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.

Autumn Leaves

This post is in celebration of my first posted article on a few article sites, I'll post the article here too as it is advice after all, this shot is a macro from last year but I'm going to get some better ones when the leaves start to turn this year. Anyway here's the article:

Leaves are a very popular subject when it comes to autumnal photography due to their great variation in colour at this time of year. If you are creative these subjects can offer great photographic potential. Here are 5 quick tips to make sure you make the most of the autumn weather

1. Ice – As the temperature drops outside leaves invariably become frozen in puddles, these can produce great photos. You can always pour cold water on the ice to remove the crystals and give it a really clear look, conversely you can scratch the surface to add some interest. If you can’t wait for the temperature to drop you can always stick some leaves in a water filled plastic container and freeze it overnight, just remember to fill your frame when you take the shot.
2. Falling leaves – As the leaves start to fall a rich carpet of yellows and reds starts to form. To get a sense of leaves falling without having to wait for a strong gust just ask an assistant to drop some whilst you snap away. Aim for a wide aperture to blur the background and go for shutter speeds of between ½ sec and 1/30 to get a sense of motion, you may need an overcast day or a neutral density filter as with the aperture wide open at this speed you may over expose during the day.
3. Soft focus – A quick, cheap way of adding a soft focus filter to your lens is adding a clear piece of plastic to the front of the lens (Clingfilm) and breathing on it, or on your UV filter if you have one. This will add a soft ethereal feel to your shots, just remember if you are breathing on your filters to give them a good clean after.
4. Back lighting – A great way to capture the vivid autumn colours is use the sun to back light them. This works great if you can shoot with a dark, shaded background. Remember if the back ground is dark the leaves may over expose so dial in a -1 stop to compensate and keep the darks dark and correctly expose the leaves. If the background is very bright you’ll have to add +1 stop to stop the leaves under exposing.
5. Get low, go wide – To really emphasise the coloured carpets so abundant in Autumn, fit a wide angle lens and get low down, focusing on a close leaf and fill the frame with the leaves going away into the distance, open spaces such as parks are great for this.