The Glass Floor

I was doing some studio portrait shots yesterday and thought I'd have a go at this technique I saw a while ago. It's easy enough to do and gives a decent effect. You don't need to be a genius to figure out how it's done, probably not a great idea if are photographing subjects with skirts on, or Scots in kilts for that matter. This was taken at 45mm 1/125, (studio flash) f/8 ISO125, I increased the ISO by 1/3 because they were a little underexposed and I couldn't be bothered getting up to increase the flash power by a 1/3. A quick Q&A for you, I could have also opened up the aperture to 7.1 instead of the ISO increase. Remember when lighting with just flash the shutter speed is irrelevant as long as it's under the cameras x-sync (usually around 1/200th).

Motorbike Photography

I'm going to start doing a bit of motorbike photography, this was quite a quick attempt largely due to the freezing conditions outside. The garage wasn't the tidiest I've seen and there was a car just behind the bike so I had to be careful not to light any of it. There was no ambient light so everything was lit by 3 flashes, one you can see in the top left and another between the car and the bike, both these were hard unmodified lights. The third light was an umbrella just to camera left and this provided the detail to all the chrome. Everything was on full manual and with the flash powers varying from about 1/2 to about 1/64. They were all fired with pocket wizards, the quick mono conversion was done in CS3. Hopefully I'll be getting out and doing some moving shots with more riders and less lights!

Skateboarding on Boxing Day

We went to a school yard nearby to test out this insane skate/snow board hybrid present, I wasn't too keen on breaking a limb but thought I'd take the camera and maybe snap some of the thrills and spills. My sister was directing the off camera flash, hard light coming from camera left, I was wanting to throw a harsh shadow on the brick wall to give it a bit of a grungy look. The second one was just as the sun was setting and the sky looked pretty cool.

When I use off camera flash I always go full manual with both the camera and the flash, this is great because when you get the flash set for a given aperture you can control the ambient just by changing the shutter speed, this is good for to get moody skies.

NB. I have been trying to post these for a few days but it seems the people over at google blogger have had an extended xmas break, all back in working order now. I went to the lake district again today so I'll hopefully have some of those shots up soon. Happy 2009 everyone!

Self Portraits

I had to send a mugshot type photo of myself to a magazine today and as I haven't posted on here since god knows when I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I really dislike being on the other side of the camera and I particularly dislike it when I have to use a mirror, I could have set up a tripod and all that but thought it would be a fairly quick affair. So then out came the speed lights and pocket wizards and I got set in front of the mirror.

I have no idea why I decided to take pictures in the bathroom and it was particularly embarrassing when my sister dropped in to see me but I managed to get through it. It was a two light setup with hard light coming from behind me to provide the rim lighting (no I hadn't brushed my hair) and a light in front to 45 degrees to my left. The light in front had an umbrella on in one shot and a home made grid on the other providing two different types of lighting. A decent amount of light bounced from the rear light on the mirror lighting up the room behind me so I just sorted it out with the local adjustment tool in LR2 (now much better after 2.1 patch). I put it in mono as I find it more flattering. The exif was ISO100, 70mm, 1/200 at 5.6.

1 Strobe, Choose your background

Hi folks, I've been playing with my pocket wizards again just experimenting with exposures with one flash off camera and some light coming in from the window. This was quite a quick setup in the living room with no clear backgrounds, I have done a shot to demonstrate what was in the background (a couch!). I didn't have any willing subjects so I had to use my wii guitar.

I think ambient exposure was about 1/100 at 2.8 ISO400. From this I can now choose if the background can be blown out white or Black, obviously for a white background there also needs to be something lighting your subject or you would get a silhouette, in this case the light came from the window.

So to blow out the background I had my flash pointed at the ceiling at 1/4 power, my camera set to 2.8 ISO400, 1/200sec, the window light exposed the guitar and the flash blew out the background.

Now to make the background black I had to eliminate all ambient light so I set my camera to 1/200 (I couldn't go any quicker as this is the 5D's x-sync speed) ISO100 and f16. The drop in ISO and aperture would also reduce the effect of the flash. The flash was now lighting the guitar, it was still at 1/4 power but I set the zoom (on the flash) to 85mm to reduce the spread and had it coming in from about 45 degrees to the right, this was important as I didn't want any spill onto the background, not to mention the horrible sharp shadow it would have produced. Instead of increasing or decreasing the power of the flash I just changed the distance between flash and subject and thats about it. I did a very minor tweak in lightroom to ensure the blacks were black and the whites were white but nothing else.

Off Camera Portraits

I've recently bought a couple more pocket wizards that allow me to use more lights off camera, this was from a few quick shots we got in the garden. It was a two light setup with an umbrella to camera right and a bare light behind the subject to camera left providing a little separation light from the background. I'm going to use another light behind the subjects to the camera right. This was taken on full manual, both lights and camera, the exif was f/11, 1/200 sec. ISO400 at about 150mm. Sorry for the quick post but will do a more detailed version when I get a better shot.

Pre Wedding Portraits

I had a pre wedding meeting yesterday with a couple we are covering in a few weeks and I thought I might use some off camera flash, I've been reading a lot of strobist, if you haven't been it's worth a look for techniques and inspiration. Anyway as the sun had pretty much dipped over the horizon I wanted to do something with the sunset, but not have the couple as silhouettes, so in full manual I metered for the sky and got f5.6 at 1/160 sec (ISO100) I had a flash to the left through an umbrella and it was just a case of changing the flash power (I ended up at about 1/4 power with an old SB28, I know, a Nikon!) I could have darkened the sky by simply adjusting the shutter speed. I tweaked the shot in lightroom, I originally added a textured layer in photoshop but decided it made the photo look like it was on a backdrop so I binned it. I was going to do a mono conversion but decided it wasn't necessary

More Flash and Water

I quite like working with water so I putting a couple of recent ones from a recent set I did in the shower. This also demonstrates a principal it took me a while to understand about freezing motion, normally if you want to freeze a stream or a fast moving car you up your shutter speed to say 1/1000, this is fine if you are out side but a bit different indoors as most cameras can only synchronise their shutter with the flash to speeds of about 1/250 (this is the cameras x-sync speed). This always panicked me as 1/250 isn't really fast enough to freeze the water BUT as a scene like this is lit with flash only, ie no ambient light the duration of the flash is a lot quicker than 1/250 so you could actually leave your shutter open for say 1/30 which is nowhere near fast enough to freeze water but as long as there is no (or little) ambient light the flash will be enough to stop the motion of the water. These two were taken at f6.3 for 1/200 at 170mm ISO 100. It was lit with a single speedlite to the camera left and I had a piece of orange card behind the shower. The levels were tweaked in Lightroom after, another rainy day project.

Still Life

I've been doing a few portraits recently and it's quite nice to get back to some still life stuff, and it's easier because you don't have to make them laugh. I was after everyday objects so I got some trainers and put them on a wooden floor. It is just lit with a single speedlight to camera right, there was no diffuser fitted so this made the shadows quite harsh, normally a bad thing but it was the effect I was after at the time. I was going to go for black and white but I quite liked the over saturated reds. I also liked the sepia version as it reminded me of the old time athletes who wore these as they were cutting edge in the day (they had holes in the side for ventilation! not just to let water in when it rains). Taken at 5.6, ISO 100 at 1/200 sec between 100-200 mm. My flash's auto power off was driving me insane but this can be disabled.

Off camera Flash

I'm just putting up this photo as it was my first shots with my new pocket wizards, I can now trigger my flash from 1600 feet. In this instance the flash was only a few feet away and could probably have been taken using a regular off camera cord but I was only testing it out.

For anyone who is interested I was at f/11 for 1/200 sec at 200mm ISO 200 and my flash was on manual at 1/16 power, f/11 to get a decent amount of DOF (depth of field) because as we all know this decreases as focal length increases! A really good site for off camera flash is Strobist, this guy really knows what he's talking about and it's a great learning resource. Hopefully I'll be posting with a bit more regularity now, but I've said that before!