and quickly adjust to various heights so you can get shots from a variety of angles.

Lastly but quite likely the most important detail is focusing. Anytime there is movement you need the camera to track focus and this means switching to a continuous focus mode. For Canon shooters that mode is AI Servo. I was shooting with a Canon 40D, which is a pretty old camera but it is still a very reliable workhorse. The 40D does not have a lot of the fancy focus zones and tracking that more modern DSLRs do but it still does a very good job. What I do is light up just a single focus point, typically one that's off centre, and then make sure my subject is hit by this point. After that it is up to the camera to do the rest. I just have to line it up and press the shutter.

Hope some of those tips helped.



Keep shooting.

Something a Little Different

I shot the picture below yesterday as a part of my 365 project.



The first thing Jen said upon viewing the image was, "that doesn't even look like a picture you would take". Perfect. Mission accomplished. I wanted to do something out of my comfort zone, something a little different.

For this shot I stuck a 24 inch soft box behind, slightly above and very close to my subject. Then I cranked up the power on the flash all the way - full power! This gave me f/32 on the far side of the flower. The camera was at f/8. My flash is three stops over my camera settings! This produced a really cool wash of light, perhaps even mirroring a blast of sunlight from a window. I actually experimented with bringing my flash more in line with my camera settings but it didn't have the same impact and it certainly did not match the vision I had in my head. The final touch was to flip the white balance to tungsten in post to give the image that pale blue shade.

Keep shooting.

The Difference of One Light...

I did some fun portrait shots for Jen the other night. She was using a default graphic for her Twitter profile, which I felt needed to change. So I set up the gear, we gathered up some props and set about having some fun getting some new shots for her profile.

For this shoot I decided to use a shoot through umbrella straight on for the main light, fill (one to two stops below main) on the left, again, another shoot through umbrella, a hair light and a snooted light for a highlight on the background. All the lights were Canon 580EX IIs triggered with Pocketwizard. It's a pretty straight forward set up that yields quite good results.

As the shoot progressed we goofed around more with various props for no other reason then to see what we could create. It was fun. I was reviewing the shots quickly on my camera's LCD from time to time as we shot but I didn't have time to pull them up on the computer. We had another engagement that night so we had to move quick. I reviewed the pictures later that night. There were many really great shots from the session, however, my absolute favourite had a little piece missing. Below, on the left is the flawed favourite and on the right is my number two selection, which, by default became my number one.



Other than the slight difference in composition, the one on the left is missing the hair light. The hair light did not fire. It is a shame because everything else in that shot was perfect. The hair/rim light adds such a nice finishing touch to the portrait. The beautiful highlights in the hair and along the arm and shoulder - it brings a bit more spark to the image and nicely separates Jen from the background. *sigh* At least I got a good visual reference on the difference that one light can make in the overall aesthetic of an image.

Keep shooting.