The Way I See It

Shutter Drag Self Portrait...

2009-09-20T05:22:00.000-07:00

Combining a continuous source of light and a strobe.

And the exciting debut of the Online Lighting Diagram Creator!

Lighting diagram courtesy of http://www.lightingdiagrams.com/, check it out.
I found it easy to use and much better looking than my hand drawn examples in the past.

As you can see, it isn't a complex arrangement.

To get this effect, I chose a very long shutter speed for a portrait; 4 seconds. The reason for this is that I wanted to have time to wiggle around a bit so as to create the blur on the shaddow-side of my face. Also, because second curtain sync isn't available when using a Canon Rebel XT with Pocket Wizards to trigger the strobe. So I manually triggered the strobe using a Pocket Wizard, off camera. (Litterally, in my "Pocket".) 4 seconds was enough time to count in my head and fire off the light right before the shutter closed.

I chose an aperture of f/13 to kill off any ambient light in the room.

The Light on the background is a strobe but I used only the incandesent modeling light for the exposure. I kept it from flashing by plugging a dead sync cord into it to disable its optical trigger. This way it wouldn't fire when the softbox went off.

The background remained sharp because it didn't move at all. I (the subject) did, however. Normally this is not proper procedure for a portrait but after a count of "One-Thousand-One, One-Thousand-Two, One-Thousand-Three...and a half. BAM! I triggered the strobe in the softbox and burned the sharp image over the blurred one.

There's a bit of trial and error involved in figuring out how much movement it's going to take the get the desired effect. In these images, I didn't use a refector or a fill light, so the shaddow side of my didn't record any light from the strobe. If I moved from side to side very much, say 6 inches or more, the background light would record as long as my head wasn't there - making it look as though my head wasn't there.

I think it's a very interesting effect with a lot of possibilities and I'm excited to try it out on some one else.

Feature Photographer

2009-09-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

SteveThornton

The California Sunbounce guys have a plethora of behind-the-scenes videos on their website here that are well done and amazingly informative. I haven't had nearly enough time to explore them all but this set is my first, fast favorite.

Above is part 1 of 4 short videos with Steve Thornton shooting both natural light and strobe using reflectors. I've watched it many times over. Gave me loads of ideas.

Of course, you don't have to buy the high-dollar, well designed reflectors to get the same results. It just makes it faster, easier and more storable. You can also do it on the cheap and make your own reflectors, light blockers and scrims. It isn't rocket science -- check out the DIY lens hood he's using there too...

View the Final Images Here

Read on to see the other three videos...

Loose the Flash and Keep on Shooting...

2009-09-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

When you just don't want it to end...

Lit only by the setting sun, these images became much calmer and more melloncollie.

They were shot with a Canon 5d at ISO1600 and 3200 using a 50mm f/1.4 or a Lensbaby.

Not much more to say than that, what you see is what you get.

More Drama With the Small Flash...

2009-09-05T07:51:00.000-07:00

Take a Great Natural Light Situation and Pump Up the Volume...

You would need a much more complex, multiple light set up if you were to do this in a studio setting. That's what I love about Shooting Natural Light. It does all of the heavy lifting for me. Then, I can get away with using a Canon 580 on a stand. That's it. Weighs all of a couple pounds - I can carry that in one hand!

Find great natural light locations and all you need is a little fill light or a little accent light. A little light is all you need.

In the previous two images, well acually, in all of these images I used the sun as the accent light and the 580 EXII on a stand as either a more gental fill light or a direct key light on the model's face.

I controlled it with a 550EX on the camera in "master" mode. It is a wonderful thing not to have to move away from the camera position a bunch of times to change the power settings on the light 1/3 of a stop one way or the other but the Canon system sucks to be quite honest. Don't even get me started...

What Can You Do With One Little Hot Shoe Flash?

2009-08-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

What can you do with only one little Hot Shoe Flash?

You can do plenty. The trick to making any one light setup, large or small, look more complex and nuanced is knowing how to use the existing, ambient light sources to your best advantage.

Here comes another plug for the Minimalist; if you can shoot using only natural light, your job is already 90% done for you. All you need from your strobe is to be a dramatic accent point; a burst of color or intensity.

In The Shots Above and Below...

The pre-existing light from the sun is doing all of the heavy lifting. The open sky, here, is even giving me a bit of directional light.

I used my Canon 580 on a stand, to camera right. It was on 1/2 or full power, bare except for an orange gel. About 1/2 CTO, if I remember right. (It'll be the same gel I use on most of these shots, unless I shoot it without the gel.)

It gave it a little extra punch of intensity and warmth.

This is one of the shots where I took the gel off for more of a monochrome feel. I just wanted a bright rim light to make her pop.

This time the flash is camera left, again with the 1/2 CTO gel. We were in open shade so there wasn't a ton of ambient light to compete with. That's how you can make the most of a small light like the 580. It was set back 10 feet or so with the head zoomed out to 105mm to focus the light like a snoot.

I'm in a great natural light location but to add a bit more contrast and give her that gentle highlight on her cheek; a 1/4 or 1/8 power pop is all that was needed.

If I even had the strobe set up for this shot, it didn't fire. Oops. However, due to the great quality of the existing light, it still works.

These were shot with a Canon 5d (mark 1) and either a 24-105mm f/4L or a 50mm f/1.4.

The Freedom of NOT Needing Equipment...

2009-08-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong...

I think strobes are great for adding drama and getting the shot regardless of the cooperation of the weather gods. Sometimes, they're indispensable.

Strobes can also be a real drag. They can be heavy, time consuming and can really kill the flow of a quickly evolving shoot.

I'm just saying, it can be freeing to leave all that equipment in the car, (or at the store, as the case may be,) and go commando. Just one camera and one lens.

The image above was taken on the shady side of the building and the sun is being reflected back onto the model from the windows of another building across the street. You can see the highlight from it on the wall right behind her head.

Clear Skies Work Best...

You do have to go out on the "right" kind of day for this to work the way I'm doing it here. The sun has got to be bright and relatively low to work best. I'm saying relatively low, meaning maybe 2 or 3 hours before sunset. I'm not looking for that so-called golden light here because that kind of light is less intense. Which is why it's so useful - but that's the subject of another post...

The image above was taken in a parking lot with the sun just peeking around a tall building a few blocks away.

The sky that is in closer proximity to the sun is much brighter than that which is on the opposite end of the horizon. Makes a good main light.

Here, she is under the shade of a large, overhanging, even tree-like bush. The sun is striking the sidewalk in front of her with its full intensity. That's the bounce. Big, soft up-light.

This image was an experiment to see how far the dynamic range of my 5d could go with direct sun.

Well, that's it.

Again, finding open shade on the shady side of a building with light being reflected back onto the model from windows across the street.

Just look for the square beams of light to hit something, the wall, the sidewalk, a parked car, whatever - then stick your subject right in the middle of it.

These two were done in a shaded street. No beautiful beams of bounced light here.

We're basically standing in a darkened channel with open sky at both ends. So, which ever end of the block you are standing closer to becomes the brighter light source.

Very simple, flat, open shade.

All of these images were taken with a Canon 5D, 50mm f/1.4 lens @ f/1.4 on Aperture Priority.

I hope this all makes sense to you. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Sometimes, That's How I Feel Too...

2009-08-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

Greenberg Wanna-be.

So, I thought I'd include my own spin on the Jill Greenberg look.

I even remembered to make a lighting diagram...

Now, to be fair, I have no idea what she did photoshop wise, so I didn't even go there on the portrait. This is pretty much straight out of the camera...only minor tonal tweaking.

The Bourbon Bottle.

The bourbon bottle, on the other hand, is a composite of three different images I shot. The first is the bottle body, second is the very bottom of the bottle and the third is the label.

I shot the label separately because I couldn't get the reflections on the bottle to look right when I had the light in the best position for the label.

For the main bottle shot, I set the bottle on a small light box that was previously used for viewing film negatives. The light box was covered with black fabric that had a small hole cut in it for the light to shine through into the bottle from underneath.

Then I used a WhiteLightning 1600 with a medium soft box camera right and I draped a long piece of sheer white fabric over it as well. This is where that large white highlight on the right side of the bottle is coming from.

Next, on the other side, I stood up a black 4'x8' foam-core board and a white one. That's where the vertical white and black "stripes" are from on the left side of the bottle.

Finally, there is a WhiteLightning 800 behind and to camera left, with a Grid to keep the beam of light tight and hit only the top of the bottle.

Now, the last little detail, I almost forgot, I cut out a piece of typing paper a little smaller than the outline of the bottle and taped it to the back of the bottle to reflect the light back and make the happy juice glow.

Feature Photographer

2009-08-15T21:06:00.000-07:00

Jill Greenberg.

As one who has done family portrait phptography for years, this brings a little smile to my heart.

To see a short video interview with some behind the scenes footage, ...

Flash & Burn

2009-08-10T22:44:00.000-07:00

Out running you sync speed isn't usually a good idea, but you can take longer if you like.

To get the freeze & blur effect,

I used a longer shutter speed, somewhere between 1/20th of a second and 1/2 sec. Jiggling the camera is a plus too.

These images were taken by with a large window to the right as well as a Canon 580 in a shoot through umbrella. Also to the right.

It works because the continuous light coming from the window is providing the blur, while the strobe fires such an intense and very brief burst of light that it appears to freeze the model in place. If there were no ambient light in the room, there would be no blur at all, even with an exposure of longer than a second.

When you mix the two you can get some funky results that are fun to play with.

Minimalist Lighting...It's a Trend Now

2009-08-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Beautiful light is everywhere and it's free for the taking.

What you see is what you get.

Mystery Light

When I go out, I'm looking for patches of light in places where it shouldn't be; on the ground, on walls, I'm looking for things that are brighter that I would expect. Then, I put my model in front of them.

When light bounces off of stuff, you can see where it lands and stick a person in it.

Presto!

Instant, free, beautiful picture making light!

Minimalist Lighting...

2009-08-02T22:41:00.000-07:00

Bonus Post

Part two of what you see is what you get.

Minimalist Lighting...

2009-07-30T22:29:00.000-07:00

This has become my favorite way to shoot.

Just me, my camera and a pretty girl. What more could a guy want?

I don't have much to add to this. What you see is what you get.

Two strobes in the Alley

2009-07-25T22:19:00.000-07:00

Quick and simple:

1 Canon 580 in a small soft box to the right.
1 Canon 550 behind her, to the left as a hair light.

Triggered by Pocket Wizards

Minimalist Lingerie?

2009-07-20T13:59:00.000-07:00

Nothing but window light and lace. And for those of you who noticed the catch lights in her eyes, yes, a reflective thingy from down low. (In this case it was a white blanket.)

It was a dim, rainy day which contrubuted to the softness of the light. Just jack up the ISO and revel in the high-key-ness of it all.

Minimalist Lighting...

2009-07-17T13:44:00.000-07:00

Minmal gear, minimal talk.

Just a couple bonus images from the last shoot...

Open shade.

Light blocked from all but one side = pretty.

Minimalist Lighting...Window Light

2009-07-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

We're on a roll with the minimalist.

Just a guy with a camera

To me, minimalist lighting is a strange beast.

It's natural for people to want all the "stuff;" all of the gear we think is necessary to make good pictures. I know I did. It seems counter intuitive.

I couldn't afford any of that stuff, so I got a job at a portrait studio so I would have access to it and some valuable on-the-job training as well. Don't get me wrong, strobes and hot lights are wonderful things, but now that I know what they do I've realized they aren't all that unique.

Light is light. Period.

Now, I've come full circle.

I've found it very challenging and satisfying to make pictures without all that gear. It's freeing and it challenges my skills of observation which forces me to grow as a photographer.

Pick a prime, any prime.

One thing I would recommend, though, is to simplify the process even more by not using a zoom lens. I love to walk around with my 50mm f/1.4 on aperture priority. That way I have no distractions. It's just me, the model and the light.

Super Minimalist Lighting

2009-07-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

Minimalist lighting.

No strobe. No reflector. Nothing but a camera.

Can you do it?...

The challenge I encountered in this session was shooting the glasses.
To find out how I solved this common problem

Normally, I like to use hard, bounced light coming off of the windows of the tall buildings in down town Seattle. This time I couldn't do that because the hard light created a hard cast shadow from her glasses onto her face which was very unflattering. (You can see a bit of it on the third image down.)

In portrait lighting, there are always two basic options with regard to shaping light and contrast.

You can either add it to make one side lighter or you can reduce it to make the other side darker. The net result is the same.

The key to subtractive lighting is to find shade. Find a location where the light is blocked from one side and it will be darker on that side of your subject.

It's that simple.

When your subject is out of the direct sun (or reflected sun) your main light source is the sky itself. Big equals soft. And, not to mention, blue. Soft light leaves little or no cast shadows or specular highlights, i.e. perfect for glasses.

Find some open shade and see for yourself.

Just a Simple Family Portrait

2009-07-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

Group shots can be intimidating but they don't need to be super complicated to be effective. These were done with only a bare, 1/4 CTO gelled Bowens for the main light and a bare, 1/4 CTO gelled Canon 580 for fill.

The reason I chose to add the fill light was two fold:

1.) Since I was shooting directly into the sun, I knew I'd have to underexpose by 2 or 3 stops which would reduce the amount of light falling on the subjects enough to make them black silhouettes. Therefore the shadow side of there face would remain almost black without the fill.

2.) The Bowens I used for the main is not quite powerful enough to overpower the sun all by itself when pulled back far enough to get a big enough spread for a group of this size. Adding the fill gave it just enough of a boost to get the job done.

The main challenge here was the flare. Those sun-spots were unavoidable as I was shooting directly into it with a relatively wide angle lens, I did my best to tone them down in post.

I used a 24-105mm lens at around f/13 or so to get the depth of field I needed to make sure every one would be in focus.

Here, I changed the camera angle to get away from the sun and cured the flare issue all together, but I prefer the composition in the other shots.

The individual shots were even more simple to produce. I added a Westcott Halo umbrella to the gelled Bowens, powered it down and pushed it in as close as I could for softness sake. Then I had a friend holding a gold reflector in for fill on the opposite side of the frame.

I also opened up the aperture to about f/5.6. This lens has a range from f/4 to f/22. At f/4, however it is not at it's sharpest. By stopping down to f/5.6 I get into it's sweet spot. It appears to be a lot sharper there.

Available Light = Any Light That's Available

2009-06-30T12:19:00.000-07:00

The last rays of sun have gone behind the horizon but in the city, light still abounds...

This series was taken solely with light coming from window displays at the retail shops on the street. Available light. Not much to be said about the technicals, aperture priority - click, click, click. But, that's just the way I see it.

Just a Strobe Lit Quickie...

2009-06-25T23:33:00.000-07:00

In continuation of the last post, add some light...

The main light is a Canon 580EXii with a light amber gel (about 1/8 CTO) on a stand, about 5 feet away, to the model's left and there is also a Canon 550 hidden right behind her, pointed at the background. This one is bare, set to a wide angle spread.

These small hot shoe flashes seem to lean a bit to the blue side to begin with so I rarely need to put on a blue gel. Just warming one of them up seems to provide enough color contrast for me most of the time.

Just Put it on Aperture Priority and Let Fly...

2009-06-23T23:03:00.000-07:00

Read the light.

When I walk into a place, I'm ALWAYS looking at people's faces to see what the light is like. Beautiful light is there for the taking. Check it out...

Here's the wide angle for the setup shot. As you can see, the only light source is the windows behind her.

Stay tuned for a post with a some strobe lit images taken here as well.

A Blog of Note...

2009-06-18T21:17:00.001-07:00

I've been spending a bit of time in the wee hours of the night checking out Scott Schuman's blog, "The Sartorialist". He's a street fashion photographer with a blog full of beautiful natural light images...

Click here for another great, short video interview that shows some behind the scenes action as well.

Adobe RGB vs. sRGB

2009-05-11T22:40:00.000-07:00

Here's some food for thought on making your pictures look as good after you upload them to the web as they do in your PhotoShop window...

So I've been having this problem. I love the way a picture looks on the screen while I'm editing in PhotoShop but when I upload it to the blog here, it looks less contrasty and less saturated and a little more blah.

Thanks to Scott Kelby's book I've found a solution. sRGB.

I highly recommend anything by Scott Kelby by the way, and I'm not getting paid to say that. These books are written with photographers in mind in an informal, get down to the nuts and bolts kind of way. Great info. Well organized. Good Stuff.

So, yes, some people say the "s" in sRGB is for "stupid" because it offers a smaller range of colors than the more capable Adobe RGB and that's fair but here's the thing, the Internet offers a smaller range of colors than Adobe RGB too (especially in the blue range). So you edit your image to perfection and then your browser or whatever compresses all your beautiful color down to something more "manageable."

If you convert it to sRGB first, it gives you a more accurate impression of what it's going to look like on the web, plus, if it isn't to your liking, it gives you a chance to give it a bit more saturation or contrast to compensate for its lameness.

Give it a try.

Melding Strobe with Sunlight

2009-05-07T22:19:00.000-07:00

Adding just enough strobe to complement the existing light is all you need sometimes to give an image a little more punch.

This was a shoot to test a new light modifier that attaches to a hot shoe flash. I think they call it the "ultimate light box."

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. It doesn't really soften the light very much compared to just a bare flash head but it still manages to soak up about a stop and a third of your light output. Even more if you put a gel in it.

Not worth it if you ask me. Try it if you like but don't say I didn't warn you. Enough about that.

Lighting Details:

What you see here is a bunch of great available light coming in through the windows to Jessica's right. She was already lit but as you recall, the whole point of this shoot was to test out this little gadget. The light was so beautiful I couldn't bear to destroy it so I just tried to embellish it a bit.

My key strobe is to Jessica's right, mimicking the light from the windows, with the "light box" attached (I just can't call it "the ultimate light box", I'm sorry.) I have a second light, another bare hot shoe flash right behind her head, pointing back toward the camera position to give me a rim light. Both lights were triggered with Pocket Wizards.

The color images were all taken with this setup. The black and white images were taken without the strobes.

Here's the Trick

I love that diagonal streak of light across the back wall there. So many times you see a direct beam of sunlight hit a wall like that, it's just too much for that dynamic range of the camera to handle. You either expose for the bright spot and the shadows go way too dark or expose for the shadows and the sun beam blows out completely.

Here's the secret for this shot. It isn't direct sun light zinging through the window at f/90. It's bounced. The sun is hitting the windows of the building across the street and bouncing back into the garage we were in with most of the stuffing knocked out of it.

It's still got an edge to it because the bounce is coming off of glass but with much of its intensity mitigated, as you can see, it's a lot more manageable as a main light or a accent splash.

This turned out to be a fantastic location. I'll be posting a few more images from it in the near future.

Inside and Outside...

2009-05-01T06:05:00.000-07:00

What's the best way to assess the quality of available light on a given day?

Assessing the light is what helps you to determine your lighting options and makes your location scouting job 100% easier.

Location, location, location.

Making beautiful available light portraits is a product of the location you choose.

Your location supplies you with your background, your supporting compositional elements and your built in light modifiers. Assuming the sun is your main light source as it is in these pictures, you need to pick a location that gives you all of these things.

Look And See

The easiest way I've found to asses the quality of light is so simple that it will easily become second nature, and you can practice it any time. You don't have to wait until shoot day. Here it is: Just look at people.

Look at all the people around you. Notice the way the light looks on their faces. Look around until you see what you want to see, maybe it's soft, flattering light across their face. Maybe it's hard edged, contrasty light. Maybe you want the background to be darker. Maybe you want them to have a dramatic rim light from behind that separates them from their background.

Start with the Background

I usually start with something that I think will work as a background light or dark, whatever I want. Then, I watch as people pass through that area and when I see someone happen through a beam of light reflected off of a wall or window or filtered through some tree branches, I make a mental note of the spot. Then all you have to do is wait 5 seconds for them to move on and tell your subject to "stand there."

The Squint Test

Another helpful tool in assessing the light is the squint test. How intense is the sun light? Well, do you have to squint to see comfortably? Then you're probably looking at an f/16 day. That means high contrast if your subject is standing in the direct light of the sun. That's OK if it's what you want. If not, what then? Do you pack up an wait for a dimmer day? Not if you know how to use those cool light modifiers that are embedded all across the city just for you photogs out there.

What? you didn't know your city installed light modifiers? Well they did, but they call them buildings. It's just semantics really.

Sunlight Comes in Many Forms

If the sun is too intense, modify it. Look for it to bounce off of stuff. When it bounces, it looses a LOT of its intensity and, as an added bonus, it comes it at unexpected angles and that gives you a LOT more options when it comes to finding a suitable background.

If there are any tall buildings around you, you may be surprised how well they can bounce a perfect beam of sun light into a shaded area. Bingo! You have a main light and a darker background that you subject will literally pop out of. Another surprise that often happens is you may even get that rim light you wanted if the sun is peeking around the corner of another building behind your subject.

If this is all starting to sound too complicated, don't freak out.

Just remember this:
Look at people. They will show you where the light is.

Black Velvet Time

2009-04-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

I set up an improvised studio at the end of the Tae Kwon Do shoot to go a completely different direction with Nia.

This was a very simple setup that gave us a drastically different look. I put up a background stand and hung up a swatch of black velvet. The main light is a hot shoe flash through a shoot thru umbrella. The flash was powered down very low, about 1/64th power if I remember right. I could get away with that because I was letting the ambient light do some of the work as well.

First, I turned all the lights out in the room, then I positioned the background near a big window - but not too near, about 15 feet away to keep the contrast from getting out of hand. The closer you get the the window the more intense the light becomes and that makes the shadows look darker, relatively speaking. So, when you pull back a bit, it tends to even the light out some.

Next, I set up the strobe in the umbrella coming from the same side as the window light. For clarity's sake, if the background is at the 12:00 position, then the window would be at about the 2:00 position and the strobe would be at the 4:00 and the camera at the 6:00.

I like to meld the strobe and window light like this because it can become a seamless wrap of light that's very soft and moody. Plus, it gives you the added benefit of a modeling light since hot shoe flashes don't have a light by which to see how (or if) the beam is hitting the model. It's nice to know where the shadows are going to fall sometimes. It's cheating but who really cares.

These were shot with a Canon 5d and a 50mm f/1.4 lens. The flash was a 580EXII triggered with a pocket wizard.

I love that camera but I have to say, I'm seriously considering Nikon now days. The CLS flash system they have has some real kick-ass potential that the Canon guys have totally missed the boat on. I mean have you ever tried to set up and adjust three different light groups with the Canon system? Get real.

Seriously, Canon missed the boat.

On-Camera Flash Doesn't Have to Look Bad

2009-04-20T15:47:00.000-07:00

When I was shooting this artist's portrait, I noticed the beautiful quality of the sunlight, streaming in through the windows, bouncing off of the walls, floor, counters and everything else in the room. I loved it just the way it looked to my eye. Unfortunately, (in some situations,) the camera's mechanical eye sees contrasting light differently than the human eye.

Enter the on-camera flash. There's a way to do it that doesn't call attention to itself. It makes the picture better and doesn't look flashed. You can (and should) still think of it as a natural light picture though...

The sunlight was very intense. To compensate for that, I had to dial down the exposure by 1 2/3 stops, (that's 5 clicks if you have you camera set to 1/3 stop increments.) Then, when I shot the picture au natural, the shadow side of Liv's face went a lot darker than it appeared to my eye. It lost the luminous, airy quality that I loved about it which was what had drawn me there in the first place. In other words, too much contrast where I didn't want it.

Simple solution. I threw my flash on top of the camera with one of those dome diffusers on it an angled the flash head so it would point at the ceiling directly above the camera. I had the flash on manual and I just played with the power output to keep it from over powering and killing the quality of light that was already there. When I'm shooting TTL that usually means -1 or -2 stops on the flash.

I like the dome diffusers because they still allow most of the light to go where you direct it while at the same time bringing up the ambient level in the room slightly. They send photons out everywhere, pretty much a 360 degree radius. That sends light bouncing off of EVERYTHING and that omni-directional, gentle fill light softens the effect tremendously.

They also make one light source into two by adding another point of light. First, you have the pool of light bouncing off of the ceiling and second, you have the lit up dome itself for that gentle flick of fill and a catch light in the eyes too.

I'll be exploring the possibilities of on-camera fill flash more in the future. The key is to remember that it is still a natural light photo. Don't forget that. If the light is ugly, fill flash won't help. The sole purpose of a fill flash is to reduce contrast. It can't put something there that wasn't there already. It can only make the shadows less dark.

If you use it this way, it won't look flashed and it will give you freedom to use more contrasty light on your subject and still pull it in to a range your camera can handle.

Lighting Side Kick

2009-04-17T19:00:00.000-07:00

Check out a simple, three light setup, optimized for high-impact drama...

This is the first in a series of shoots where I've had the pleasure of working with a talented, up and coming model named Nia Sanchez.

You will probably be able to dissect the lighting setup very easily by looking at the cast shadows on the mat. If we were looking down at the face of a clock and Nia was in the very center, the main light would be at, say, 6 o'clock and the two rim lights would be at ten and two, respectively.

As I said, this was a three light setup: two hot shoe flashes in the back with gaffer-tapped cardboard gobos to prevent lens flair and a hot shoe flash in a small soft box on a boom arm extended directly above and in front of the model, just barely out of the frame. This so-called main light was powered down as to be less bright that the rim lights to give me a more dramatic silhouette type effect.

I did a little sharpening in post as well as removing some clutter like power outlets, fuse panels and light stand feet but the feel of the image was achieved in-camera. The color effect was a combination of desaturating a bit and adding more warmth via white balance.

Nia and I had a lot of fun shooting together and we can look forward to quite a few more articles featuring her in the near future.

Lighting a Tae Kwon Do Portrait

2009-04-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

What wonderful things one can do with a few little hot shoe flashes. You've got to love 'em!

Today, The Way I See It went out on assignment to photograph a talented martial artist in her native environment...

Cut the chit-chat, here's the setup:

It's a three light job. A classic, over-under beauty light setup with a hair light. Yes, the boom arm is a bit over-kill for this. A smaller light stand would have done just fine but I already had the boom going from the previous setup as the main light. Whadda-ya-gonna-do?

The idea here, is to have the botom light about one stop less than the main light. It's just supposed to be a gentle fill light to punch some light into the eyes
and finess the shadows, not oblitherate them.

I have long since stopped using a light meter to determine the exposure I want. With the digital age and all, I just use the histogram as a base line. Technically, a good exposure is say a hump in the middle, according to the histogram. Don't worry about the shape of the hump or it's lopsidedness, that will all change depending on what you're shooting. The important thing to understand is that if everything is all bunched up on the left hand side, you're going to be under exposed. That means you're loosing data in the shadows. Your blacks will look like mud and if you try to fix it in post, you'll get a lot more digital noise than you bargened for. So, try to leave yourself a tiny bit of space over there, you'll be happier.

That's the base line. With that established, you can just look at the lcd and adjust the rest by feel.

Natural Light Portrait in 5 Minutes or Less

2009-04-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

Here's the deal. When you are in the magazine section at the bookstore and you meet a professional model who agrees to make some pictures with you for 5 minutes, you don't say, "Let me go out to my car and get some strobes and light stands and PocketWizards and..." No. You say, "Hey, there's some beautiful light over here by the window. Come with me..."

The light source in the first two shots here, is actually a skylight behind and above the model. It gave me both a rim light on her hair and because she is standing in front of a book table, the light bounced off some light colored books and lit her face as well.

Now that is as simple as it gets. No setup time. Just, "Stand here," click, click, click. I love it! Turns out, the management doesn't feel the same way I do though...

The setup here is pretty obvious. There's a window. Easy, peasy, lemon squeasy. Put it on aperture priority and fire away.

Simply be observant and you can make a beautiful picture anytime, anywhere.

Hey, Remember Color Contrast?

2009-04-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

Yeah, color contrast. What I did was a lot simpler that you might think...

In this instance the final shot and the setup shot are one and the same. To get the color in the shot to look like this I did two things.

First, I put a couple green gels in front of the lens. You can do what ever color you want. Here, I used full tungsten-to-florescent conversion gels.

Second, I slapped on every orange gel I had on that main light. I also used a grid on there to prevent that orange light from going everywhere and contaminating the rest of the scene. I think it worked out to about 4 CTO's worth of orange. It's interesting to note, the main light is a White Lightning 1200 and I had to fire it off at full power at just a couple feet away from my subject. Yeah, it took some serious power to blast enough photons through all of that orange to make the exposure.

The Green gels on the camera made everything green so I didn't have to gel all the lights in the room. That makes it a lot easier. Then I can selectively erase the green off of my subject with the complementary colored gel.

So, all of this color was generated from only two gelled sources. I think that's pretty cool. At the very least, it's a great jumping off point for planning something more elaborate.

That bit of white glare on the left side of the frame was just one of those happy accidents. It was light reflected of little micro scratches in the green gels. I like the way it looks so I left it in but I couldn't get it to work again. That's the magic of doing it in-camera.

Sure I could have spent hours tweaking the colors and doing this in PhotoShop but I'd miss out on all the serendipity and beauty that finds it's way into the picture when the photons hit the fan. All kinds of things can happen that you can't anticipate and you'd never have thought of, even if you could have done it in post.

Part II: Natural Light

2009-03-31T10:43:00.000-07:00

No lights? No problem. On cloudy days, subtractive lighting is my go-to technique. Read more to find out how it was done...

Here's the setup:

A Reflector and a Wall. Count 'em. That's two light modifiers.

The reflector is obvious. It adds some up-lighting to compete with all the down-lighting I'm getting from the cloudy sky straight above. If you can block the light that's coming straight down on your subject's head, the reflector isn't as necessary but in this circumstance it's hard to do without. It doesn't have to be a store bought one either. Anything reflective will do. Seriously, a white sheet, cardboard covered in foil, a piece of gold poster board, a big guy walking by in a white shirt, anything.

Don't forget, the wall itself is the second light modifier. That's what gives us the subtle shadow on the left side of Sarah's face. Without it, the light would have been flat and less interesting.

Bear in mind the color of the wall you use as a light mod. Light takes on the color of what ever it hits. Red, OK. Green, not so much. Also, if the wall was any lighter in color, it would not have had the light-blocking, subtractive effect and generated the shadow for us. It would have bounced even more light in there and made it look even flatter than it was already.

In the next set, we decided to duck under cover and eliminate the top light and force the light to come from only one direction. I did this by surrounding my subject with light blockers on all sides but one. The effect is one of creating a virtual soft box. A huge one at that.

We finished the shoot with the same setup in a different location. Same idea: block the light from the top and side and you get pretty, directional lighting.

The entire shoot, including the strobe portion was done in about 20 minutes start to finish. As you can see from these two different perspectives on lighting, it doesn't have to be difficult to make pictures look better. It's mostly just being observant about where the light is coming from and where it isn't.

All you need to remember is to block the light from the top and side and start shooting!

Strobe it Where the Sun Don't Shine

2009-03-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

The place I'm referring to is, of course, the Pacific Northwest. As is common practice for the weather out in this neck of the woods, I went out that afternoon and looked up at the sky to see beautiful, puffy white clouds floating lazily in a sea of blue. But then, an hour later when our subject arrives... BLAMO! Instant, brooding, dark, gray, "If we were in China, you'd be dead." kind of sky.

Read more to find out what I did...

The point here was to make some simple, what I call "pedestrian portraits." I do formal portraiture all the time so I like to change it up a bit when I can and do something outside that box.

Here's the Setup:

Well, OK. I used two different setups. This is the first one. I used one hot shoe flash in the Halo umbrella as the main light and one as a hair light with a gaffer tape covered piece of cardboard as a gobo to keep it from glaring into my lens. Both lights wre triggered by PocketWizards.

I had both lights gelled orange, probably 1/4 CTO just to warm it up a bit and give it a little color contrast against the cool gray of the clouds. That's kind of hard to see in some of these shots because, well they look great on my screen at home but after I load them onto Picasa for the article, it tends to suck the color right out of them.

I'd appreciate any advice on how to ovoid that in the future. That'd be great!

The second setup is an over-under, beauty light combo. I love it because it really adds some punch to the eyes. The only thing you need to watch out for is glare in the subject's glasses. Most of today's glasses are great at controlling glare. It either doesn't show at all or it is so minimal that it is easily taken out in post.

Sarah's glasses gave me a little trouble, only when I added the light from below. But, as you can see, it really isn't that bad. It doesn't hide her eyes and it's in a perfect spot for retouching so I let it go.

The thing is, you just have to be aware of it because if it does begin to glare into the eye itself, you'll have to bend over backwards in layers hell to fix it.

By the way, the black thing on the light in the foreground is the afore mentioned gobo. I just have it turned around backwards to keep it out of the way.

This article is a two parter. In the second half, I'll switch gears and go with natural light using a great technique for dark days, subtractive lighting.

Stay tuned.

Roller-Rink Part II

2009-03-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

Here is the second part of the shoot along with a few more details on gels and light mods...

One thing you may want to know about small flashes is they're white balanced to daylight, yes, but more specifically to "skylight" rather than "sunlight". They tend to lean to the blue side compared to the larger, studio strobes.

To compensate for this, I almost always have at the very least, a 1/8 cut CTO (Color Temperature Orange as opposed to CTB, Color Temp. Blue) gel on my main light. I like to leave my hair lights and kickers alone to give me some subtle color contrast but always gel the main. Some times I double it to 1/4 cto (while leaving the camera set to daylight white balance.) I'll be experimenting with using more, say a full cut cto, in the future and changing the white balance to tungsten, but that's the subject for a different article.

Here's the setup:

I decided to go with a simpler, more contrasty setup. I wanted to see a dark, dramatic shadow to give me separation between Katarena and the bold red of the lockers and, I really love the way this Over-Under lighting setup looks. It adds so much punch to a portrait and sparkle to her eyes.

As you can see, my main light is a hot shoe flash in a halo umbrella, which contrary to what I just said, I used without a warming gel. The reason being is that we were right up against the lockers and I didn't want to wash the entire thing with orange light. The whole point of gelling a main light, instead of warming with the white balance in camera or in post is color contrast. You can separate the subject from the background with say, a warmer color than the other elements. If you are going to hit everything in the image with the same amount of color, it kind of defeats the purpose of using a gel and eats up flash output unnecessarily. Gels do block some of the light from getting through, it's like using sunglasses on your strobe.

So, in this case, I chose to light the scene evenly, color wise, and warm up her skin tones a bit in Photoshop to compensate for the cooler light source.

The second light you see is the floor skip, also without a warming gel.

Next, we moved around the corner for a change of scenery. This is an identical lighting configuration from before but I wanted to get the background as dark as possible while retaining just a bit of detail. To do this, I pulled them out a bit farther, dialed down the exposure in the camera and powered up the light by the same amount to compensate.

If I wanted the background to go even darker, I could have pulled the girl's out away from it even more. That would prevent any significant amount of light from the strobe from reaching it and getting back to the camera. The key to getting light to fall off quickly like that is to push it in as close as possible to your subject so you can keep it at a very low power. Low powered light doesn't travel as far.

One last thing I want to leave you with is a note on the light modifiers I used for this shoot. Specifically on the hair lights. If you point a light back towards the camera so that it shines into the lens, you get flair. That's the nasty glare and sunspots that show up unexpectedly in a photo. Sometimes you can use them to your artistic benefit but to prevent them from happening in this shoot, I fashioned some simple devices to block the light from the camera position.

I cut out some cardboard from cereal boxes, covered them with black gaffer's tape and velcroed them to the flashes. I'll have an article with more on that soon. Until then, I invite you to check out David Hobby's post on the subject on his blog, Strobist. David does amazing work and what's more, he shares all of his secrets. As the name implies, the focus of his blog is using off camera strobe and specifically small flashes.

I hope this gives you some ideas to try out.

Strobing it up in a Roller-Rink

2009-03-15T22:09:00.000-07:00

Doing a portrait of a pair of roller-figure skaters using only small flashes. Read more to find out how...

I had 3 small, hot shoe flashes and used them in several different configurations to give each location its own look. In the above photo, I lit the girls with a pair of shoot-thru umbrellas to make the light softer and to cover a broader area. They were positioned right next to each other, camera left. (One umbrella probably would have done the job just fine but hey, they were already there...)

The umbrellas I have are Westcott Halos. They are different from the standard white shoot-thru as they have a silver lined backing that covers what would be the bottom, open side of the umbrella if you were holding it up as to keep the rain off your head. The silver backing has a Velcro-lined hole in the center where the shaft comes out for the flash head to go into.. I like it because it's the best of both worlds between the softness of a basic shoot-thru and the efficiency of a silver bounce umbrella.

Enough about that. The third light was aimed at the bank of lockers. Just a bare head with no gel. I ended up having to add some red to the lockers in Photoshop as the cool white strobe kind of washed all the color out of them so, in hindsight, a red gel would have been a good choice.

I didn't know what to expect when I walked into this place because I'd never set foot in it before but as soon as I did I saw place after great place to set up a shot. After I saw the lockers my eye went immediately to the library of skates behind the counter. Luckily, the girls knew the owner of the place, so we got to play there after hours and have it all to ourselves!

Here's the setup:

I knew I wanted to back light those skates so the first thing I did was stick a light deep in that shelving row. It's a bare flash pointed right at the back of her head.

Next, I decided to light her from above and set up the small soft box on the boom. As you can see here, I'm very organized - I forgot to pack the counter weight for the boom and had to have the girls' mom hold it down the whole time. Another advantage to using small flashes, they are light weight!

Now, since I lit her from above, I needed to do something to control the shadows in the eye sockets and brighten them up so I fired the remaining flash into a silver reflector I had on the floor to give it some turbo power.

That floor skip is a technique I picked up from Joe McNally who, if you don't already know, is one of the Nikon Speedlight gurus (among many other, greater things) and I highly recommend checking out his blog for more inspiration and instruction on using small flashes to their greatest potential.

In this set of images, the setup is the same: Two hair lights/kickers behind left and right with a small softbox boomed overhead. You can see the difference in the eyes from the previous setup and if I had a fourth light, I would have made it a floor skip. But all in all, I think it turned out fine without it.

Now this is where I made the change. As you can see in the setup shot below, I pulled one of the hair lights and turned it into the floor skip and boomed the other hair light right behind and above the subject. I then Used the third light for the main in the Halo. I think I prefer this look as it punches more light into the eyes and give 'em some sparkle and some luminosity to her face.

I had so much fun shooting these girls I couldn't stop myself. So, we just kept on shooting. You can look forward (hopefully) to the second half of the shoot coming soon to a blog near you.

Natural Light a la Gazebo

2009-03-11T15:41:00.000-07:00

In today's article, we are continuing with the theme of subtractive lighting.

When it isn't possible or practical (or affordable) to add light, think about how you can remove it strategically.

Less is more...

It's all about the contrast. If you can't find the light, find the dark. Then you can craft the shadows that define the shape of the face.

These were shot on a sunny day under the shade of a large gazebo-like structure at a park. You know, the kind you can reserve for family reunions that have little built in bar-b-ques and picnic tables in them. As it turns out, they're actually free standing light modifiers.

Here's the setup.

There is no direct sun light on the subject. It's lit only by the ambient light from the sky. What makes it work as a portrait is the shadows that were created by blocking the light from above and from one side. Presto! Free soft box!

The above image was taken on the same day, only we moved out from under the "light mod" and into the sun that I over powered with a strobe in a medium soft box.

As you can see, I made the shadow a bit darker by dropping the ambient in camera. I could have used a piece of cardboard or something to darken the shadow side of the girl's face even more in the gazebo shots as well, but I didn't have anything handy and I liked the way it looked the way it was.

That's one of the things I love about photography. It isn't about being right or wrong. It's just about enjoying what you do. So, go out and have some fun.

Lookin' for Light in all the Wrong Places...

2009-03-05T11:14:00.000-08:00

I find it most difficult to shoot on cloudy overcast days.

This seems counter-intuitive to me as cloudy light is softer and should be more flattering but it isn't. That's because the light is coming from EVERYWHERE. And, most unflatteringly, a great deal of it is coming straight down, which gives your subject "perma-eyeshadow" that can be difficult to deal with.

This is where a different lighting technique comes in very handy. It's called, "Subtractive Lighting".

If you can't add light, maybe you can take it away...

My usual technique of dropping the ambient a stop or two with the exposure settings and adding a strobe for a key light doesn't work because it makes an already gray sky look positively gloomy. Unless that's what you're going for, of course.

My go-to natural lighting technique, where I look for open shade with something bright close by for a main light doesn't work either because... there is nothing bright anywhere! There is no contrast in the scene and there isn't anything around to help me out. Or is there?

Photographic lighting is all about relativity.

Here's a complicated equation for you. It stands to reason that if: "Something Brighter" is brighter than "Something Less-Bright". It is equally true that: "Something Less-Bright" is darker than "Something Brighter". Brighter > Less-Bright, Darker < Less-dark. Make sense? Never mind. Forget what I said.

The point is, it's all relative. You just need to have light and dark to get the contrast you want, it doesn't matter how it gets there.

Back to the task at hand. I've established that adding light isn't the solution. The other option is subtracting light and there are many ways to do this but the easiest and cheapest is ducking under a tree or an awning. By doing this, you are "subtracting" the light from the top (and one side, if you're also next to the tree trunk or a darker building.) The image at the top is the best example of this.

Presto! Free, flattering side light via removing the light you didn't want!

You can also do this with a piece of black fabric or cardboard or semi-expensive, collapsible light blockers. But, all I had with me was the camera, so what are you going to do?

For this particular shoot, I wasn't as concerned about flattering my model as I usually am so these aren't perfect examples of using the technique for that purpose. I wanted a more moody, edgy feel. My focus here, was only on maintaining a reasonable amount of contrast in the images.

So, next time I shoot on a cloudy day, it's all about getting under cover. Use subtractive lighting, where less really is more.

As a side note, half the images were shot with a 45mm f/2.8 tilt-shift, perspective control lens and the other half were shot with a 50mm f/1.4

Natural Light on the Street

2009-03-01T21:20:00.000-08:00

This one's just a quickie. I was standing on the street corner after a shoot and the light was too pretty to pass up. It was late in the day, the sun was getting low in the sky and I was looking right into it. Normally, that would mean "silhouette city", use a strobe! But, right behind me was a wall of glass, bouncing the sun right back into everyone who was walking by. Presto! Free fill light!

Beautiful lighting situations are everywhere...

A Model's Portfolio Shoot

2009-02-22T20:40:00.000-08:00

Here's a shoot done for a model's portfolio using two lights, a Bowens 500 in a medium softbox and, the sun.

More Details after the jump...

On the top two images the sun is about 45 degrees behind the model, camera left, producing the highlight on her nose. The exposure is based on this highlight and the strobe is powered up or down relative to that exposure.

In the images above and below, I brought the exposure up a bit to give me a more high-key effect and the softbox is brought around front for a gentle fill.

Here, I darkened the exposure to kill more of the ambient light and powered up the softbox to give more direction to the light on her face.

At this point, the sun was getting low enough on the horizon to dip below the tree tops and we were loosing light fast so I added a canon 550 hotshoe flash on a light stand to bring back the accent light the sun was providing earlier. You can see it here, rim lighting the model and the bars from camera right.

For the next shot, I brought it around to the other side, about 45 degrees behind the model, camera left. It's a bit more subtle here but you can see that the shadow on the bars is on the opposite side.

Same setup on this one. I just jacked up the power a stop.

For both of these, above and below, there is just the one softbox, camera left.

As in all of these shots, the key to the effect is in dropping the exposure and "under exposing" the scene according to the camera's light meter, in order to create the dark which becomes the shadows when you add the strobe. If you were to expose the scene "correctly" according to the meter, adding the strobe would over expose the image - so you have to drop it down by a stop or two to leave room for the strobe at the top end of the exposure.

How far down to drop it is a matter of taste, if you drop it two full stops, you shadow will be dark and dramatic and it will really call attention to the fact that it's being lit. However, if you only drop it say, 2/3 of a stop, the difference between the light and the shadow will be less and it will have a more natural feel. It just depends on what you want it to be.

Give it a try. It's actually a lot easier in practice than it sounds a written out.

One Light Fashion

2009-02-20T22:12:00.000-08:00

Hit the jump for a minimalist fashion shoot.

Setup:
One White Lightning 1600 with a beauty dish directly above the model.

One small silver reflector for fill on the model's face.

Cars Are People Too

2009-02-19T23:38:00.001-08:00

Made the trip back home to take a picture of Dad's car.

As with people photography, car photography is all about location, location, location. I'm not much of a car photographer but I had fun with this one (Mostly because I hope to inherit it someday...)

The important thing to note about a shot like this is the background has motion blur and the car doesn't. It's a technique called panning. Here, I used a slower shutter speed - 1/20th of a second and tracked with the car the best I could as it going by at about 10-15 mph. It takes a bit of trial and error but I like the effect and it's fun to try.

Back Yard Candids

2009-02-15T22:52:00.000-08:00

With natural lighting, it's all about location, location, location.
Learn what to look for after the jump...

I'll say it again: Location, Location, Location. My own back yard is an absolutely perfect place for natural lighting. Unfortunately, I didn't even notice that until I decided to move to a bigger place. D@#* it!

Anyways... What makes it work so well is that row of trees that blocks the entire yard from the harsh, direct sun, but still lets it hit the side of the building, creating a huge, soft, bounced main light source. Secondly, the cool, soft light from the open sky above provides a subtle hair light.

It's hard to go wrong in a setup like this. She can run all over the place and still be lit beautifully. I just left the camera in aperture priority mode and tried to keep up! Seriously, this girl's like a humming bird and she never lands! It would be next to impossible to hit her with a strobe out there.

The light is soft because the light source is huge - the size of a building! She has to be in the shade for it to work, though. Without the shade there would be no soft shadows on her face or texture in the foliage. Plus, the background would be way too bright (and probably out of controll, blown highlights up the wazzu too!) For great, soft natural lighting locations, always look for open shade, with something to block the light from one side (like a fence, building or row of trees) and it's even better if you can find something that the sun is bouncing off of or filtering through for your main light, (like a building or a parked white van or a big guy with a white shirt...)

So, you're looking for some place shady with something bright near by. If you keep your eyes pealed, you'll begin to see them just about everywhere. When I find a potoential location, I like to sit for a bit and watch the light on people's faces as they walk by, that's the easiest way to see where to place your subject.

Take a look around and see what you can find. It may be as close as your own back yard!

"Gorilla Lighting Series" No.2

2009-02-12T16:48:00.000-08:00

In continuation of the last article on natural lighting, here is another set of images from a bit later on the same day...

A little later in the day, the sun has set farther below the roof line of the buildings and as you can see, the light is a lot more even across the subject's face. Since the light has lost it's intensity, there is no light bouncing around like in the previous article. I'm just looking to light Veronica with the cool, soft light from the open sky.

The most important thing to watch out for when using open shade / open sky as the main light source is racoon eyes. There are two things you can do to ovoid having those eyes turn into ugly black holes (unless you like that sort of thing - there are no rules, only preferences in photography.) The first is to jam a reflector in as close as you can to bounce the light in and the second is to get the subject under something that can shade him or her from the light that's comming straight down on them. I you block the light from the top you automatically have only the more flattering side light.

I did a little of both in this set. Check out the setup shot at the bottom of this article for a more graphic description. Give it a try.

"Gorilla Lighiting Series" No. 1

2009-02-11T12:41:00.000-08:00

So what do you do if you don't have all that expensive lighting equipment and you still want to take beautiful pictures?

I went out to the local mall the other day with nothing but a camera and a collapsible, silver reflector to see if I could pull off some beautiful natural light portraits. Wa-da-ya-think?...

My preference is to have at least two light sources in my pictures. When I'm shooting out doors, that usually means the sun and a strobe. I like that setup because it gives me a consistent, predictable outcome lighting wise and that frees me up to experiment elsewhere. On this day, however, I wanted to leave all the gear in the car and make a picture with next to nothing.

Now, when I say two light sources, I'm not usually counting the collapsible reflector. Mostly, I just use it to bounce some light back up into the subject's eyes - to brighten the face, add a little sparkle and keep those sockets from becoming black holes. (See the setup shot at the bottom of the article.)

In these first two shots, both light sources are the sun. It had just set below the roof line of the buildings on camera left and since there were a couple clouds in the sky it had a very intense, diffused glow over there. That intense glow was also shooting across the pedestrian channel where we were standing and hitting the archway behind Madison, providing a less-intense back light.

That's what I love about shooting in urban environments. There's light bouncing back and forth, and zingin' around everywhere! It makes it easy to find spots all over the place where two shafts of light intersect. All you have to do is stick someone in one of those spots and, presto! Instant, painless, (and did I mention free?), portrait. Oh, by the way, since the sun way behind the buildings there - we were in open shade. That's important, you can't do this in direct sun, it's all about finding reflected, or bounced light.

Sit someplace with a cup of beverage and watch the people walking by you. If you do this for even five minutes in a decent urban location you'll see someone in a spot where their face is brighter, their hair has a bit of a glow to it and the background behind them is darker than they are. Bingo! There it is! Now, don't you wish you'd brought that model along with you?

You'll notice in this shot that the shadows have a harder edge to them. (Look at the shadow her hand casts on her neck.) That's because she's being lit by the sun bouncing off of a big glass window. Much less intense than direct sun but glass reflects back a much more defined shaft of light than say a patch of light colored wall.

Here, the subject is being lit only by that intense glowing cloud above the buildings, now on camera right.

All said and done, I spent less than ten minutes shooting and I'm pretty satisfied with the results. I'll be shooting this way a lot more in the future and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I hope you give it a try too.

"Where the Wild Flowers Grow"

2009-02-09T22:45:00.000-08:00

With the exception of the last image, this set of images was taken with natural light and a small silver reflector. Hit the jump to see the rest...

As I said above, this is the only one I added a strobe to. The highlight on the model's left side is from a Canon 550ex on a stand triggered by a Pocket Wizard. These little hot shoe flashes are very versatile and convenient for location use. They're light weight, no cords, and pack a whole lot more punch than you'd think, if you use 'em right.

"Tell Me Like It Is"

2009-02-07T21:31:00.000-08:00

Learn to Light

2009-02-05T11:08:00.000-08:00

How do I make light softer?
Hit the jump and I'll tell you how to do a studio portrait like this one.

Here's the setup:

The two lights in the back are white lightning 800's with barn doors and the one in the soft box is a white lightning 3200. That's irrelevant though, because the flash tubes were burnt out, so I was only using them for the 300watt tungsten bulbs they had for modeling lights. NO FLASH AT ALL.

There are two elements that give this shot the look it has - OK - 3 elements: 1. the whole black on black, "emerging from the shadows" thing, 2. The super shallow depth of field, and 3. the super soft, wrap-around quality of the light.

Let's take these one at a time.

1. "Emerging from the Shadows"

There are two ways to make a super black background (there is actually a teal background behind the model). First, kill the ambient light. There were florescent lights in the ceiling, so I turned them off and there were no windows in this room so that was done. Second, Pull the model out far enough away from the background that the light from you main light source (whatever it is) doesn't get on it.

Bear in mind this is all relative. It doesn't necessarily have to look pitch black to your eye in order to look pitch black to the camera. What matters is that the light hitting your subject is sufficiently brighter that that hitting the background. Then, when you make the proper exposure for the skin tones, the minuscule amount of light coming from the background won't even register on the camera's sensor.

2. Super Shallow Depth of Field.

Your "Depth of Field" is the area in the photo that is in focus and it varies according to a.) your aperture or "f-stop" setting, b.) the length of your lens (wide angel vs. telephoto) and c.) the distance from you to your subject.

In short, the smaller the f-stop number - shallower the focus. The more powerful the telephoto lens - the shallower the focus. And, the closer you are to your subject - the shallower the focus area.

In this set I used a 50mm lens, not a telephoto by any means but, I used the widest aperture available (f/1.4) and I got as close as the camera would let me, i.e. the minimum focusing distance. Between those two factors, the area in the image that is in focus is about half an inch. That's why only the model's eyes are in focus and the rest is not.

3. Super Soft, Wrap-around Light.

Ok, what makes light "soft" is the biggness of the light source relative to the size of the subject. It is relative. Bigger = Softer. I'm talking about physical dimensions bigger, not brighter or more powerful bigger. And "softer" doesn't really refer to the light itself either. It refers to the transition zone between the light part and the dark part. A "softer" light appears to wrap around the face smoothly. The transition zone between the light and dark is broad and smooth to the point that it's difficult to tell where the light ends and the shadow begins.

Here, I had a 2' x 3' soft box and there is only one way to change its size, (it's relative size anyway) and that is to change its proximity to the subject. Follow me here. If a light source is far away, it will "look" smaller to you and if it is closer, it will "look" bigger to you, and bigger = softer. Get it? Relative Size.

I turned it sideways and jammed it in as close as I could get it without it protruding into the frame, and I pulled it forward towards the camera position because any light falling behind the model is wasted here. Thus, I'm using the whole 3 feet of soft box to my softest advantage.

Then, I added the reflector after a few test shots simply because the dark side of her face was darker than I wanted it to be. As you can see from the diagram, the same theory applies here too. Both the soft box and the reflector were just a few inches away from the model's shoulders.

The rest is history. The only PhotoShopping I did was to sharpen the eyes a bit. The rest is straight out of the camera. I hope you found this helpful.

More of the Same

2009-02-02T21:33:00.000-08:00

Here are a few more images using the same lighting setup I described in the previous post.

Two of a Kind

2009-02-01T20:03:00.000-08:00

A simple portrait of my two nephews. Hit the jump to see how it was done.

These two little brothers were born over a year apart but this is a set of their 4 month portraits. Creepy.

Lighting info:
One sliding glass patio door. Indirect light from the sky. Real simple, real smooth.

The key to the softness of this light is that in is indirect. It's lit by the open sky above my small back yard rather than the sun itself. And, since the little ones are lying on their backs, it's coming from a perfect 45-ish degree angle to them for that Rembrandt-esque look.

How do you get the light to come from the opposite side? Spin the baby 180 degrees. I know you had that figured out already, but who ever said good light had to be complicated?

What can you do if that blasted sun is shining right in on your subject? No problem! Just close those sheer curtains you probably had haning there already. If not, tack up a white sheet and presto - instant soft box! After all, those expensive soft boxes were created to mimic this kind of beautiful window light, not the other way around.

"Catch One if you Can"

2009-01-30T23:07:00.000-08:00

One light; the sun. No reflectors. Quick and simple.

"Coronasphere"

2009-01-29T15:47:00.000-08:00

Just a shot I couldn't pass up while eating dinner.

It was lit by two light sources, a small window providing the back light and an incandescent bulb in the chandelier over the black table. I had the camera set to tungsten white balance to compensate for the bulb and it had the affect of turning the sky's light from the window, (which is naturally cool) even more blue. Black is a perfect canvas using color because it won't dilute it like white or some other colored surface would. No Photoshop necessary.

Learn to Light

2009-01-28T14:57:00.000-08:00

This is a set of eight images shot all natural light, in the late summer's setting sun (about 8:00pm). In this post, I'll tell you about the lighting and Photoshop details. FYI, there are some artistic nude images in this post...

They call the hour or two the "golden hour" for a reason. You can stick someone almost anywhere and the light will be beautiful. There isn't much to be said about the lighting technique here. Since the light was softening all by itself, I didn't need to diffuse it. I did have a small silver reflector and I pointed it at the model but I really don't think it had a noticeable effect at all. The sun was very near the horizon so it had directionality and beautiful color. No muss, no fuss.

I don't use Photoshop very heavily, because, after some practice, it's quicker, easier and more satisfying to me to do it in the camera. Obviously, I tweaked the color a bit. That's my favorite thing to do in PS, I just play around with color variations and white balance and hue/saturation sliders until I get something I like, and it almost never works on two images the same way.

One thing I do to almost every image is selective sharpening. The way I like to do this is by duplicating the background layer and using the high pass filter on it. Apply the filter at whatever level brings out the hard edges while not concealing too much behind the "gray." If you go too far you'll get funky halos around everything, just back it off until the go away. Then, Switch the blending mode from "normal" to "overlay". Poof! The gray goes away! Then add a layer mask and paint in just the important stuff like eyes or detail you want the viewer to notice. If the effect is too strong, you can reduce the opacity of the high pass layer.

Another thing I do all the time is "dodging and burning." But, I never use the "dodge and burn" tool. I like to create a blank layer and paint over it (try 4-8% opacity). That way, it's easy to erase mistakes, trash the layer if I want to start over or reduce the opacity. If I'm trying to darken the edges of a picture, I'll use black but if I'm retouching skin, I use the eyedropper tool to select a nearby skin color, lighter or darker as needed.

I do it on the skin to add contrast in a very controlled way. It's subtle but it adds some punch to an image. In these images, I just made the highlights that were already there a bit brighter, on her nose, shoulders, chest, arms and fingers. It adds a bit more depth and dimensionality to the image. That's what gives her skin that slight glow, especially in the first image of the set.

If the "pant" get too thick and looks unnatural, sometimes I apply a Gaussian blur at level 2 or so right at the end to soften it and then add noise at a level 2 to match the graininess of the rest of the image.

That's my method. Experiment and see what you like - in your personal work, the only one you have to please is you.

"On the Lonley Journey"

2009-01-27T23:31:00.000-08:00

Notice the everyday beauty around you. The lighting here is simply direct sun through a window and experamenting with the exposure untill I get the look you want.

"Liquid Sunshine"

2009-01-26T23:39:00.000-08:00

breathes

"Playing Dress-up"

2009-01-25T22:27:00.000-08:00

Girl on a Shelf

2009-01-24T19:35:00.001-08:00

This isn't a lighting tutorial or a Photoshop tutorial, but I think it will still help.

I just thought you might want to see what this image looked like before it got massively Photoshopped.

All the images in this series were lit with the same setup: 1 White lightning 1600 in a beauty dish, camera left and a small silver reflector camera right.

I did way too much in Photoshop to explain here, a lot of hand painting and many, many layers. The point I'd like to make is this: it's so much easier if you've got to your lighting the way you want it in-camera. (Notice, I didn't say get you lighting "right", because there's no such thing in lighting. There is only, "the way you want it.")

As you can see some drastic changes were made but the look the lighting has stayed the same. It just got pushed around and finessed - that's what Photoshop is for.

In Memory of Jack

2009-01-23T22:50:00.001-08:00

We're going to miss you.

"I'm Looking"

2009-01-22T15:35:00.000-08:00

"Catch You Unawares"

2009-01-21T00:54:00.000-08:00

Emerging From the Shadows

2009-01-19T21:16:00.000-08:00

So much of my life has been spent trying to find Truth - true Truth. I figured there had to be something really real, objective reality or something but the problem is that even if I could find out what it was, how could I ever prove it? Know what I mean?

I have to say, that realization has made me a bit agnostic on the whole Truth thing. I mean, I always wanted to find that objective reality and make my life conform to it because that would make me "right".

If you're a Christian, you might tell me I could find it in the Bible, but that's just what I'm talking about. It isn't that I don't believe it's there, it's just that there's no way to know if your interpretation is correct or not. Look how many church denominations there are, all claiming to have a corner on the Truth. If our spiritual leaders, who are supposed to be the oracles of God to us lay people, can't figure it out; what am I supposed to think?

Like the X-Files so aptly put it, "The Truth Is Out There," and apperently, that's where it's gonna stay.

Then, I read something Buddha said, "It is proper to doubt. Do not be lead by holy scriptures, or by mere logic or inference, or by appearances, or by the authority of religious leaders. But when you realize that something is unwholesome and bad for you, give it up. And when you realize that something is wholesome and good for you, do it."

I think that about sums it up.

We humans are inherently subjective beings due to the fact that we can only ever have one point of view: our own. Sure, we can try to get a consensus going among a lot of people thinking, "This many of us can't be wrong, right?" But, then you've gotta think, there was a pretty solid consensus regarding the world being flat at one point in history... I know, I know, we're modern, we're smarter now, we're better at this consensus thing. I got two words for you; George Bush.

The only way to discern objective reality from non-reality is to have an infinite point of view. Something you and I will never have, as much as we'd like to think so. So, where does that leave us? Good question. I don't know.

The point I'm trying to make is this: You know that everything you think you know, you made up. So, why don't you make it up the way you want it to be rather than waiting for someone else to tell you how it is.

The lighting on all of these images is exactly the same. This is a one light setup - a Whitelightning 1600 with the standard 7" reflector and barndoors positioned about one foot above the model. It was set at a very low power, so even a hotshoe flash would have been adaquate. And the light from the side is just a small silver reflector catching the spill from the main light and throwing it back at the her. The reflector is also very close, just inches from her shoulder, right at the edge of the frame.

Learn to Light

2009-01-17T23:32:00.000-08:00

It's Time to strobe it up again.

In this post I'll show you how to get a shot like this one of my friend Mary, on the sidewalk, literally two feet from my office door.

As in the last Learn to Light post, the effect is derived from making two exposures simultaneously. Not to be confused with a double exposure -- Two exposures, at the same time.

Again, with the charming, hand drawn lighting diagram. Actually, both strobes were more in front of her than they appear in the drawing, the reflector was directly under her face, which ever way she was looking. When you look at the larger versions of the images, you can see the highlight or "catch light" low in Mary's eyes from the reflector/strobe.

This is a three light setup. My main light is a Canon 580EXII thru a translucent umbrella. The second light is a 580EXII pointed straight down into a silver reflector that's just laying flat on the ground. And, the third light is the sun, nicely back lighting the whole scene. (In the shot below, you can see it camera right on Mary's jaw and neck. Yes, that's direct sunlight.)

To simplify the exposure thing, let's look at it this way. There are two kinds of lights. The ones you can control the brightness of and the ones you can't. So, you can set your camera to the lights you can't change, like the sun, (this is the "first exposure") and you can set your strobes to your camera exposure, (this is you "second exposure").

This works because your strobes fire a very fast burst of light. So, they don't care if your camera is set at 1/125th of a second, or 1/25th of a second or even 25 seconds. It's the same amount of light output either way. As long as you don't out run your flash by shooting faster that your sync speed, it doesn't make a difference what your camera is set to. (For Canon speed lights its usually 1/200th of a second or slower and for studio strobes it's usually 1/125th of a second or slower.)

You Aperture and ISO settings do affect how sensitive your camera will be to the flash so that's why you always set it to the other light sources first.

That's enough information for now. In a latter post I'll go into more detail on how I use the camera's histogram to get the exposure I want instead of using light meters. I swear, best thing I ever did!

I've included the before photoshop (on the left) and after photoshop (on the right) of this shot because I wanted you to be able to see that you can get it the way you want it in-camera if you put your thinking cap on. As you can see, I cropped a tiny bit off the left and bottom sides. A little sharpening, contrast and saturation and darkening on the very top and bottom of the frame. Take the time to learn to light and you may be surprised to see what can come straight out of your camera - no post necessary.

Obscurity

2009-01-16T17:47:00.000-08:00

The tension between obscurity and clarity is a theme I like to play with in my work. It feels like real life to me. I often find myself struggling in a fog of confusion, fighting to put my thoughts together and find some measure of clarity. I try to explore that struggle in my images.

The lighting here is as simple as it gets; indirect light through the window, that's it. The room itself was an off-white color, so the light bounced around pretty well in there. The funky blur effect on the right side of the first two images came from shooting into the beveled edge of a mirror that was on the wall opposite the window. It split the image but since I spot focused on the model instead of the mirror, it became invisible. The blur effect on the other images came from a lensbaby.

Oh, The Humanity.

2009-01-15T20:44:00.000-08:00

To continue with the theme from the last post -- I figure we'll beat it 'till it's dead -- If you believe it to be true that God made Human beings in His own image, then admiration of the human form is admiration of Him as well. In fact, being the Creator of everything, the admiration of anything He has made would be an act of worship in its own right.

That being said, I've included a few more images in the second part of the post that contain artistic nudity. If you are offended by that, please feel free to opt-out.

The setting sun is the only light source here. Nothing to do but jack up the ISO to 3200 and try to hold the camera as still as possible without a tripod and watch the light fade away (I hate to lug those things around). These were shot with a Canon 5d (I love that camera) and a 50mm f/1.4 prime lens.

To Be or Not To Be: That's my question.

2009-01-12T22:57:00.000-08:00

It may be some time before I come up with Einstein's theory of everything but I can whip out a so-and-so's theory of such-and-such in 30 seconds flat!

Anyway... At the risk of being pigeon-holed as a "christian blog," (I don't see it as such) there is something I'd like to put out there since it's relevant to both the content of and the creative process behind my images.

The main subject of my work is humanity. Humanity in the broad sense more than the individuals themselves. But, of course, you can't have one without the other.

In my so-called Christian upbringing, I grew up being taught our humanness is "the flesh," which is a negative term for our inclination toward evil. It must be conquered and to do that, we must become more and more spiritual. This process is called sanctification; the process of becoming less human, which we must do to glorify God and be good Christians.

This left me feeling estranged from myself in the most fundamental way. My own being, my humanness was something to be despised and done away with in order to be closer to God. It didn't make sense to me but it took me a long time to come to the conclusion that it might not be true.

Follow me back in time to the Garden of Eden, before the original sin. What was God's original intention for human kind? It wasn't to sit around singing songs to boost His ego. He made Adam a human being, not anything else. Not an angel, animal or deity. He made him human. So I'd say being every bit as human as one can be, that's really glorifying God. You get that? Being fully human, not avoiding it. In other words, Jesus didn't need to come and save us from our humanity but redeem us back to it in its original sense.

This is what my art is about. Humanity, seeing that original goodness, the original essence of what we are and were literally created to be. Exploring what it means to be truly human in that sense.

Be more human, not less. That's my philosophy in a nut shell. Everything else grows out from that.

Learn to Light

2009-01-11T22:40:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you just have to go out and have fun. For me, that means taking pictures of beautiful people. I shot this picture of Amanda while we were practicing/goofing off at the arboretum.

A shot like this is not as hard to do as it looks if you've never done it before. The key is understanding that you can make two separate exposures simultaneously when you're using Strobe & and natural light.

Strobist info:

I shot this using two lights. 1 Canon 580EXii on a small stand right behind Amanda's head and another 580EXii shooting through a translucent umbrella, camera right.

First, take a shot of the scene without any flash and under expose it by one or two stops. You are setting the darkness of the shadows here. (Amanda will look pretty close to a silhouette at this point.) Look at that histogram on the back of you digital camera to make sure you aren't all the way against the left side, meaning you're loosing detail in the shadows and they'll start to "plug up" with pure black. I like adjust the exposure to leave a couple columns on the left side empty to let me know there is little or no pure black in the picture.

Next, take a shot with the lights on. Now you're watching the right side of the histogram, looking out for the image plugging up with pure white pixels, or "blowing out." Hence, the blinking red highlight warning -- Adjust the power settings on the lights so you don't get that and ta-da! You have a picture!

The Way I See It

Shutter Drag Self Portrait...

Feature Photographer

Loose the Flash and Keep on Shooting...

More Drama Bonus Post...

More Drama With the Small Flash...

What Can You Do With One Little Hot Shoe Flash?

The Freedom of NOT Needing Equipment...

Sometimes, That's How I Feel Too...

Feature Photographer

Flash & Burn

Minimalist Lighting...It's a Trend Now

Minimalist Lighting...

Minimalist Lighting...

Two strobes in the Alley

Minimalist Lingerie?

Minimalist Lighting...

Minimalist Lighting...Window Light

Super Minimalist Lighting

Just a Simple Family Portrait

Available Light = Any Light That's Available

Just a Strobe Lit Quickie...

Just Put it on Aperture Priority and Let Fly...

A Blog of Note...

Adobe RGB vs. sRGB

Melding Strobe with Sunlight

Inside and Outside...

Black Velvet Time

On-Camera Flash Doesn't Have to Look Bad

Lighting Side Kick

Lighting a Tae Kwon Do Portrait

Natural Light Portrait in 5 Minutes or Less

Hey, Remember Color Contrast?

Part II: Natural Light

Strobe it Where the Sun Don't Shine

Roller-Rink Part II

Strobing it up in a Roller-Rink

Natural Light a la Gazebo

Lookin' for Light in all the Wrong Places...

Natural Light on the Street

A Model's Portfolio Shoot

One Light Fashion

Cars Are People Too

Back Yard Candids

"Gorilla Lighting Series" No.2

"Gorilla Lighiting Series" No. 1

"Where the Wild Flowers Grow"

"Tell Me Like It Is"

Learn to Light

More of the Same

Two of a Kind

"Catch One if you Can"

"Coronasphere"

Learn to Light

"On the Lonley Journey"

"Liquid Sunshine"

"Playing Dress-up"

Girl on a Shelf

In Memory of Jack

"I'm Looking"

"Catch You Unawares"

Emerging From the Shadows

Learn to Light

Obscurity

Oh, The Humanity.

To Be or Not To Be: That's my question.

Learn to Light