Many of you have a flash and I would venture to guess it’s attached to your hot shoe. Now, there are more adventurous types of you who have ventured out to off-camera flash with some sort of remote either with a cord attached to your hot shoe or a wireless remote like a Pocket Wizard. I was using my off camera flash yesterday with my model Lynlee at the Morgan Creek Vineyard when the opportunity came up for me to demonstrate the power of shadows.
The problem with the light yesterday was that it was 7PM and had been raining so there wasn’t much sun at all. I did my best to create my own sunshine. So I had Lynlee stand between two rows of vines while I shot over at her from slightly behind her left side. My assistant stood in the same aisle with her in the first picture with the flash (umbrella attached) pointed right at her. I looked at the picture and thought the light from the flash was good enough but the results weren’t what I desired.
Rule: Shadows make a photo more interesting not light. Actually, you do have to have light to create shadows which is the trick…use your light source to create shadows that make shots more intriguing. You wouldn’t put your subject looking directly into the sun would you? Of course not! You would put them turned slightly with the sun at the side or back of their head.
I had my assistant go over one more row of vines to the next aisle and point the flash up and over the vines at the right side of her face which created shadows on the left side of her face. I included a before and after shot to illustrate…
Light creates shadows when used correctly
The problem with this is going to be how do you get that $300 Canon 580 off the hot shoe right? A 6ft cord attached to the flash and the camera wouldn’t allow you to more your flash around very far. More on that later…yes it’s just more money!
I thought I would do a little bit of instructional post today. I shot JD yesterday at the train tracks and I lit him with a single gridded head and it lit his face well and kept the exposure of the background looking correct. However, the background is the problem. Have you ever taken a photo and thought, “If only that man with the pizza box weren’t in the background it would be a great photo?” My thoughts were similar to that on this photo where I thought the photo was nice and I did a little cross-processing on it and liked it. But, the background on the left really looked bad.
So what I did was to use the pen tool (in Photoshop) and outline very close to his hair and across his shoulder to mask off the part I wanted to remove down to the top of the silo. If you’ve never used the pen tool you should consider it because it is an excellent way to mask more accurately. After the selection was made I simply used the clone tool and since I had lots of blue sky I sampled the sky and cloned it over the parts I wanted to remove. Since all of that was next to and “behind” his head the mask allowed me to clone remove very accurately so it looks like nothing was there in the beginning.
If you have any questions about specifics shoot me an email. I wanted to illuminate the concepts and point you in the direction as to how you might be able to do the same thing on your photos.
The Ceci's of Huntsville, AL
On the left I included the page from the March 2010 edition of Family Circle Magazine and on the left included one of the family shots that I personally loved. We shot that at the The Davidson Center for Space Exploration next to US Space & Rocket Center. The story was to highlight the Ceci’s civic involvement as well as the city of Huntsville. I learned some cool things about Huntsville I didn’t know which was how much history exists there especially in the area of Twickenham Historic District which includes the oldest house in Alabama which was built in 1814. There I also found the childhood home of actress Tallulah Bankhead.
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Thanks to the good people at Southern Living I have the tear sheets from the Healthy Living Section from January’s edition. It is really cool to see talented designers put together a visually appealing layout of text and photos like they did here….unlike my feeble attempt here to show them! |
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January - Healthy Living Section
Thanks to WonderfulMachine.com for being found by Southern Living. I got the pleasure of meeting lots of good people both at the magazine and at the bootcamp (BirminghamBootCamp.com). Mary Zarate really kicks everyone into gear out there in Mountain Brook for Birmingham Boot Camp. Everyday that we had planned to shoot it was raining like crazy. There was a tight deadline so we finally found one morning early that was dry – 8AM! Ok that’s not that early but for me it was especially when it was that cold. Thanks to everyone for a good shoot.
D. Watts was a pleasure to shoot with because she made it easy and a few other things made this shoot go well. 1) She has a striking appearance with her blond hair style and the dress she picked suited her well. She accessorized very well with bracelets and jewelry. She has spent some time in front of the camera which does help. 2) The time of day was great. It was 6PM and the evening sun was nice and warm. 3) The sunflowers was a very nice setting to match not only her style (personality and music) but the paisley dress also fit nicely. 4) Assistants. Jeff and Brad, helped a lot on this. If you will check out the napkin diagram below you will see how it worked. Brad held my scrim to filter the direct sun off of Denise while Jeff reflected the sun back on her using foam core essentially creating a “Denise Sandwich.” If you notice you can see the left side of her face you can see the foam core reflection. I shot with a 50mm prime opened pretty wide and the rest is a bit of Photoshop retouching with color and contrast. I added some design elements to it with brush swirls, etc.
Also check her tunes out on iTunes…
When I decided to shoot Mandy again with the idea of shooting for stock I decided on something youthful and fun with some kind of flair. So we decided on striped socks and braids for her hair and I let her decide what else to wear. I think she did a great job. All my shoots are fun because that’s what I want to do – have fun. But in the process I want to create great images in great locations with great engaging subjects.
We decided to shoot at the laundromat and just have fun with it. These here are strictly natural light which turned out terrific I thought.
The laundromat had only two older men in there and one left soon after we arrived. The other man was friendly and came over to watch us. He chatted with us a while and I found out that his wife had died recently and that he survived two heart attacks himself and now at 82 (he didn’t look that old) was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. He was just doing his laundry when he said he had declined the chemo and would let it take it’s course. I asked about his family being close by and they weren’t.
I’m finding out all this while I’m shooting but at one point I stopped and introduced myself (his name was Cox) and gave him my card with my phone number. I hope he calls because I would like to take him to lunch and learn about him more.
It always amazes me the number of personal stories there are around us and how easily we have our own pat answers on how to handle all the things life throws at us. One truth I am learning is that no matter what a person is or has done or will do; no matter the situation in which they find themselves there is a God of grace who wants to spend time with us in time of need. We get so focused on performance sometimes that we think that’s all there is and while there are expectations we forget the simplicity and stillness of just being rather than doing.
I do a lot of personal work for the sake of always shooting to improve and to make better and better pictures (and to feed my stock library). I don’t know where I come up with my thoughts and ideas but they sort of formulate during the day and then I seek out ways to make them happen. A lot of times my models and I can talk through ideas and come up with better ones because they contribute their time and talent and help refine the process. Of course eating ice cream with 2 softboxes flanking you with a silver reflector near your lap and a camera waiting for you to make the right expression worthy of a click can be intimidating. What I did with Samantha is just wait for the right moment. I was really pleased with the images I got because they were much better than I envisioned in my head. We had a lot of fun just shooting and coming up with the right moment. She’s a real professional.
Korean Beauty
I’m really not sure what most models think when going on a shoot with a photographer. Models have a goal of portfolio pictures and photographers have a goal that if shots are good they can be used to enhance a portfolio or sold as stock. I have had many models say to me that other photographers start out clean and all but then slowly start asking for more compromises with regards to clothing. I shot Talia yesterday evening and we just were going to have fun at the beach and we did. My goal with her, and any model, is to get lifestyle imagery with fun as the emphasis and beauty as a secondary thing. Since we weren’t shooting high fashion we focused on ideas that could be used in lifestyle ads.
Talia is half Korean and somehow she owns a ukulele which she borrowed from her husband for a prop. Enjoy.
Can I play you a song?