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).

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.

Another Portrait

Hey folks, I thought I'd put this one up of one of my nieces who was over recently, I did a bunch of photos of her and her brother in the studio, both were very photogenic. I liked this image because of her eyes.
I've been experimenting with some photoshop actions as I find them a little more effective that lightroom presets, I can't quite put my finger on why. Actions, like presets, are recorded steps you can apply to several images very quickly and they are a great labour saving method. There are plenty available on the web, some are free and some are, well...not.

Lifestyle Portraits

We did some outdoor shots at the weekend as the sun was out (occasionally) and the oil seed rape was in full bloom, excellent when one of your subjects suffers from hay fever (I only found this out after). We did some posed shots in the studio but the outdoor ones were all pretty much off the cuff, I really liked this one, I thought the pose combined with the balloons was great.

I went for another '300' style processing effect in lightroom with the heavy vignette. This was my first outing with the 70-200 f/2.8 lense and I loved it. It was taken at f/4, 140mm, 1/1250 sec at ISO100. The large aperture and the long focal length made gave great background blur and I think the low angle (basically lying on the road) finished off the effect. It's always good when you don't get shot at by irate farmers!

Maternity Photography

Another ultra quick post because I need to go to bed, I've just been processing this one as it was literally the first one I looked at from a shoot this evening and I needed something to do while all the other photos were being imported. This was of my good friends who don't mind being photography guinea pigs! This isn't how I typically process a maternity shot, but I quite liked the effect, I imaging the rest will be in mono, I have another 293 of these to do! Anyway happy easter!