Clamshell lighting

I saw a few medium format portraits yesterday that had a beautiful creamy depth of field to it, and I wanted to see if I could emulate it with my camera. I feel like I got close with this.

Here is the setup shot:



Settings:
2 Canon 580ex II
Top flash at 1/32 power,
at 24mm,
into silver bounce umbrella
light stand was at 1.5 meters height,
directly in front of subject and angled down,
bottom flash at 1/64 power,
at 24mm,
through white shoot-through umbrella,
light stand at .3 meters height,
directly in front of subject angled up.

The lower flash was essentially 2 stops dimmer than the upper flash. It was dialed down one stop, plus the white umbrella eats an extra stop of light than the silver. The result is a very smooth lighting with a little direction from above. These low settings of 1/32 and 1/64 in a dark room allowed me to use f/1.8 which is how I got such a smooth and strong fall off of focus. I tried it with a background slave flash set, which illuminated the background, but that washed out the nice focus, so I turned it back off.

For post, I adjusted contrast slightly, and clarity slightly, desaturated a little. Then in Photoshop I added a +.3 exposure to just the eyes, and then used highpass and smart sharpen, but with masks to limit it to just the part of the image that was in focus, so that I wasn't sharpening the out of focus areas.

Light modifications

This post is going to explain the various light modifications that I use in my portrait photography. This will serve to illustrate what mods I mention in posts, as well as to show how you can modify a small studio strobe.

First off, bare bones flash with skyport wireless trigger. This is the foundation, where everything builds off of. The skyport triggers the flash wirelessly, the front of the flash can accept gels (there is a 1/2 CTOrange gel in it in this photo), and the head can zoom from wide, normal, and telephoto.



Next, is a "bare bulb" emulation mod. This is just a white frosted container that scatters the light in all directions, like a real bare light bulb would do. Normally the flash is directional, but with this mod, it works like an omni-directional light, sending light off in all 360 degrees. Useful for lighting small places, hiding inside a real lamp, car interiors, etc.



Now I've attached a Dave Honl 1/8" gridspot. The flash head is zoomed out to telephoto as well. This mod throws the light in a very tight, very narrow beam. Useful for isolating the light to a single area.



This is a Lumiquest Softbox II. Normally the flash "size" is exactly the dimensions of the flash head. This gives a very hard light that is not very flattering for a front light. By increasing the light's apparent size, you get a softer look. This small softbox doesn't blow over in the wind like my umbrella does, and allows for a great feathering affect that's harder to achieve with an umbrella. I'll demonstrate the feathering affect in my next portrait post. I am in the process of building a snoot for this softbox, which will give me a soft, isolated light.



This one brings the juice. It's the 285hv cranked to full power, with a small slave flash velcroed on top. The 285hv has a GN of 120, and this slave flash a GN of 80. This gives me a GN of 144 (thanks for the math Jasphoto) brighter than the high end canon and nikon flashes. The flash only has 2 settings, high and low, but I leave it on high, and set it to slave, and it's triggered when the main flash it's on top of goes off. The same velcro that I attach the soft box to, holds my skyport slave on the side of the flash.



This is that same setup, aimed into a silver umbrella. Right now the handle is choked up on, but if I extend the umbrella all the way, this really packs a punch of soft light. Great for groups, or if the light has to be out of the frame on a wide angle shot.



Now I've attached a white nylon sheet. This is just white rip stop nylon from a fabric store, with grommets for the umbrella tines to go through. It has a slit to the middle for the umbrella shaft, and then had fray-check (a sort of fabric glue) to keep the slit from fraying. This setup is incredibly soft, and extremely powerful. With the slave flash velcroed to the 285hv, it can really pump out the light. The reason I like this better than a white shoot-through umbrella, is that this provides a 43" flat white soft light, rather than a rounded one that curves away from the subject. It makes a difference in the wrap around light.



In the future I'm planning to build a small card for the honl grid to further restrict the light to a tiny area, a snoot for the softbox, and a snoot for the white nylon'ed silver umbrella. Being able to "not light" is almost as important as being able to light. Control is the artist's tool.

B&W Male portraits

This started as an attempt to emulate another photographer. She had some amazing black and white, one-light portraits. I sat a subject down and started playing with light sources, angles, and ratios. I liked the end result so much that I started asking more of my friends to sit for this same treatment, and it sortof evolved into a photo project over time. The goal is to get to 50, and I'll be doing a coffee table book. When it's complete I'll put the details on how to order here so that readers can get a high res print if interested. Just for my information, if anyone knows now that they'd be interested in this book if it's high quality, and around 30 USD (plus shipping) please leave a comment.



Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
Main set to full power,
through white shoot-through umbrella,
at middle zoom setting (this fills the umbrella with no spill)
Rim set to 1/4 power,
through Dave-Honl 1/8" grid-spot,
Full zoom setting
Main light stand was at 2 meters height, rim was at 2.5 meters
Main light was slightly in front of the subject, at 45 degrees, just outside of the frame
Rim was 2 meters behind subject, 1 meters to the left,
Rim light was aimed at his head, main light aimed directly at the right eye.

The goal was to reveal the volume of the skull, and the texture of the skin, while still being "soft" lighting. This means I needed what's called "rake light". You put the light at an angle to the detail, and it will be revealed more than with a more frontal light. The main white umbrella is shooting across the face, so it acts as a rake light. However it's so close and so large that it comes across as quite soft at the same time.

The rim light is so that the head does not get lost in the black shad0w of the background. Speaking of background, it's actually my dining room. There is no drop cloth, and it's quite light outdoors. The two lights are just so bright, and so close, that by adjusting my aperture and shutter speed for them allows the ambient to practically disappear. I have to do some slight burning to remove one or two light spots, but it's practically dark when I bring it in.

The post processing is a bit complex. I have a b&w preset that brings up the black point, adjusts curves to show maximum volume without clipping, and pushes contrast and clarity quite high. Then I jump to photoshop, make sure the background is solid black, do any physique fixes (sometimes I emphasize muscles or straighten posture or head angle), then use smart sharpen to really bring out the pores and texture. After it's saved and brought back into lightroom, I have a b&w final setting that mostly just ups clarity again to 100%.

I think this project has emphasized to me how good photo series/projects are. Whenever I'm lacking for other ideas, I can ask someone to sit for this series. It's also given me a larger body of work that is more identifiable than my other random attempts.

Here is the full set.
I'm at 10 now, but aiming for 50 before I do the first book print.

More examples:

Graffiti photo shoot

A friend of mine, Oddur, and I decided to do a shoot out in the fading sun this weekend. This was taken around 8:00 with a fairly overcast sky, which had nothing interesting about the lighting. This was the beginning of the shoot against a nice graffiti-ed wall.

I liked how orange the graffiti was, and wanted to play up the warmth with my flashes. I'd scouted this location before, here, and had tucked it away in my mind as a good backdrop for portraits.

Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
Main set to full power with,
1/8 CTOrange gel,
through white shoot-through umbrella,
at middle zoom setting (this fills the umbrella with no spill)
Rim set to 1/4 power with,
1/2 Window Blue gel
Full zoom setting
Main light stand was at 2.5 meters height, rim was at 1 meters
Main light was slightly in front of the subject, 2 meters to the right
Rim was slightly behind subject, 3 meters to the left
Both were aimed directly at the subject

Here is the setup shot, click through to flickr for the notes over each flash and larger image:



I started with the sync-speed at 1/200 to get my flash values correct, then lowered to 1/100 to let in more ambient light and brighten the graffiti-ed wall. The blue rim was to provide a bit of separation from an otherwise all warm scene. I kept the WB set to Flash, so that my very lightly colored gels would show through. At 1/8 orange, auto white balance would correct for it, making everything else very blue. This is useful at times, but not the look I wanted here, as my goal was to capitalize on the warm background. The flash values came together quickly, and I got the gels right the first time, so the only experimentation was figuring out the angles I wanted them at. I shot a few times, moving the umbrella closer and further forward to reveal more of his face. I also originally had the rim light set to rake across the background as well, but found I didn't like the look, and rotated so it was hitting only him. I wanted a very normal Field of View on this, so I used my 35mm lens, which is not only my sharpest lens, but turns into a very normal 56mm lens on my 40d camera.

Here is the final result:





Click through for the whole set