second_light

Settings: Ambient is gone, main is from the small softbox with grid on camera right, 1.5 stops above neutral grey, and fill is from a large 110cm silver umbrella almost directly behind the camera even with neutral grey.

For Christmas my husband (that's him above) got me a 2nd S-head for my Quadra. I can now use 2 lights again. It was freeing having only one for a while, and I imagine I'll still use just one for a lot of photos, but now I can bring in two when I need it.

This was a quick test with using it, as well as a long term series I want to do. A mugshot of each of us every year at New Years (our engagement anniversary). I got the idea from another family that did this from the 70s through the 2000s, including when they added their kids in. I forget where I got it from, but you can see the sequence here: http://www.poopinmymouth.com/wip/age_family.gif I have a long way to go to get that far, but it's good to have some extremely long term projects.



Settings: Ambient is gone, main is from the small softbox with grid on camera right, 1.5 stops above neutral grey, and fill is from a large 110cm silver umbrella almost directly behind the camera even with neutral grey.

If you look closely in the eyes of the large version, you can see the placement and relative brightness of the two mods. The umbrella is the dimmer fuzzy one in the center, and the softbox is the square in the upper right of the eye.

I've been studying Dan Winter's work, and I love how he controls the shadow density with a ringlight. I'm not a fan of actual ring lights, but the principle of using an on axis fill (something strobist fans will be familiar with) is really appealing. Right now the Quadra can only do a 2:1 ratio, so I can only play with distance, but I plan to build some mesh covers that give me 4:1 and 8:1, as well as letting me drop a single head even lower than the current minimum of 8.2 watts. By placing the umbrella directly behind the camera as a fill, every surface you can see gets light. This way you can keep your shadows from going black. If you move it off to the side, you run the risk of creating pockets of shadows which normally looks awful. Fill goes on axis, or as close as you can get without coming into view of the camera.

One thing I really like about this, is that I still have my super contrasty main light, my small softbox with grid, but I can keep the shadows under control even in an indoor environment. Most of the time I use ambient as my fill when doing outdoor stuff, but now I can bring it in even indoors easily.

hugo_boss

Settings: Ambient is at -3 stops below neutral grey. One flash into a large silver umbrella off frame left at +1 stop above neutral grey. One flash with a gridspot aimed just at the face, outside frame left and slightly behind the subject at +2 stops.

Nothing like a new outfit to inspire a portrait session. Here's the setup shot:



Really simple, but the one little twist is the head only rim light. This pulls focus to the face, which is important in a composition like this, where nothing falls on a natural point of power. Without the gridspot, it would have rim lit the whole portrait, which would have been too contrasty and harsh.

This is also a powerful lighting setup that allows for a lot of model movement. Here is a front facing pose with the same lighting.



The only thing I'd like to change, is that the rim is just a bit too harsh. An 8" reflector with a honeycomb grid would have been perfect. It would have had a smoother falloff into the soft area of the face, rather than the hard edge it has now. The subtlety would have enhanced the lighting on the face.

Having the background quite far behind the subject allowed me to use an aperture of 6.3 for razor sharpness and a fully focused figure, with a slightly blurry background to make sure the focus fell completely on the figure. The far away background also allowed it to fall into a very dark grey. The light sources are so close to the subject, by the time they reached the background, they are much dimmer, giving a natural lighting ratio.

Post was very simple. I used a gradient map layer, with neutral grey as the light and dark area, but with a greenish blue transition area, and a purple blue shadow area. This way I could tone the transition from light to dark with a slight blue, and then the very start of the shadows are purple. The gradient map layer was then put to overlay mode. For more info on gradient maps, use this tutorial. (from my 3d site) Then I made a solid color layer, a very light cream color, put it on screen mode, and then backed it off to 5%. This makes everything a bit smoother and less digital feeling. I then used my standard sharpening procedure, masking out areas that looked too harsh.

Karolina

Settings: Ambient is right at neutral grey. One flash into a small silver umbrella held directly over the subject's head at 1.5 stops over neutral grey.

I saw this garage door and strip light while walking at night, and it just had the nicest feel. The long fluorescent tube gave off such a pleasing light in the otherwise dark night, and the red door seemed to really have a presence to it. I knew I wanted to do a shoot here.

First I did a test shot to see my framing and figure out what type of subject an lighting would work:



The background was symmetrical, so I knew I wanted to use symmetrical lighting. I also wanted something simple, so just one light. I ended up using my small silver umbrella. Ideally I would have had a heavy duty C-stand, with a long arm and a counterweight, but honestly the wind was so strong that I think even that wouldn't be enough. I ended up holding the lightstand myself, which required me to use the 10 second timer. It was not fun to hit the button, run forward, arrange the stand, give direction to the model, photo takes, then I run back to check the image, and start again. An assistant would have been great, or my remote trigger, but I'd already packed it for the move.

Here you can see how it was working.




Knowing I would be in all the frames, I took a clean "background plate" at the beginning. This was also necessary for the radically different light sources. I had no idea how to gel for this particular tube light, as it wasn't the traditional fluorescent green. It was easier to just shoot a background, balance it, then composite her on.

Here is the retouching process:



1. Original photo of background, brought in from lightroom. It's been color balanced, the red shifted to have no orange and be a true red, and some constrast adjustments, bringing the clipped whites around the light back with the highlight recovery slider. CA was removed with my 50mm preset.

2. Distortion removed with the free transform and lens distortion filter.

3. Left half duplicated to right half for symmetry, but using a mask to disguise the middle bits so you don't get a Rorschach effect giving it away.

4. Tire tracks removed using an earlier shot background plate (car ran right in front of me with wet tires)

5. Blue lens flare removed from bottom and top. (very subtle but would be visible in a print)

6. Bring in the layer with subject.

7. Mask away the background using the magic lasso to start, then using a soft 50% opaque brush for the hair and boa to do careful masking.

8. Color balance her main light source.

9. Color balance the "fringe" where the light is leaking around from the fluorescent tube.

10. Final fixes on her fly away hairs, removing the last bit of orange.

11. Desaturate ground layer to hide the dual light sources. I needed the ground here to show her shadow and anchor her down, but had to remove the color giving away the composite job.

12. High pass desaturate sharpen layer.

13. Hide wrinkles and add body using healing brush and overlay layers (this was done under all the color correcting layers, but I did it last. It's non destructive but didn't have as much to do with the final image as all the color sources.

I also practiced the poses and tried to visualize them beforehand. The first image of this post is pretty much exactly how I envisioned. I really feel that lately my best images have been the ones I've previsualized strongly beforehand. I feel that I can go out with almost anyone in any lighting and get a good normal portrait just mucking around, but my favorite recent images have all been very "produced".

This is also why I have no problem with so much photoshop in post. I wanted the image at the beginning, and I don't mind doing whatever is necessary in post to achieve that vision I had to begin with.

Here is one other after an outfit change. I like it, but I don't feel it's as strong as the red on red:



Settings: Ambient is right at neutral grey. One flash into a small silver umbrella held directly over the subject's head at 1.5 stops over neutral grey.

After nailing the full body ones, it was time to do some playing around. I asked her if she had any ideas, and she wanted close ups, especially using her boa as "hair". In this case, the strong wind really helped give the feathers some motion, which I think strengthens the image.



Settings: Ambient is 2 stops below neutral grey. One flash into a small silver umbrella to camera left at 2 stops over neutral grey.

Óðinn part 2

Settings: Ambient is 4 stops below neutral grey. One flash behind the model and aimed forward at 4 stops above neutral grey.

After the shoot out in the snow, we warmed up in the car and went back to the subject's flat to take some interior portraits. I used the 1x1.2 meter black/white backdrop I've spoke of before to get the pure black background. I set up a front flash into a silver umbrella for the front fill, and a back flash for the rim light. However the front flash was at full power, which takes 5 seconds to recharge, and I tried to take a photo before it had finished, and I got the first shot of this post, which ended up being my favorite. The flash is bouncing off his skin and hands to fill what little of his face you can see. The rest falls off into black.

When the main flash actually fired, it looks like this:



Settings: Ambient is 4 stops below neutral grey. One flash behind the model and aimed forward at 4 stops above neutral grey. One flash in front into a large silver umbrella, at 2 stops above neutral grey.

It was a very easy setup to throw together, and it turned his living room into a studio as long as I kept the framing tight. Any stray edges of room that peaked in were easily blacked out with a paint brush in photoshop.

I will definitely try to play more with the look of the original shot, aiming for it to be my actual lighting setup. The main problem I have with it, is that it's so blown out. I'd prefer to use a larger light source, maybe a large or small silver umbrella, and keep it from blowing out so intensely.

More silver reflector

Settings: Ambient is 4 stops below neutral grey. Flash into 110cm silver umbrella, 2 stops above neutral grey, to the right and above. Silver 1x1.2 m reflector to the left and below, angled up. Tiny slave flash in the background lighting it up.

I decided to try an experiment with the silver reflector. Normally I like edgy lights, with deep shadows and strong direction. Soft light is easy light, I always thought. But I wanted to try some soft, easy light. I put my favorite soft light, a 110cm silver umbrella, high and to the right, and used the reflector to fill in the shadows. Then I put my tiny morris slave flash in the background, through a blue gel, at it's lowest setting. That lit up the background for a nice light, airy feel. A warm gel would have made it feel a bit warmer, and I should have tried that.



Settings: Ambient is 4 stops below neutral grey. Flash into 110cm silver umbrella, 2 stops above neutral grey, to the right and above. Silver 1x1.2 m reflector to the left and below, angled up.

Then I turned off the slave flash in the background, to get a dark backdrop. This completely changes the look of the portrait. Having a dark background implies there is the proper amount of lighting, so even though the skin is super softly lit, it looks "correct", and implies youthful skin, since wrinkles and pores are minimized in their shading. Women or self conscious men will love this lighting setup. The light backdrop of the first works well too, especially with a little texture so that it looks legitimate.

Here's the setup shot:



If I wanted the shadows a tiny bit darker, I could have switched to the white reflector instead of the silver. I am guessing the silver reflects -1 stop, and the white -2 stops. That would give you either a 1:2 ratio of main to fill with silver, or a 1:4 ratio with the white. Assuming they are placed as close as possible of course. Distance also reduces light intensity. Moving white backwards a bit would give you 1:8 ratio.

Belly Dancers part 3

Settings: Ambient was 3 stops below neutral grey. One flash into a 60cm umbrella above and to the right, at 2 stops above ambient.

One of the dancers from the original shoot asked me to come out to Akranes (a smaller city about an hour north of Reykjavik) and photograph her dance team, as well as some individuals of herself. I used save, even lighting for the group shots, but once I could focus just on her, I could play with more contrasty lighting. I used only my 60cm umbrella, as she had great skin that would work well with it.



Settings: Ambient was 3 stops below neutral grey. One flash into a 60cm umbrella above and to the right, at 2 stops above ambient. There is also a bare flash on the ground behind her, pointed straight up, at 3 stops above ambient. You can see the rim slightly on the bottom of her forearms.

It was great to have someone so eager to perform in front of the camera, and the costume made it even better. Once I had my lighting ratio setup, I was able to ask for all types of poses, and as long as I stayed in the same general angle to the flash, I was getting good lighting with contrasty shadows. On this fullbody shot, I had placed a bare flash on the ground behind her aiming up. I got a little bit of rim light separation, but I should have zoomed it wider so it hit more of her veil to really light it up.



Settings: Ambient was exposed at neutral grey.

After getting some good lit photos. I wanted to try some warm candle lit photos. I asked her to lay down on a pillow, and I moved several candles in close to get as much light as possible. I cranked my camera to maximum light gathering mode (ISO 1600, f/1.8, and 1/80) The shutter speed was so low that I had to brace my elbows on the ground to avoid camera shake on the 85mm lens. Normally I try to use 1/160 of a second with this lens. Even with this much sensitivity, I had to boost the brightness about .6 in lightroom, making this about ISO 2500) The soft candlight really added a nice mood. However her makeup had an odd reaction to the candle light and slightly discolored her face to a green color. I made a quick brush adjustment with a color overlay of a light magenta, which popped it back to the color of the rest of her skin, and much more natural.

The rest of the set.

Belly Dancers part 2

Settings: Ambient is 4 stops below neutral grey. One flash into 110cm umbrella, 2 stops above neutral grey, on the right, and one flash into 61cm umbrella, at 1 stops above neutral grey, on the left. Both flashes were set to maximum height of about 2 meters, and angled at 45 degrees to the group.

These are from the same shoot as the last post. This dance group needed promotional shots for an upcoming show and asked me to help. Luckily they had a black seamless paper roll set into their ceiling, which made for a nice backdrop. Despite the sun streaming through the blinds, by using 1/250 and ISO 100, I was able to completely kill the ambient for some nice contrasty shadows. I asked the ladies to stand as far away from the background as possible, so that the shadows would be as unnoticeable as possible.



By putting the two lights at 45 degree angles, and at the maximum stand height, I could be sure that everyone would receive lighting, and there would not be too much shadowing to obscure details. This way I could focus on the ladies expressing themselves with the different dance poses, and not have to worry about them moving outside of the lighting area. I made sure to do the group shots first. It was the main reason for the shoot, so I wanted to make sure I had it in the bag, before people's energy wore off, or possible equipment failure.



Next I wanted to shoot individual portraits against the black seamless. The seamless was at a 45 degree angle to the camera and the subject. This ensured it went to full black, since less light was received by it. I also had a smoke machine outside frame left, which I turned on briefly before each shot, in order to add some interest to the floor level, rather than leave it plain.



Settings: Ambient is 4 stops below neutral grey. One flash into 61cm umbrella at 2 stops above neutral grey, to the left and at maximum stand height, facing down. Second flash is through gridspot, at 3 stops above neutral grey, to the right, aimed at just the head and shoulders.

This time, with only one subject, I had more freedom with lighting. I placed the 61cm umbrella to the left, aiming down. This would ensure the face and upper body was fully lit, but the lighting would fade out toward the floor, creating a natural focal point. I put my gridspot on the 2nd flash, and put it behind the subject, and to the right. I used the modeling light to ensure it was only hitting the head, and was gone by about the waist level. This gave me a bit of separation against the black background, ensuring the silhouette is clearly visible.



I wanted the dancers to look a bit regal, so I was crouched on the floor, to have a bit of an upwards facing angle. In post, I used a curves layer to make the smoke extremely punchy, and the background go extremely dark. I made a quick mask to keep it off the subject, and blurred it to fade smoothly. I used an inverted version of this mask, to warm the subject slightly. This color contrast also gives it a bit of pop between subject and background.

The shoot was quick and fun, and the girls had a great attitude about it. The fact there was no one there but myself, one other photographer who assisted me, helped keep them at ease, which enabled great posing and expressions. Too many extras might have introduced some self consciousness and stiffness. I was glad I did a bit of pre-visualization before heading out, as I was able to work much faster after getting there and setting up.

Covered Garage

Settings: Ambient is 1 stop below neutral grey (other than the lighting fixture itself, which is 3 stops above) Main flash is into a 61cm umbrella at 1.5 stops above neutral grey. Secondary flash is aimed at the wall behind the circular opening, and is about .5 stops above neutral grey.

Several weeks ago, I passed a really interesting covered parking garage here in Reykjavik. I knew instantly that I wanted to use it as a backdrop for a photoshoot. The concrete and the long lights provided so much interest, and would contrast really well with a subject. In my mind, I wanted to do a full body portrait with a lot of the garage showing, but those shots didn't turn out so well. It was all the impromptu posings and backgrounds that worked best.

This was actually the final area/pose of the evening, and I think it worked best of all. I saw the circular opening, and knew I wanted to use it as a framing element. I asked her to stand inside it and put her arms out. The first several poses had good compositionl, but the way the light fell on her face wasn't very flattering. I took some time to examine the back of the screen, and asked her to move her head a bit forward so that more flash would reach it. This is one of those times where sticking to the shoot and asking for more, to ensure you get the right shot.




The post processing was actually quite involving, but because I felt there was so much potential to be had. Lately I've been shooting all my flashes ungelled, and color correcting in post, because I ended up doing that anyway to get the right colors, and this way I save time from having to bother with the gels. The first thing I did was to clone out the other circle in the top. It sucks because had I noticed it at the time, I could have reshot crouched just a bit lower, and it would have been gone. Once I had a clean plate, I used the liquify tool to slenderize her arms and waist a bit. The coat was extremely thick and killed her curves. Next I used the magic lasso tool to make a quick mask for the background, and used the cooling photo filter in photoshop. Then I made a custom white balance layer to subract the yucky green color from the flourescent lamp. I had to custom paint that mask onto her face and the concrete in order to remove it correctly. I liked the lamp a lot for what it adds to the composition, but the disgusting green had to go. Finally I used a slight warming filter on her skin to give it just a bit of warmth. Once the photo was where I wanted it, I used my typical high pass and smart sharpen combo to add some more micro contrast, but masked it away from everything in the face, other than the eyes, and edges of the nose. Female skin works well soft, so I left it that way, but eyes tend to look good with some sharpness.



Settings: Ambient is 2 stops below neutral grey. Main flash is into a 61cm umbrella at 1.5 stops above neutral grey.

This one is the result of a technique I've been trying lately with models. I asked her if there was any pose she was interested in trying, or thought would look good. She suggested having her hand by her mouth, and it worked out great. It took a few times of arranging the light till I was happy with how it fell, but I really like the final.



For the post on this image, I cooled the background, reduced the neon green of her ribbon, and tucked in the front of the jacket, and jacket sleeve. The shadow from her back made her look unnaturally wide, so I used an exposure layer to bring up the edge of the jacket and sleeve a bit, as if there was bounce light from the wall. I also fluffed up her hair a bit using the liquify tool.



Settings: Ambient is 1.5 stops below neutral grey. Main flash is into a 61cm umbrella at 1.5 stops above neutral grey to the right and in front of the subject, above head height. Secondary flash is zoomed to 105mm and through a gridspot, aimed at her head so that it only hits her hair. The secondary flash is about 2 stops above neutral grey.

This one is closest to my original mind's eye image of the shoot. I used a classic female pose, found on a 70's tutorial somewhere, and it helped, as originally she wasn't 100% sure of what pose to assume. We tried several, but I think this one was the most feminine and confident looking.




This one took the most time in post. Immediately I used liquify to remove the effects of the thick coat. During the shoot I asked if it was possible for her to angle her arm back in such a way that I could see a triangle of the wall between her elbow and the small of her back, as that's a very feminine aspect of the body. It was too constricting of a coat, and too uncomfortable of a position, so I added that part in photoshop. I cloned a bit of wall in to look like you're seeing through, then darkened the coat to make it look as if it really ended there.

Next I adjusted white balance on everything, neutralizing the green of the ceiling lights, and warming her face just a bit. I used a curves layer to add a lot more contrast to the background, and then used a technique from the Platon copy that I did. I used the mask of her figure to create an exposure layer, that darkens the image in a halo around her. It's only by about .4 stops, but it emphasizes her silhouette more and brings attention to her as the subject, allowing the background to fade away.

It was a great shoot, and many thanks to Chantal for being a lovely, willing model, and to Árnór who assisted.

Inspired by Platon

Settings: Ambient was at 3 stops below neutral grey. Main flash was into a 61cm silver umbrella, directly in front of the subject, and high above facing down at 45 degree angle. Main flash was at 2 stops above neutral grey.

I was looking at the photography of Platon Antoniou, better known as just Platon, today. I really like his use of single lights for portraits. I'm not sure what light modifier he uses, but it looks either smallish, or if it's larger, a bit further away than normal so that it might as well be smallish. I believe this because the shadows are soft, but there is still a lot of definition and rake to the lighting, which would only come from a beauty dish or smallish softbox. The nose is dark, and has a hard, yet fuzzy shadow, which also makes me believe it's a smaller light source.

This made me use my new 61cm umbrella instead of my normal 110cm umbrella. The larger one would have made much too soft of shadow edges, leaving no real black, and would have contaminated the rest of the room, filling the few shadows it did make.

I asked a friend over specifically to try to emulate Platon's lighting style. First, I placed the lighting source directly in front of him and above. You can tell from the nose shadow that the light is directly in front of his subjects, and the size of the shadow means it's above the head a bit. I fired some test shots till I had the brightness correct. I was working at 1/250 shutter to kill the ambient. I wanted my shadows dark, not contaminated by any lamplight from the apartment.

In order to get the light directly in front of him, I had to hold the camera in front of the light stand. I was essentially hugging the lightstand, in order to have it at the right distance. The subject was sitting about half a meter in front of the wall to prevent any shadows from showing. The first shots, the nose shadow was too little, and the face was too well lit, which kept it from showing the skull structure. I raised the light stand further to get some deeper shadows. I didn't want it so high that I lost the highlights on the eyes, or it would look dead.



Once I had several good photos, I loaded them up in Lightroom. I did some quick blemish removal, a little contrast, and desaturated a tad, then brought it into photoshop. First I changed the background from a dull yellow to a brighter blue-grey, and desaturated the tie a little. Then I brought in eyes from another photo that had better catch lights and less shadows. I liked how the cheekbones and overall head was in this shot best, but the eyes were a bit too dark. After that, I used high pass and smart sharpen to create a much higher contrast/sharper image, but masked it so that it only contributed to the face and tie, not the hair or sweater. Finally, I added the fake vignetting. If you look through Platon's portfolio, he must do this in post. Any of the full body portraits, the darkening follows the silhouette perfectly. It looks like he shoots on white seamless (a white background) and then adds this darkening in his post processing. I made a mask from the background, used the minimize filter to expand it 100 pixels, blurred it 100 pixels, then used that as a mask for an exposure layer, where I pulled it down 2.5 stops. I used a curves layer set to just this exposure layer to bring in some blue and green so it wasn't a completely linear fade.

Once back into lightroom, I added +5 to the blue White balance, and desaturated again a bit.

Pushup self-portrait

I was watching the movie, "Never Back Down" which was a bit cheesy, but fun. They did a section where they filmed the main character doing pushups, but did it with the camera oriented on it's side, then righted the footage so that the character looked as if he was pushing off a wall instead of the floor. I thought it would be a cool opportunity for a photograph, so when the movie was over, I set about emulating it.

First, I knew I wanted to use something soft-ish for the main light, but I wanted to create as much volume as possible, this was a good opportunity for my new 61cm umbrella. My main umbrella is 110cm, which would have made a much softer light, which would not have defined the muscles as well. 61cm is a great in between a bare flash and a huge umbrella when you want strong details that still have a soft edge. I had to move it toward the camera a few times until it revealed just the right amount of detail. I wanted a rim light that still raked across the muscles on the front. It's still slightly behind the subject, aiming a bit forward.

After the main was set, I started with the second flash. I tried at first to place it directly behind the head, and use as a bright rim light all around the head. It wasn't quite strong enough though, and didn't really give the effect that I wanted. I moved it off of the light stand, and attached it to the small stand the flash came with. It was about even with the main flash, and aimed up at the subject's head. However it spilled onto the arms, making them far too bright. After attaching a gridspot, I was able to keep it only on the face/torso and not on the arms.



Settings: Ambient is 5 stops underexposed. Main flash is into a 61cm silver umbrella at one stop above neutral grey. Secondary flash is at 1.5 stops above neutral grey, and is using a gridspot to keep it only on the face/torso and not on the arms.

After rotating the image to achieve the original planned look, I was quite happy with the result. The background did not go quite dark enough, as you can see from the setup shot. A quick pass with the burn tool gave me a true black background, which I think adds to and heightens the mood of the shot.

Andres Portraits

Settings: Ambient is 2 stops underexposed, Right light is into a silver umbrella at 1 stop above neutral grey, and left light is a bare flash zoomed to 105mm and aimed at his head, at 1.5 stops above neutral grey.

This was a shoot that I´d been planning for several weeks and I only finally had time this past weekend. I´d originally planned to reuse the fishtank setting, which is why I asked the model to wear all white, but the office was extremely busy so we improvised. This is a nice park near the model´s house, and it offered some really interesting settings. It was cold and we needed to work fast. Luckily I had an assistant to hold my lightstand so I could use an umbrella. The lighting setup was very simple, the main flash was into a silver umbrella for a nice even and soft light, and the rim light was a bare flash zoomed to 105mm so that only his head and shoulders would get rim lighting and I wouldn´t get a 2nd ugly shadow on the ground. As we moved from setting to setting, we only had these two, very light, light stands to move around, and it enabled me to quickly get all the shots I wanted. As the ambient level dropped, I was able to just open the shutter more to compensate.



Because his skin is a bit darker, I needed to make a bit brighter exposure, but this risked blowing out the bright white clothing. Luckily my 40D has quite a bit of raw headroom to bring the highlights down, so it worked quite well. I just used a little bit of the recovery slider in lightroom to bring the clothing down, while leaving his face well exposed. The white clothes help to contrast with his darker skin tones, to bring more attention to the focal point (his face).



For this one, because I couldn't physically put the rim light behind him (we were on the edge of the dam, so only open water was behind this railing) I put the second light against the railing, and it provided a bit of fill, giving an almost glowing affect to his face that I like very much. It manages to not quite overlap the main light, so you still get some nice shadows to give his face volume. If either light had been brought around closer to the camera axis, they would have overlapped and been flattening to his facial structure.

Once I had a good lighting ratio, it was all about getting a good pose, and composition. It was so nice to have that freedom of knowing I would get good light, and be able to focus more on the portrait experience. I could switch lenses quickly for different framing aspects, and I mostly used my 28mm, my 35mm and my 85mm lenses.



For this headshot, I would have changed the height of the rim light so that his collar didn't create such a harsh line on his chin. The light was in a ditch and it was already at it's full height. I should have moved the model to the ditch and placed the light a full meter higher to ensure the collar didn't cast a hard line across his chin.

There is something to be said for using classic lighting setups. You can be sure to achieve a nice result lighting wise, and can concentrate more on the subject and the composition.

View the rest of the set.

Simple portraits

Settings: Ambient is 3 or 4 stops underexposed. Left light is a flash into a silver umbrella at 2 stops above neutral grey, and right flash is through a Lumiquest softbox 2 at 1 stop above neutral grey.


I have felt a bit like I might be trying too hard to deviate from "safe" and standard lighting, so I have been wanting to try some more traditional lighting setups. By putting the umbrella at the same height as his head, and aiming it horizontally instead of angled down, it emulates window lighting quit well, and is very soft. The right side light does an ok job of filling, but I think either another umbrella, or just bouncing that flash off the ceiling to raise the light of the room would have looked nicer. It would have kept the harsh shadow from the left side of his nose.

The background is just a piece of black posterboard taped to the wall. I'm going to add to my kit a length of black, and white fabric to use as quick backdrops.



Settings: Ambient is 3 or 4 stops underexposed. Left light is a flash into a silver umbrella at 2 stops above neutral grey, and right flash is bare, zoomed to 105mm at 3 stop above neutral grey.

For this shot, first Agust got ready for the Gothtasm Halloween party by dying his hair and applying makeup. Since it was such an effort, I decided it would be good to document it. This is a fairly standard setup also. The silver umbrella is a little high and aimed down, to produce nice directional lighting. The right flash provides a really nice rim light along the cheek and back of the head, for a bit of separation from the background. I think this is easily my favorite lighting setup.

I had to get in on the action too.



As a slight aside, I recently purchased a photo editing monitor. The HP LP2475w. It's a 24" monitor that uses an S-IPS panel, which is a true 8 bit panel, that does a very wide gamut of colors. It's a huge upgrade from my little 17" laptop, both in color accuracy and brightness. I also got a monitor calibrator to ensure color accuracy. Even just looking at other people's photos is more fun now, because I can see so much more detail and dynamic range. I highly suggest ensuring you have a good monitor with accurate color (either an S-IPS or S-PVA panel, not all LCD panels are made the same way, TN and TFT which is the most common used panels, are not true 8 bit color) and a monitor calibrator to ensure you're getting your colors correct. I know I've been over compensating for my poor monitor quality in past photos by pushing the contrast and colors a bit too far.

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.

Fashion shoot

A friend of mine, Sruli Recht is a tailor and shoemaker, and he routinely asks me to shoot his products for his website. Above is a jacket he´s made, and underneath is a protective brace. Some people have ribcages that will pop out of socket if not held in, and this brace does just that, but it´s a designed product from a tailor, rather than a medical product.

Here is a shot of just the brace:


Settings:
2 Vivitar 285hv
main flash at 1/4 power,
at wide zoom,
into silver 43" bounce umbrella,
light stand was at 2 meters height,
1 meters to right of subject 1 meter forward from subject,
2nd light was at 1/16 power,
at wide zoom,
2 meters to subject left, and .5 meters forward from subject,
at 1.5 meters in height.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a setup shot, however it was very simple. The background is a plain piece of cloth, and both lights are basically at 45 degree angles aimed at the subject. this eliminates the shadows on the back wall, and creates a very even lighting. However the fact one flash is bare, and one flash is using an umbrella, gives a nice difference in quality of light from one side to the other. One side has soft, broad lighting, and the other has a bit harsher, sharp lighting. I will definitely use this type of setup in the future. I was working right at 1/250 to kill as much ambient and darken the shadows as much as I could, since this cross-lighting would otherwise create a too-even lighting if the ambient was allowed to leak in.

Here is an angle that shows how hard the left light was, based on the hard shadow line from his nose across the cheek. The edge of the cheek shows the soft falloff from the right flash. The other nice part of this lighting setup, is the subject could rotate freely with no need to adjust the lights.



I ended up doing quite a bit of post on these shots. Mainly to adjust the subject's physique.



I started by using the warp and liquify tool to readjust the main proportions, then I quickly cloned out any skin imperfections (which there were very few), and then proceeded to use the dodge and burn tools to add in muscle definition. I finally used a regular brush with a flesh color, set to saturation, to add back in the color that dodge and burn tend to remove. Finally, I enhanced or added in catch lights to the eyes to make it feel more vibrant.