zen_shoot

Settings: 1.5 meter softlighter to camera left and halfway between subject and camera, aimed at head and centered at head height, about 3 meters from subject. Metered at head to be properly exposed. Background was shutter dragged to come up to proper exposure as well.

I had asked this subject if I could photograph him over a year ago, and it just worked out this weekend to do a shoot. I had some locations in mind, and did a 1.5 hour location scout with my camera, 35, and 50mm lenses. Luckily I did this right before the actual shoot, so the lighting was identical between scout trip and the shoot itself. Doing a location scout is really pivotal. You don't want to feel rushed with the subject or you could miss some nice background elements trying to just find something quick. I pick locations based on "feel" and our eyes can take in a huge field of view, plus we are viewing "live". It takes exploration to find a single view for your camera that encapsulates this same "feeling" that you chose the location for. By having plenty of time by yourself with no lights, just your camera, you can find these views a lot easier. I'm constantly putting the camera up to my eye without taking a photo, just looking how things are compressed and what shows from that angle.

For the above shot, I loved how the trees went back into the background, and the serene feeling of the bare ground with just pine needles. This is a very uncommon setting in Iceland, tall trees like this and bare ground with no grass or weeds. I knew this was spot number one for the shoot. I experimented with different heights of the camera during the scout, and I knew I wanted my 35mm lens so I could see up into the trees, which would necessitate a low angle. The 50mm narrowed the view too much and you didn't get the same sense of height. I wanted a nice soft side light, so I used the 1.5 meter softlighter. I metered for the face, and then opened the shutter until the background came into a nicer exposure, 1/60th of a second. The rim light on his left side is from the bright sky coming through the open area of the tree trunks above, behind, and to the right.

In post, all I did was create a gradient adjustment in Lightroom for the top of the trees, which I boosted exposure by 1 stop, and made a bit more saturated, and added a slight orange color overlay to give it the sunny feel. The left side of this copse of trees had a road, where people were walking and cars driving, so in Photoshop I duplicated the layer, flipped it, and masked in just enough to show bushes on that side as well. I left as much of the original trees as possible to keep it from looking mirrored. I also made an adjustment layer for the ground, darkened it slightly and added more red so it wasn't so yellow.

This location was very close to the first, and uses all natural light. This is the main cemetery of Reykjavik, and it is an incredibly peaceful place. There are trees planted on most graves, and since the cemetery itself is about 150 years old, some of them are quite large. It's the most dense large forest in the capital area. This location was the hardest to scout. I wanted to capture the depth of the forest, and the serenity, without it being too cliche as a cemetery portrait location. I wanted peace, not morbidity. This tree was one of the more dense in it's foliage, and as such created the darkest area of the cemetery. I knew if I put the subject under it and facing out, I could get some nice soft light with decent shadows on the side facing the tree. We took a few shots of him looking toward me, but I had him look outward, and his profile looked great. I made sure to line it up so it was on top of the dark branch, to truly show the silhouette, and grabbed this image. It should really be viewed large to really appreciate the details and tonal depth. I love the composition of having the dark side and light side, but his sleeve and face serve as the main light spots in the dark half, properly drawing your eye to the foreground. His sleeve and the tree branch behind his head make a smooth S-curve with his face in the middle. The photo was mainly about the tones and composition, and I felt black and white treatment was more appropriate and would really let me draw out the details I wanted. The main color was the green of the foliage, his outfit was all grey and white, so the color version doesn't bring much.

Here are the other favorites from the shoot, all using natural light.

lilja_in_the_greenhouse

Settings: Ambient read at f/1.4, and the flash aimed at just her face was at f/1.8

A quick one from this afternoon. My friend Lilja has bright red hair, and always has the coolest outfits on her facebook photos. I saw the polka dot tights and knew I had an image somehow. We were originally going to go into the woods for the shoot, but it started to look like rain. A friend had a greenhouse, and it quickly went from a proposed plan B to the best idea.

I had seen a magazine on the racks here in Iceland with what looked like a tintype image, and I was inspired at the color of the processing, and the faded colors of the image. I knew her bright red hair and the dress we had picked out would survive this processing, and would probably be made stronger because of it.

For setup, I put my black 1x2 meter frame just outside of camera left. This is serving to darken the shadows on that side. The greenhouse was glass on all sides, and it was an overcast day, there was almost no contrast or shadows inside the structure. The black board introduced a bit of contrast, but to properly expose her face, I had to totally blow out the background, which I did not want. I wanted the softest setting of my lens with the shallowest depth of field, so I locked it to f/1.8. At iso 100 and shutter speed of 1/125, this gave me f/2 where her face would be, too bright for what I wanted. Knowing that I was using the light tightly gridded to her face, I could go way above the sync speed.* I bumped the shutter to 1/250, taking the ambient to f/1.4.

Next I put the quadra on a boom, using the grid reflector with a 20 degree grid. This gave me a very tight beam of light, tighter and harsher than my softbox. I wanted to contrast the soft light of the rest of the image, and I knew I was going to use some softening post processing techniques, so the harder lighting would help the face still read when I was done. It was drizzling the entire time, which made me so glad I was using the quadra system, which is largely weather sealed. I put the cable in plug B, and lowered it to the lowest setting of 8.2. This gave me a reading inside the greenhouse where her face would be, of f/1.8, right where I wanted it.

Because of the light meter usage and the tripod to find my exact camera angle, once the model came out it was very fast. I directed her pose, (as an aside, I cleared the view of all modern day looking things like plastic bags of dirt and colored buckets, always control your scene), had her tilt her head in the direction I wanted, and fired a test. I could see the light was not far enough around to give me narrow lighting, it was more like a rim light, so I moved the boom to be closer toward me, and it hit both eyes for the look I wanted. We were done with the actual shooting bit within 10 minutes.

For post processing, I new I wanted to absolutely destroy the corners. First I used a lens blur set fairly low, and masked her out roughly. The items within the greenhouse were too contrasty and pulling focus from her, and this helped clear it up. Next I used a radial blur to really smear the corners the way a crappy lens does. I completely masked it away from her face though. Next I did a lot of color stuff. I made the shadows bluer, the highlights yellower. I made a blue/green layer that only went on the low shadow tones, but not the blacks. Then I made a desaturated green layer, set it to lighten, and only let it touch the deep blacks, effectively taking away the contrast of only the low end of the image, a typical look of antique photos. Finally I found a stain texture and a glass plate texture which I overlayed lightly to give it a bit of texture as if it were on paper. The whole goal was a contrast between a high quality center, with destroyed edges, and a desaturated fatigued look of the colors, with her hair and dress still shining through by virtue of their saturation.

*once you go above your maximum shutter speed (on the 5D it's 1/200, but with a skyport it's effectively 1/160 because of delay) you start to see the shutter blocking the flash on the image. however, that's only on the lower part of the frame, and it gets progressively higher in the frame the higher you go over the sync speed. If the area where the flash is hitting, is high in the frame, you can disregard the shutter creep shadow, because it's not evident anyway. In this image, her face is the only part getting flash, and it's "high" in the frame. I would have probably had to go to 1/320 to start to see the shutter creeping onto her face and blocking the flash.

shoot_walkthrough_part_three

Settings: Ambient was all over the place, the lightbulbs almost clipping and the shadows near black, but it was a neutral exposure with no flash. Flash at 2 stops over neutral grey providing the rim light on his shoulders and hair.

Above is the final composite, click through for large.

Below is the animated gif of all layers, with images brought in fully, then the next frame showing the masks applied to cut them out.

1. First was to get the main background plate more symmetrical. The benches were slightly offset, so I evened up the front most bench. The farthest two benches on the left were broken (not illuminated) so I cloned over the benches and lit tree trunks from the right side.
2. Darken the farthest trees so it would fade well into the next layer.
3. Comp in 2nd photo of the same benches, but I was further away. This required scaling the image way down and careful placement to make it fit.
   
4. Color correction for the main background plate.
5. Using an exposure layer, I boosted the foreground path, and then comped in some empty ground from one of the bench shots with no subject. It was made by copying just the ground in front of the bench, then duplicating it, and flipping it vertically to be now above, doubling the height of the lit ground, then using perspective scale matched to the perspective of the bottom chunk. Then I used the clone brush to get rid of the seam or any other identifying details you saw near the flipped edge.
6. Add in fake shadow from the bench using another exposure layer set to reduce exposure.
   
7. Pull in the bench, then mask away the dark background. I mainly used the marque selection with a 1 pixel feather built into the setting (only CS3 and above). I used a magic lasso for the non geometric bits, and a paintbrush to clean up, working in the mask.
8. Bring in the subject and arrange him in place, mask him out using magic lasso and then a brush for cleanup.
9. Exposure and contrast boost on his face. I liked this body pose and another face, so I comped that together also.
10. Final color correction on all layers.

I found a new trick for matching White Balance on separate layers, and that's to make a Hue/Saturation layer at the top of the image with saturation set to 100%. This makes color discrepancies really obvious and can be turned on and off by hiding the layer.

In the end, the final composite looks very similar to my original vision I had in my minds eye. Shooting everything at the same time and in the same lighting conditions, as well as with similar standing heights and angle the camera is aimed will make sure these composites work. If the lighting is lying between layers, or the perspective radically different, your white balance matching and perfect masks won't have any affect on unifying the image.

sebastian_balcony_portrait

Settings: Ambient is around neutral grey, with the flash modeling light one stop over neutral grey.

This is my friend Sebastian. He told me he had an awesome balcony with a view of the city of Cologne, and he wasn't lying. While visiting with him, he went out to smoke, and it gave me this really cool vibe of him out there, and I felt like doing a Marlboro man-esque shoot with him there.

I knew before the shoot it was going to be difficult. The city is way in the background, so keeping them both in focus even on a bright day would be hard, at night even harder. Even just letting in enough light for proper exposure was an ordeal. This was taken at ISO 1600, F/1.8, and 1/30 of a second on an 85mm lens. The light was so low, using the flash was out of the question, so this is just the modeling light from the Quadra, a 20 watt LED that is daylight balanced.

I used the softbox without the inner baffle to let through as much light as possible, but used the fabric grid to restrict the light to his face, with some falloff towards the body. To get a good balance, the light is about 2 meters from his face on the right. Then I turned on the lights inside his flat, which were tungsten bulbs, to provide some fill, that's where the orangeish light is from.

With the camera cranked to maximum light gathering mode, I was able to properly grab an exposure of him with the city. The only problem is that the city was super blurry from the 1.8 aperture. I solved this by moving him and taking another photo of the city in focus, so I could blur to taste in Photoshop with the lens blur filter. I wanted a little blur to isolate him as the subject, but not so much that the church was unrecognizable. By masking him out first, I was able to blur to the exact amount I wanted, which was not much. I'd say this is the equivalent of the same photo at f/8 or so, which would have required a camera with iso 12,800 or so.

In post I first did some body editing, using liquify to change the profile, and dodge/burn to sculpt in more muscles. Then I masked him out, quickly with the magic lasso tool, then cleaned up with the brush using a layer mask. I added clouds to the background from another shoot, since the sky was empty, collapsed it, then blurred the collapse layer, blending the skyline and clouds perfectly. Then I used my masking trick from this post: http://mr-chompers.blogspot.com/2009/08/maskingtrick.html to blend the border of him in so it wasn't so obvious he'd been cut out.

Here you can see the stages of editing. The final stage is multiple small things, from enhancing the intensity of the cigarette, to adding some fresnel glow on his silhouette to imply the city lights, to the masking trick, high pass sharpening, and a final color grading to unify it all.

lausanne_portraits

Settings: Ambient (on the subject) is one stop below neutral grey. Flash is one stop above neutral grey.

This past week I traveled to Lausanne to vacation and attend a strobist meetup. I had a great time and got a chance to photograph two very good models, Sandra and Scott. I was a group leader, and when we were asked if any group wanted to use the library, I volunteered, as it was very bright and sunny outside, and I didn't know the campus we were on. I didn't want to lose too much time walking around looking for a spot. Once in the library, the tables and chairs near the brightly lit windows immediately drew my attention. I explained how that when walking around looking for locations, I use my hand to envision how the ambient light will fall, and how bright the exposure on it compared to things in the background will be. It's much faster than having the camera up and trying to arrange the model. It's like a divining rod for pleasing light.

Once we were all set up, I asked the group if they wanted me to walk through a normal shoot, and they said yes. I'll try to repeat all the steps and explanations here.



This first image is the natural light only. I explained my first choice is always lens fov. Because of the location, a wide angle lens would have revealed that this was just a row of tables at the edge of a library, and for the narrative of this photo, I wanted it to feel more like a warmly lit cafe. A telephoto lens would compress the scene to only show the row of tables and give a more blurry background, creating more subject isolation, and a pleasing pattern of all the background patterns.

Step two for me is to figure out ambient exposure. If I'm planning to use flash, I use 1/180 as my ceiling for shutter speed (1/200 is the 5d sync speed, but I can't seem to get my skyport/quadra setup to reliably sync, but it always hits 1/180, and I have my camera set to half, rather than third stop exposure changes, so 1/200 doesn't show up anymore, but 1/180 does). It was really bright in this room so I was able to use ISO 100, 1/125 and f/2.

We noticed that the background really blew out in brightness, so our next step was to try to control the background, and use the flash to augment the existing light. The goal was to get the same overall feel as the ambient only image, but with complete control of background and subject illumination. I doubled the shutter speed to 1/250 to darken the background. This left the face quite dark, but I positioned my softbox in the same location as the window, and powered it up to match. Because I did not want spill on the table, the shutter at 1/250 managed to block the flash from hitting the table, which was a convenient feature.



The light is a bit more contrasty and specular than the window light only, but to be honest I prefer it that way. It's not quite as appropriate for women as for men, but she had sufficient makeup on that it worked well anyway. Specular highlights tend to work nicer in bringing out skull structure on men, whereas women look better looking smooth and matte.

Notice how in the ambient only image, the bright areas in the background fight for visual attention with her face. In the flash lit image, we were able to darken the background, add a bit of volume to her face, and bring it out brighter. Now there is no question where the eye should go, directly to the subject's face. With this control we could darken the background even more, or let it bleach out. The flash frees us from the ratio of the ambient only.

Next I wanted to try a different feel. With the crop occurring mid-torso, it has a more relaxed location feel. But since she had very nice legs and a short dress, I felt that a more full body shot would be more beauty/glamor. I asked her to move the chair to the edge of the table so that I could see all of her.



Settings: Ambient (on the subject) is even with neutral grey. Flash is one stop above neutral grey.

For this the flash is coming from almost directly in front of her face, perpendicular to the camera. One of the group members asked about how the light would work in terms of reading well, since the ambient light is clearly coming from the other side. I said that since it was an indoor location, there would most likely be interior lights, and having a light source coming from the other direction was ok and would most likely still read well. It was a good question though, as it's good to have your light motivated by existing ambient. It is possible to break the lighting on the subject so they appear not to actually exist in the background.

I also explained that once I have a lighting setup and pose that I like, it's fun to explore around to the different angles, and you can potentially find a really nice image that you hadn't pre visualized. This was one such example.



This was the first part of the day, I will cover the second portion tomorrow or the next day.

kiril_portraits

Settings: The background was shot separately with ambient about 2 stops below neutral grey for a dark feel and still allowing the lamps to not blow out. In the subject's image, Ambient is 1 stop below neutral grey, and flash is 1.5 stops above neutral grey.

I've posted the original setting, and a closeup of this shot for the previous masking tricks post, but here is the full image.

Having scouted the door location, I knew I wanted to use a male model, in a dress coat. I asked around for my friends, trying to find someone with a look I could use, who also owned a dress jacket with collars that could be held up. I used google images of pea coats and chesterfields when asking people if they owned what I was after.

If I had the full budget of a paid shoot, I would have scouted for a Hugo Boss grey or black double breasted pea coat. I also wanted a double layered undershirt, something white with a low V-neck showing the upper pectorals, and then a button down blue shirt. However when putting together a shoot with a budget of zero monies, you work with what you have.

We arrived at the location, and I set up while the model changed into the wardrobe (it was far too hot out to bicycle there already dressed). I had already scouted the location, so I knew I was going to use my 35mm lens, I knew about where I'd stand as well. The evening wasn't dim enough yet for them to have turned on the lamps, but in hind sight it worked well, because the ambient provided a nice fill on his face on the non flash side that would have been lacking if it was closer to dark.



Settings: Ambient is one stop below neutral grey. Flash is 1.5 stops above neutral grey.

In this photo you can see what the ambient levels were like at the time of the shooting. The flash in all these images is in a 30x40 cm softbox with a 20 degree grid. In this image, it is coming from camera left, through a fabric grid to keep the light only on his face, and not on the door or his knee. You'll notice in all the images the flash is set to a narrow lighting pattern, where the flash hits the front of his face, but leaves the side of the face we can see in shadow. I like this lighting pattern best for how it reveals facial details.



Settings: The background was shot separately with ambient about 2 stops below neutral grey for a dark feel and still allowing the lamps to not blow out. In the subject's image, Ambient is 1 stop below neutral grey, and flash is 1.5 stops above neutral grey.

This image uses the same settings as the first, I've just moved the subject further back, and gotten down on my knees instead of taking at eye level. The background was composited in. The bricks on the ground are from the subject's image, and the background plate had to be extended as it wasn't wide enough. I used photoshops content aware resizing to extend the brick walls without ruining the windows or the doorway. Then I did some reshaping of the jacket, as it was too loose, and then used dodge and burn to give him a bit more obvious musculature. I also slimmed the waist a bit. The hardest part was getting the ambient levels of the subject to match the background, as well as the color toning. The ambient was still quite neutral, whereas on the background plate it had a ton of blue and a bit of purple in the shadows. I used an exposure layer with lots of masking to darken the non flash lit parts to match. Then I used a color balance and a photo filter to tone the ambient to match the background. In the top image, I used Photoshop's Lens Blur filter to add depth of field to the background so that the subject would stand out a bit more.

Before and After:

Garden

Settings: Ambient is 2 stop over neutral grey. One flash to camera right, with grid spot, aimed only at the head, even with neutral grey.

No setup shots on this one unfortunately. I noticed that the lighting in the backyard was beautiful the other day. I started shooting in sunlight, but by the time I finished, this was just bright sky providing even smooth light. The light from the left side is from the sky, and the fill on the right side is from the flash. it's a bit hot on the forehead, and would have benefited from an umbrella to soften it a bit.

After getting a shot that I wanted, I tried to emulate the split toning that Annie Liebovitz seems to be using lately. I messed around with the shot, mainly desaturating the whole shot, while keeping blues normal. Then I used lightroom's split toning feature to make royal blue shadows, and turquoise blue highlights. Further, I made two gradient masks, one from top left with a tiny bit of an orange hue, and a +.2 exposure setting, then the bottom one with a purple tint and a -.2 exposure setting. I feel it emulates the parts that I liked about Annie's post, so I'm content.

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.

Óðinn part 1

Settings: Ambient is .5 stops below neutral grey. One flash to camera right, aimed up so that just the bottom edge touches his face, at 1.5 stops over neutral grey.

I'd been wanting to take photos of my friend Óðinn for a while, and finally got a chance to. We did a multi-part shoot to make the most of our time. This is where being mobile really pays off. I'm convinced that with studio strobes and a large battery pack, with the extra time it would take to set everything up, we would not have been able to fit this much in. The daylight was fading fast, and we had a narrow window when the light was perfect.

I've been to this location before, but not during the snow. It opened some really nice possibilities. The sky was still quite bright, and was providing a nice soft even light, this provided for some nice photos with no lighting equipment needed.





After a few nice shots in this setting, we moved to these wooden beach chairs that were covered in snow. There was some beautiful light still coming from the horizon, and I just wanted to add a touch of light with the strobes, to bring attention to his face. I could have oriented myself on the side of the light, but it would have given me a much darker background, and I wanted some of the interesting sunset in the background.



Settings: Ambient is .5 stops below neutral grey. One flash to camera right, aimed up so that just the bottom edge touches his face, at 1.5 stops over neutral grey.

The biggest thing that I learned from this shoot, is that when using an unmodified flash, and letting in enough ambient to make the shadows not so harsh, I like "short portrait lighting". You can find a detailed explanation here. The quick explanation, if the flash is illuminating the front of the face and the side of the face you can see, it's "broad" lighting. If it's illuminating the front of the face, and leaving the side of the face you can see in shadow, it's "short" lighting. Broad lighting with an unmodified flash is less pleasing (to me) than short lighting. I hadn't consciously recognized this preference of mine till this shoot, and I'll let it dictate my lighting placement for future shoots.

Here is an example of broad lighting. I like the pose and composition, but wish I had taken this photo with short lighting instead. The broad lighting is leaving his face too flat for my taste, and not bringing in enough of the colored shadow from the ambient to tie him into the background.



Settings: Ambient is 1 stops below neutral grey. One flash to camera right, at 1 stops over neutral grey.

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.

Slight flash

Settings: Ambient is about a stop below neutral grey. Flash through honeycomb grid aimed at face, from high up and to the right, at one stop above neutral grey.

I realized all my favorite photos, both that I've taken, and that I like of others, use a lot of ambient light, and the artificial light is very subtle and only adds a little pop to the main area. I really want to pursue this line of lighting this year.

For this photo, almost all the light is window light from the left. I got on a chair to shoot from this height, and took at f/1.8 to get a little depth of field on the feet, so that the attention was kept on the face. Once I had everything exposed right, I decreased the iso by one stop to make everything a bit darker. Then I added my flash to a stand at about 2 meters height, to the right, aimed it at his face, and added a honeycomb grid to constrain it to just his face. Without the grid, even zoomed to 105mm, it spread to the rest of the bed and body. It had just enough softness to fade out nicely, and because there was only about a stop difference between ambient and flash, even though the edges of the shadows from the flash are harsh, they aren't very noticeable. If I had dropped ambient another stop or two, the flash shadows would have been extremely noticeable.

I'm still working on a portable option that lets me through softer light a longer distance. I'll let you know what I come up with. I would have loved to have this light constrained only to the face like this, but softer.

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.

Strobe on a boom

Originally this was going to be "Softbox on a boom" but the wind was way too strong, so I had to remove the softbox and go with a bare flash. I saw how nice the wet street looked, along with the warm sky, and I wanted to use a warm flash to push the blue street scene even bluer.

Here's the setup shot (we just both moved further into the scene).



Settings:
1 Vivitar 285hv
flash at 1/4 power,
at wide zoom,
through 3/4 CTOrange gel,
strobe was on a boom arm,
1 meter above subject, 1 meter in front and .5 meters to camera left of subject.

Here's the scene with no strobe:



Post settings were simple. I cooled the WB some to bring the flash a bit more neutral, while retaining some warmth. This pushed the street very cool. I did a quick adjustment brush for the sky, reduced exposure and upped the constrast, clarity, and saturation, as well as doing a slight warming overlay to make it pop a bit.

If I were to do it again, I would have moved Agust further into the shadows so that his head doesn't break the line of the roof. I'd also have put a flash outside camera right, with a blue gel, and a very low intensity (maybe 1:8 of the main) to give a slight rim light affect.

Striplight part 2

Settings:
1 Vivitar 285hv
flash at 1/2 power,
at telephoto zoom,
through a striplight (20x90cm),
Striplight was vertical,
top was about 1.5 meters height and bottom .6 meters,
.5 meters in front of the subject's face, and slightly behind subject.

A website I frequent is having a self-portrait competition. I noticed from the many submissions so far, they were all very different from the classic portrait techniques. When I was in art school, every time a brief was given, it had an immediate obvious interpretation, but was open to more experimental stuff. Every member of the class would try to push the brief to it's utmost limits, and do something as obscure as possible. This left the class interpretation relatively untouched, and I routinely tried to work on something well done, but that fit the more obvious example. I found it fun to try something basic and simple, but try to work more on quality rather than getting lost in originality purely for it's own sake.

I wanted to use my homemade striplight again (I have a real one ordered on the way, I love striplights now). I originally tried some straight on shots, like this:



And while I liked it, and it looked how I envisioned in my mind, I decided to try a few more poses. Again, I ended up getting my favorite of the shoot (the first image) when I tried this. I also found that the different poses ended up working with different crop formats.

One thing that I like so much about striplights, is that you get soft lighting, but can still reveal volume and shadows. It's only really soft in one dimension, which gives tons of room for interesting lighting setups. I was originally planning to get this main strip light setup correctly, then I was going to pop in a 2nd flash, but it worked so well as is, there was no need.

Magazine advert dissection

Time for another dissection. I saw these in a local magazine and loved them. They're from a prominent fashion label, and I assume these are corporately sponsored shots that are disseminated to smaller magazines. What I like is the simplicity. I think if most photographers tried something this simple, it would end up looking far too garish and ugly, whereas here I think it's stunning.

Setup shot:



I am positive it's a single light source. What I'm unsure of is the shape of the light and what kind of modifier was used. I do not think it's barebulb, the shadows are far too soft for that. It could possibly be a large beauty dish, but it's more likely an octobox or softbox, with a grid. The shadows are still quite hard for most shoots, so the light was definitely further away. The grey wall provides just a bit of bounce. You can see it open up the shadows of the guys face. It's possible there is some kind of bounce or reflector at the front of this room, angled so it doesn't add much to the wall (leaving the dark shadows intact) but keeping the clothing from going completely black. I'm unsure of this aspect though.

Great shoot, stunning images. I definitely want to try something like this in the future.

Gróto again

Settings:
1 Vivitar 285hv
flash at 1/2 power,
through 1/4 CTOrange gel,
at normal telephoto zoom,
into silver umbrella,
light stand was at 2 meters height,
light was .5 meters to left and even with camera,
aimed directly at subject.

Whenever the sunset is looking nice, I am always tempted to run down with any available subject and do some portraits. This past Saturday I gave in to the temptation and raced down. It was quite windy, so I was limited in where I could place the umbrella. I had my left arm straight out, holding the light stand. I gelled the flash slightly, so that in post, I could adjust the WB to be a bit bluer, but still retain a warm look to the subject. I started at my max sync speed of 1/250, got my flash settings right for the subject (I started at 1/4, but had to bump up to 1/2), then I lowered the shutter till the background was the brightness I wanted.

I sat Agust in such a position to put him in line with the leading lines of the telephone poles. This would compositionally balance the image and give something else to look at in the background, at a place of power. Unfortunately it left grass in the scene. Originally it was very bright, yellow, and distracting. I just used Lightroom 2's new adjustment brush to quickly darken, green-ify, and reduce contrast, so that it could be there as another layer of foreground, but not be as distracting. I also added green to the sky, pinked up the sun poking through, and made a mask for Agust's face. I used that mask to de-saturate a little, bump exposure, contrast, clarity, and sharpness. I do that often now on faces to make sure they are the most clear and attention drawing element of the scene.

Sunset with small softbox

Settings:
1 Vivitar 285hv
set to 1/16 power,
at telephoto zoom setting,
through Lumiquest softbox II,
light stand was at 2 meters height,
light was even with camera, and just outside frame right,
aimed directly at subject's face.

Sunset photos are easy and produce very pleasing results. This portrait, while not all that exciting, demonstrates the use of the small softbox when moved in close. I feel from this example that the small softbox is a bit too harsh still to produce a good main light, if the ambient is too dark (like in this example) However I like the falloff it produces. If I were to do this shot again, I'd most likely use my silver umbrella, and block off the bottom portion to get the same falloff. However as a softer than barebulb fill, or in a lighting situation where there is more ambient, this light-mod will work well.

There was a much hotter specular on his forehead and cheeks, but I reduced it in photoshop by "select by color" using white, and reducing the feathering till I only had the highlights. Then I used levels to reduce the brightness, giving it a softer look. I opened up the shadows with the fill light slider in lightroom. Before these two adjustments, the lighting on the face was more severe, and less flattering.

Jean portraits

Whenever I can get someone to sit for a portrait session, I jump at the chance. Fresh faces can be inspirational. Two things came together for this particular session. First, I had been bicycling by this exact spot several nights in a row on my way out, at this very hour. The light and reflections of the lake were so beautiful, I knew it would make a great backdrop. Secondly, I'd just purchased a small softbox that would sit on my flash without blowing over, a real concern here in Iceland when running with no assistant to hold the flashes. I wanted to see what I could do with this new light mod. You can see it in this post, the lumiquest softbox II.

The first shot we met near the city hall, which has this nice ledge that pokes out into the lake. I knew it would give me reflections, and the round windows in the background would provide framing elements.



Settings:
1 Vivitar 285hv
set to 1/16 power,
at telephoto zoom setting,
through 1/2 CTOrange gel,
through Lumiquest softbox II,
light stand was at 1.5 meters height,
light was even with subject, and 3 meters to the right of the subject, just outside of the frame,
aimed a bit up to feather downward.

The softbox managed to soften the light more than a bare flash, but not as much as I'd like from this distance. The nose shadow is still quite hard, but in this setting it works well enough. If I use this setting again, I would position a 2nd flash to subject left, with a slight blue gel (as the natural light was already that color) to pop him from the background. (in this photo I faked it in post)

Then we moved to the main location that I'd observed the previous nights. We walked along the edge until I felt the background elements worked best compositionally. I wanted the church and city lights to show in the right of the frame, but I wanted a dark spot for his head to fit. I used my thumb as a stand in for his head as I walked, till I found an area that worked. I still had the softbox on the stand, so I just needed to adjust height and position. Bringing the ambient up to match the flash was difficult. I was already shooting at iso 400, but I had to really drag the shutter for this to work. (dragging the shutter means using a longer exposure than would normally yield a sharp photo, but the short, intense duration of the flash, 1/4000 of a second or so, ensures that the subject is sharp despite the short shutter, sometimes the background blurs a bit in this situation though). The 1/2 cut CTOrange gel provided a nice contrast against the blue background.



Settings:
1 Vivitar 285hv
set to 1/16 power,
at telephoto zoom setting,
through 1/2 CTOrange gel,
through Lumiquest softbox II,
light stand was at 2.5 meters height,
light was even with camera, and 1 meters to the right of the subject, just outside of the frame,
aimed a bit up ( about a meter over his head) to feather downward.

Post production for these was quite fun, as it was my first time using Lightroom 2's new adjustment brush. Tomorrow's post will demonstrate some of my post processing techniques.

Long shadows

I saw an advertisement several months ago of a man on a concrete bench, and the lighting cast long shadows across the concrete. I thought it was a really nice mix of soft lighting but with the shadows of harder lighting. I wanted to emulate the setup.

Settings:
1 Vivitar 285hv
set to 1/2 power,
into silver umbrella,
at middle zoom setting (this fills the umbrella with no spill)
light stand was at 2.5 meters height,
light was flush against the wall outside of frame right,
aimed at subject.

The silver umbrella increases the size of the light, so that the lighting and shadows are softer than the bare flash would create. The fact that it's almost flush with the wall is what creates the long shadows. This is also why I wanted to use a construction site. The room had 3 walls, blocking the light from all but the right. This way the flash would work with existing light, though I did use 1/200 sync to bring the ambient down as low as possible. The "rake lighting" would not only create the long shadows, but reveal the texture in the concrete walls.

The whole shoot was quite short, as I had an idea in mind, and as soon as I hit it, I was satisfied. If I were to do it again I might experiment with a snooted second light aimed just at her head from the left side.

Post processing was fairly basic. I masked out the white pipe and reduced it's exposure. It was drawing too much attention, and since it was so close to the flash, it was the brightest thing in the scene. Now that attention was squarely on the model, I used a curves layer to play up the translucency of her skin, locking down the red channel in the highlights and deep shadows, but boosting it in the transitional shadow area. This helped to make her look extra alive and vibrant in a setting of inorganic materials.

Full set
A few more shots from the shoot: