Posts Tagged ‘lighting’
Fewer Shots? Why yes, I think I will.
Today, I was catching up on tweets from the photo world and this blog post from Scott Bourne happened to come up.
Become a Better Photographer by Taking Fewer Shots « Photofocus:
“‘Okay, I’m done.’
‘That’s it? You’ve only been shooting for ten minutes!’
‘Yep, got about 50 shots, I should have 4-6 proofs for you from that bunch.’
‘So we’re done?’
‘Pretty much…I mean I can keep shooting, but there’s really no point, it’ll just be duplicates of the same stuff.’”
Every Thursday night at a local coffee joint called Spiderhouse, burners from around the area filter out into the night to meet up, catch up, burn up, and live up the evening. Some nights you’ll only find one or two people there. And still other nights, the crowd will be thick and awed by these people knowingly dancing with spark and flame, mixed in a combustible hydrocarbon cocktail. Spinners, young and old, greenhorns and gurus alike come out to play.
I was out this Thursday.
Man, Thursday night was cold. Not bitter cold like we’ve seen in the last few weeks, but cold enough that I should have remembered my recently acquired +5 gloves of comfort. Not a good thing when you’re trying to photograph someone outdoors, at night, with a bit of wind at your back. Exposed fingers become icicles in mere moments. The last thing you want is to have a finger freeze to your camera trigger and break off at the decisive moment. Nothing good would come of that.
So, like I was saying. I was out this Thursday and happened to be at Spiderhouse. Out back amongst the cobblestones and picnic benches, in fact. Lisa, one of the regulars, and a new guy, Wesley, were out by the stage prepping for a burn, so I walked over and watched. No. It’s not so much that I watched. I was drawn in. Captivated and hypnotized by this new guy’s fluidity with the poi. He was very good, to put it mildly.
And herein, I decided I need to grab the camera and take some photos. Lisa and Wesley were gracious enough to allow me some time to play. I wanted to try something new, so out came the Ezybox. Now, I’ve done a fair bit of photography in the local burner community, so I’m always interested in trying out new ideas here. In fact, the cover of Joe McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries is very inspiring for me; I want to do a shoot like that with one of the local burners.
This night would be a step in that direction.
But, before I go on, what does this all have to do with the quote from Scott’s blog? Having spent quite a bit of time photographing fire spinners, the one thing I’ve found is: there’s only so many moves you can do with each type of fire spinning prop. Poi, staff, meteors, swords: they all have limits to their showmanship, so there’s only so many ways you can experiment with photographing them. After you take a few hundred shots of someone spinning something in a circle, all you have is a few hundred shots of flaming ring photographs. It looks all the same.
And knowing this, I’ve been trying to cut down the number of photographs I take of people playing with fire.
When I first undertook to photograph fire spinners, I always saw it as a race against time. Get as many photos of the flames before the wicks flamed out or grew too lacking of fuel to get the rich oranges and yellows of blaze. When I started seeing the blackness of the wick itself, I knew it was coming to a close. The camera sounded like a slow-motion machine gun as the shutter clicked open, waited a second or two, and then clicked closed. And then again. Again. And again. And … again. Until I filled up a card and was forced to swap to the next.
One of the things that fire has begun to show me is that this can be so. unberably. repetitive. Boring almost. Of the few thousand photos I have now, I can point at maybe a hundred that have become artistically interesting for one reason another. And many of those have been caused by something different that happened during the burn. Maybe it was someone I’d never seen before. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe it was me trying something I’d not played with before. But, whatever happened in the photo, it was different. Unusual. Something to be remembered.
And knowing that, I’ve begun looking at what I’m doing in my other photographic interests and trying to apply the same aesthetic. I don’t want it to be repetitive and I believe that this often causes the mental blocks I’ve so frequently been encountering with my camera. Because, if you’re shooting the same thing over and over, where is the art? Where is the fun? Where is the blade of unusuality that takes ahold your interest and leads you into the photo?
Gone. It’s just gone.
So I’m forcing myself to look anew at what I’m doing and try to evaluate what should be different. What should be played with. Like Thursday: I don’t normally add flash to my fire photos. I’ve always found it difficult to balance and clumsy to work with when you’re playing with longer shutter speeds in order to capture the arc of fire.
But here’s what I learned: it’s still no different than other flash photography. You can easily over power it. You’ve got the control there you need. Now, rightly control it. In many of my photos from that evening, I let the flash over power the scene. Why? Because the chimper in me kept seeing the scene as too dark on the back of that god forsaken camera LCD. And second? What I want to do is fire within a portrait. I want to go for that McNally photo and make it my own. And doing so is going to make me think differently about what I’m trying to achieve with the local fire spinners, moving from a passive documenter, to an active photographer and engaging them in the photo, so they can engage you in the photo.
I ended the night with about 50 photos. Three came out good. I think that’s a fair haul for 20 minutes of shooting filled with experimentation, don’t you?
The photos above are of Wesley and Lisa. Both were photographed using a 15″ Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe with an SB-900 at 1/2 power and a full CTO to balance the color of the flash to that of the flames.
Early Christmas! I heart Lastolite Ezybox … a review
For months, I’ve been searching for a portable softbox that would work well with my speedlights. I looked at the Creative Light setup. I looked at Lastolite. I looked at crap Ebay stuff. I went back to working with my umbrellas just to make sure that they were truly annoying me. They were. And I kept searching.
After a month of hemming and hawing, I narrowed it down to two systems: Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe and Creative Light’s system. Both looked really good on paper and both came with good marks from people on the Internet that I follow and trust (David Hobby and Joe McNally). Joe is a fan of the Lastolite equipment. It’s prominent in many of his videos and photographic grip lineups. David recently expo’d the Creative Light stuff on his blog.
The big differentiator between the two is that the Ezybox Hotshoe appears to only have two sizes: a 15″ and a 24″ square box. The Creative Light system is a speedring that has a cold shoe on it and fits any of their strip boxes, softboxes, and other setups. Plus they have a wider range of sizes and shapes. With a speedring, that also meant I could still use the Creative Light softboxes if/when I purchased some Alienbees (or something beefier) just by purchasing the appropriate ring attachment.
Not so much with the Ezybox Hotshoe. It’s designed to work with their specific speedlight speedring (which is made of plastic, by the way).
So what did I end up with? The Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe. I looked long and hard at the Creative Light system and the most significant down-side was that you just can’t get the speedlight speedring right now. No one has it. Everything appears back ordered with no timeline for getting it back in stock.
It arrived at our doorstep today and when I got home, I immediately tore into the B&H box. Lots of happy little packing pillows cradled my lovely little light modifier of happiness.
For some reason I expected the bag to be smaller and more portable, something I could hook onto my camera bag and just carry everywhere. Not so much. It’s manageable but will be awkward, so I’ll keep it in the photo box and pack it with me when I know I’ll need it. Looking in the bag, I found that I had received not one, but two of the 2414 flash brackets. I don’t know if this is normal or not. If not, merry christmas to me!
The bracket assemblies pretty easily. It’s plastic, but feels solid enough. I had no problem putting an SB-800 on it with a stofen. The SB-900, being larger, was a tighter fit and more awkward to get in place, but I think that will become easier as I get used to working with it.
The softbox itself is a foldable setup. It looks like four Lastolite Tri-grips sewn together. The internal structure seems pretty solid. I’m not sure if it’s metal or steel, but it’s certainly thick. The box is stiff and doesn’t really lay flat by itself when folded up. When it pops open, a quick squeeze of the opposite corners gets it nice and squared up. The inside of the box is layered with a silver lining to help increase the efficiency of the light.
Opened more …
Pop goes the weasel …
The opening in the back side of the softbox is just large enough to accommodate the SB-900 with a bit of maneuvering room to spare.
The diffusion panel is held on by velcro on all four sides. Mine seems just slightly larger than the opening at the front of the softbox, so it’s fairly easy to get on and off.
Next, we attach a flash to the flash bracket. It’s sturdy. I would avoid overtightening the two screws. The one that holds the ring to the shoe needs to be snug but not so much that it starts flexing the bracket. Mine already has a slight indentation on the groove of the ring part where I over tightened. Also, the pin holder where you’d attach the bracket to a light stand is all plastic. I was careful not to overtighten this part for fear of splitting the collar.
The ring doesn’t really attach to the softbox as much as it slips inside the lip of the rear of it. The softbox boning is fairly sturdy back here, but gives you enough slippage to spin the softbox around the circumference of the ring with ease. I could adjust it one handed with no problem.
And here’s a test shot with the softbox in view.
I was working with iTTL CLS while playing with this (which is still a new thing for me being used to working in manual mode with Pocket Wizards). I was finding that I had to push the flash exposure up by 0.7 to 1.0 EV to get something that wasn’t under exposed. I’m not sure if that was just me not yet fully understanding CLS or the conditions under which I was playing.
Here’s a second photo. Softbox to the left and behind the wine bottle with an SB-800 in it. To camera right was a large sheet of floppy paper with an SB-900 bouncing into it to provide a bit of fill from the right. Uber light control. I like it.
Overall, I love this thing. The 15″ softbox was a good investment and a great addition to my lighting gear. I’ll be putting it through further paces to see what problems I might encounter with it.
For those looking to purchase, I just got the basic Lastolite LL LS2438M2 Ezybox M2 Hotshoe (15-Inch x 15-Inch)
Ready if I want it now, Danger Boy…
It’s 1:30am on Thanksgiving Day. I’m wide awake, Johnny Cash is fitfully playing from some show on the Biography HD channel, and there’s a frozen turkey sitting in a blue plastic tub in the kitchen. And yet, instead of dozing off or preparing for a wonderment of victuals delicately prepared and teased, I sit here thinking about my lighting style.
I am frustrated by it.
Let’s back up a bit. I’ve been re-reading the Hotshoe Diaries again (and watching some recent McNally videos on the Nikon site) and realizing what difficulty I continue to have with my lighting style. I think I’ve been so abused of this notion that light must be grand and soft, that I find it a terribly grim notion to try something else.
Lately, I’ve been limited to using umbrellas. I know, there’s nothing quite wrong with them, really. You can shoot through them. You can bounce into them. But controlling that light is a pain. It just goes everywhere. And generally, some of it is reflecting back some place I don’t want it to go. 
I suppose I could get smart and flag out some of the light more, but in the heat of the moment I forget that I can do that. Or that I can collapse the umbrella. Or feather it. Or just take it off.
And herein lies the rub. I get wrapped up in what I’m doing that I can’t defiantly remove myself from the scene and observe what’s going on within it. Or even know what the scene should really be about. For the longest time, I’ve taken the mindset of letting things occur and reacting to it. No real foresight or planning occurs. I mean, what right-minded pirate would think of being so rigid as to stick to some photographic code! They’re guidelines, people!
But, really, they’re not even that. And I’m beginning to observe that not having some sort of reasonably gelled idea, not having some set of guidelines for what I really want out of the photo, not having some set of rules and checks that I want to purposefully constrain myself within is affecting my not very well-formed vision of the shoot from coming to fruition. A plan you must have. You can have a plan and choose not to follow it. You can’t choose to not follow a plan that doesn’t exist. Just doesn’t work very well.
Take this latest shoot, for example. The idea was simple: Aeon Flux. That’s it. I would show up with the camera, take a few photos, and be gone. I asked about what they specifically wanted but didn’t get very good direction beyond, “We’re going to suspend her and try to recreate one or two shots from the original TV show.” Ok. Didn’t know that until I got there so I had no idea what those shots would have or should have resembled.
I’m fond of the phrase, “a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.” Only, in this case, it was my lack of planning that made it a struggle. We tried a few positions, took some shots. 
Mostly, it was an evening of aimless fucking about until something kind-of, sort-of began to gel together if you tilted your head to the left, squinted your right eye, and covered your left with the back of an aching, sweaty palm.
And yeah, I was fighting the light the entire time. I wanted something mood-filled. Dark. Reminiscent of what I recalled the cartoon to be. Tried using two lights. One in a large umbrella, one bare to get some separation from the background. In most cases, it just did not work out the way I kept envisioning it. I’m still mulling over why. Could have been the space we were shooting, the lack of a real shooting plan, the phase of the moon. I’m not sure. Frustrating, it was.
So like any good non-plan following jack, I did what I thought best: killed the second light, pulled the first in closer, and dropped to a smaller umbrella. And this helped. I was dealing with too much light. Well, not so much that there was too much light, but that there was too much being illuminated. The walls, the ceiling, the carpet, the midget in the corner. I wanted to layer light in a pleasing manner, but I could not do it. Just wasn’t working and I was tired of bashing my head against the wall.
Lately, I’ve been playing with the idea of using smaller light sources. more controllable, more directional. And the umbrella makes it difficult for me to achieve this (or maybe it’s just that I don’t know how to do it effectively yet). So, I’m getting a small 15″ softbox for my speedlights. 
I think that’ll be a good first step to get what I want. Blast all the light forward, don’t have to worry as much about light coming from places I don’t want it (like reflecting off the beige wall behind me). And this is what I really needed for this Aeon shoot. More control.
Once I got to a smaller umbrella, things started to work better. I felt less and less like my clutch was slipping and more like I was making positive forward momentum (even if I was squealing tires and redlining the engine). And looking back at what I was doing before, I begin to realize that what Joe McNally is doing is second nature to him. He understands just what light mod needs to be in place to achieve a particular effect (plus a bit of magic and luck) and I’m still figuring that out.
Only, in my case it feels like “shoot, shoot some more, shoot again, and then ask questions.” Not a great way to do it.
So, some things I walk away with from this shoot:
- Get a good idea of what the shoot is about. Include a list of photos you want to get.
- Plan your shots, even if it’s only a tiny bit of ordering. This will help you know when you’ve got it … or when you should just move on.
- Don’t forget that you have control of the light. If something is broken, change it. Feather it, flag it, move it, change it, turn it into a duck. Whatever. Just try something different, but make sure it’s a positive and directed different.
- Breathe.
- Think about what you’re lighting before you get there.
- Think about what you’re NOT lighting before you get there.
- Make sure the place you’re shooting is appropriate for the subject you’re shooting. Had I fully realized what the shoot was intended to be, I would have pulled them to a much better location.
- Someone spinning around in the air really needs a tagline to hold them steady, otherwise you just cuss and frustrate yourself while attempting to get focus lock.
- Spend some time after the shoot to review what you did and what worked (or didn’t work). Just writing all this down has helped me figure out a few things to keep in my mental checklist of shooting.
My Aeon is a local friend who’s moving out of town. This was a Halloween outfit she created a year or two back and she wanted some good photos of it before she departed. She’ll be away for quite awhile and likely will only rarely return for visits. My only regret was never being able to photograph her in her Mystique costume. Damn was that thing sexy.
Juan Valdez, eat your heart out!
I promised myself I would do every Strobist Bootcamp II assignment this go-around. I swear I did. When I failed at doing the second one (the food assignment), I went out and bought some random vittles at Whole Foods to make up for it. A good strobist I was. I chose a random smattering of things: serrano peppers, fresno peppers, coffee beans, spaghetti (spinach AND wheat), two-bite brownies, and pints of blueberries.
Sadly, the brownies didn’t make it out of the evening alive. But the coffee beans did! I’m not sure about the photos though. I need to take a step back and re-evaluate what I did and figure out how I could have made them better. I think the biggest problem is that they’re just too uniform in color. All brown, no biscuit.
Biscotti might have helped.
But that’s ok. I still managed to spend over an hour working the light and coming up with something that looked good. Compared to many of the 2nd assignment’s submissions, I think they suck a bit. For the reason mentioned above. I just didn’t think enough about what I wanted to do with what I had.
I have a few more ideas to work through for the berries and peppers, but that’s going to take a day or two before I’m ready to even work on that. The hard part is trying to re-create northern sunlight coming in through the window in the dining room. It’s just too hot during the day to try and shoot back there.
I’ve included a few lighting setup shots so you can see what I was doing. It’s not much, but it’s a start.
What I’m realizing now is that, while the umbrellas do really well at creating a large, soft light, they’re extremely challenging to control. I mean, it’s a big round light. At one point, I was getting hot spots coming through because of how close I had the umbrella to the kitchen table. Solved that by slipping a piece of paper inside the umbrella at the point where it came closest to the table top to help diffuse out more of the light. That definitely worked great.
But, I need a good softbox. I need more light control for something like this.
In time.
But yeah, take a look at my coffee. Juan Valdez ain’t got nothin’ on my coffee bean yumminess! I think I’ll have to play with this idea some more. Add some piles of white cane sugar, maybe some cinnamon sticks. And a different mug. The brown is definitely just too much.
Oh, and next time I’m buying cheaper coffee. Something I can throw away when I’m done; or at least keep away from my wife who kept trying to act as part of the coffee bean thievery guild of greater Austin. Maybe I’ll just buy her her own coffee and that’ll solve my problem.
More photos from the evening. Click through to see the explicit lighting details.
White: The Prequel.
Not much of a blog update. I’ve been furiously working my way through photos from three photo shoots over the last week and a half, trying to get everything edited, uploaded, and distributed out to their respective models and clients.
And I’m bushed.
Donica and I had a shoot Wednesday two weeks ago. She wanted to do something different and I wanted to practice with my new white muslin. I think it worked out well. Especially when you realize that up until this point, I’d stuck to grays and blacks for backgrounds. This was something completely different. The work I did with Donica in understanding how to use this tool ended up being put to good use in the White: The New Experiment.
Overall, I’m fairly happy with how the high key photos turned out. We shot some low key things too. Mostly because I was getting bored with the white and wanting to try something different that evening. I’ve shown some of the high key photos around and gotten some good feedback. Mostly, I need to watch out for having the model wash right out into the background and get some tile board for the front part of the muslin ( the part nearest the camera) in order to help get rid of the cloth ripples I was experiencing (and about ready to bang my head through the studio wall because of it too).
In other news, there’s been someone of a heated discussion on the Strobist Austin discussion group regarding allowing the group to accept moderate photos in the pool. There are some decent reasons, both for and against for doing this. 
Tonight after considering the comments (of which, most came from moderators … I don’t know what that means … do we just care more because we have to work at keeping the pool clean?) In the end, I opened it up to see how well we deal with it. If it becomes a problem, I guess we’ll figure it out then. We’re all adults, I think we can handle this.
Anywhoo, without further ado … more Donica photos! Enjoy.
The Light Fantastic
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”Edith Wharton
I’ve been thinking about light lately. Not so much the physics of it. We all know that, at it’s most basic level, it is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength most sensitive to the human eye. I’m not digging into it at that level. I’m more interested in the mechanics of how it falls upon the world, leaving shadow and detail in it’s wake.
As I’ve progressed over the last 18 months, I’ve begun to pay more and more attention to the quality of light in everyday life. From the cool, blue tones melting at the break of day, the zombie-like greens of fluorescent, or the warmth and glow of a bulb as it boils off the tungsten filament one watt at a time. 
Tones have started to play more of a roll in my photos; I’m finding that I like playing with them to see what I come up with. Unfortunately, I’ve been leaning too much on the warm side lately and I’m having problems breaking free of that. Especially when it comes to skin. I’ve been somewhat enamored by cooling down the tone of skin or even the light reflecting off of it. I’ve been studying a few photos and trying to figure out how it’s done, but so far it’s a carrot just out of reach.
Some of the recent posts by David Hobby have helped. I like the idea of mixing cool and warm tones in a photo. He does it by dropping the ambient on the background while subsequently lighting the subject with a warmer-than-flash light. The other way I’ve seen is balancing for tungsten. Especially when dealing with blue skys. It just makes them that much bluer. I haven’t yet tried this, but I will.
Along with the tone, I’ve been paying more attention to the crispness of shadows. Being able to play with a softbox, I’ve found that I have a love-hate relationship with soft shadows. On one hand, it adds such a welcoming quality to a photo. On the other, sometimes it just doesn’t work for the look I’m going for. Take the recent steampunk photos. I really like how they came out, but I’m not so sure that the soft light was the right look for some of them, especially around the corrogated steel backdrop. 
There’s something baffling about hard light that just makes me want to play with it a lot in order to figure it out.
When I started out, it took me awhile to understand the concept of apparent light size and how that relates to how the shadow appears (or disappears) on my subject. But now, it’s just second nature: tiny light, hard lines. big light, soft (or no) lines. Now, I’m onto figuring out how reflectors and grids change how that light appears. Prior to Red’s shoot, I didn’t really use reflectors because I liked that dark, moody, one-light look on a photo. It was simple and perfect. The anti-baroque. Same with the grids. I wasn’t sure how to use them. I’m still not sure I know how to use them, but I’m more eager to apply them for effect.
Tomorrow, I go back into the studio with nothing in mind other than to shoot a pretty woman and play with the light. There’s a new piece of equipment in place (a boom) that will allow me to do something different: artificially light from above. 
I have this concept shoot I want to do to re-create a scene that involves this type of lighting. Just enough light from above, lots of shadow obscuring the body. Sort of enveloping from a different direction (not from the side). It should be fun. Actually this is one of the best things about photography: having fun with the light.
The lovely lady in the photos is my good friend Red. These were taken the same day as the steampunk shoot. She’s fun to work with and we came up with some pretty good ideas to mold and shape that day.
Sunday Rembrandt and the Strobist
Man, what a blistering day in Austin! The day was absolutely gorgeous despite it being so hot. Like most other Sundays, I met up with some of the folks from Strobist: Austin at Opal Divine’s on South Congress. Because it was Memorial Day weekend, the meet up was fairly low key: only 8 of us I believe. We BS’d for awhile, ate, and came up with a few ideas for the group going forward.
One of the things that came up was discussion about lighting in cinematography and how film makers use light to carve out depth and intensity to a scene. Christopher and I agreed that picking a few movies and watching them as a group might lead to an interesting discussion on how we can use similar lighting techniques in our photography. Near the end of the meetup, Ron piped up and asked if we wanted to shoot his daughter Megan. Being the eager Strobists that we are, we all hesitated about half a microsecond before saying yes!
After lunch, most of us ended up up at UT to do a bit of shooting. The campus was virtually empty. Hot, but empty. 
We scouted around some of the buildings around Littlefield fountain, looking for some interesting textures to shoot against with Megan. The sun and heat conspired against us, driving us inside to the comfort of sweet, sweet air conditioning in the McCombs School of Business.
Tangent: One thing about UT that I really like is the sheer number of interesting textures and alcoves to shoot within. We found a bit of trellis work that would have been great to shoot under had the sun been lower in the sky. It was just too harsh and hot to work with. Definitely something to keep in mind for when it’s darker and cooler, much like some of the other areas we found and passed by.
So, back to the climate-controlled haven. We all stashed our stuff while waiting for Megan to arrive. Peter and I walked around the 2nd and 3rd floors looking for backgrounds worth shooting against. In the depths of the building is an atrium that houses a small cafeteria. Surrounded by brick at every level, it is topped off by a large set of frosted skylights. It was just enough to let in some of the sun and provide a nice tweak to the ambient. The second spot we found that had lots of potential was a big open entry-way on the east side of the building. There were large concrete columns and some great ambient flooding in from the wall of windows leading to Speedway.
Peter and I wandered back and found Megan with the rest of the folks from the meetup (Bob, Ron, Christopher, and Mike). Picking up our things, we led them back and quickly set up. During this first set of photos, Peter kept talking about Rembrandt lighting. I’d heard the phrase before but wasn’t sure what it was. Christopher took a moment to explain it to me. In Rembrandt lighting, you arrange the light across the face of your model such that a small diamond or triangle appears under the eye farthest away from the light. 
You start out by setting up your main light so it’s 30 degrees off of center from the nose and then 30 degrees above. Learn something new everyday! This style of lighting is based on the lighting found in Rembrandt’s paintings.
I didn’t take many photos in this first area at the atrium. I’m finding that I’m still having problems visualizing just what I want in my photos, so I’m going to have to make it a point to review my lighting folder for ideas before I go off and shoot something. Plus, I’m realizing that I really want to get some better (and faster!) glass. Christopher let me use his 90mm Tamron. I got frustrated because, like most lenses, it’s manual-only on my d40. It’s a nice lens, don’t get me wrong. Just hard to deal with when you’re trying to get something tack sharp on a camera that has no way of controlling that itself.
After everyone had shot some, we meandered down to the floor below to the other big atrium-like area. Christopher found a chair, Megan changed into a black, strapless dress, and we parked near the windows for the rest of the afternoon. By this point, I had started to relax and get into a better mindset about photographing her. It’s strange, the first half-hour to an hour, I tend to psych myself out. I’m realizing that I’ve done this every time I shot with a group of people. 
Just something to work on I guess. Once I got into the right headspace, I was finding it much easier to work with Megan. Directing her certainly became less of forefront task and more of a thing that I just did while framing my photographs.
One thing I’m figuring out is that I like dark, moody photographs. I keep wanting to kill out most, if not all, the ambient in a photo. The d40 makes it “easy” because of the electronic shutter. I still need to pay attention to the exposure histograms; just because it looks good on the little LCD doesn’t mean it’s going to look good when I get it back on the Mac and in Lightroom. More practice with being consistent in my lighting will help with this, but that means I need to work more one-on-one with models. This would be easier with fewer people around. Or, I just need to learn to jump in and take some time with the model instead of being “nice” and letting others take as much time as they want.
Around 4:45, one of UT’s fine police officers walked up on us. I suspect someone reported us being in the building. He asked what our project was and who we were. I explained to him about Strobist and what our group was about. He seemed satisfied and left us to our own devices after a few minutes. Nice guy. Hopefully all my future encounters with police and security will go that way (ha! doubtful!).
I wrapped up around 5:30 or so. Home again, home again.
The model above is Megan, Ron‘s daughter. She’s graduating and going off to college soon. She’s also an artist and a photographer. Right now, she focuses on macro photography and doing selective colorizing in Photoshop. She was definitely great to work with. The first photo is one of my attempts at Rembrandt lighting. You can see the small triangle of light piercing the shadow under her right eye.
If you’d like to view more of this shoot, check out my Megan at McCombs set on Flickr.
Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait
When I first came across this book, I was struck by the intensity of Michael’s work. I paged through it and was awed by image after image (really, I bought the book for the articles, honest). Before I get too deep into the slathering of praise, let me introduce the author.
When I first came across this book, I was struck by the intensity of Michael’s work. I paged through it and was awed by image after image (really, I bought the book for the articles, honest). Before I get too deep into the slathering of praise, let me introduce the author.Michael Grecco is a commercial photographer specializing in editorial and celebrity portraiture. His first introduction to photography came at the age of twelve when he became enthralled at the magic behind “tart smelling liquids” transforming paper into photographs. He soon became the proud owner of his first camera to practice his “art”. Six years later, he entered Boston University and discovered how different the world of editorial photography was compared to his experiences growing up. After graduation, he went to work for the Boston Herald where his photojournalistic experiences blossomed. His artistic roots kept poking at him though. After several years of being on staff at the Herald and several photojournalism awards, he began to realize he needed to get back to what he started with … so he loaded up his truck and moved to Be-ver-ly … Hills that is. Swimmin’ pools, movie stars. Ok, ok. He actually moved to Santa Monica where he began working on his lighting and artistic style, learning from cinematographers the art of giving a scene depth and life. From there, his portraiture began to take shape and evolve into what we now see today. True to the book’s title, Michael has an innate ability to envelope the subject in a dramatic shawl, like a photographic Doctor Frankenstein, bringing the moment to life with a flash of bright, wicked light.
As Michael states, this book is a combination monograph and a course on his lighting and portrait style. While there are some technical bits (it’s definitely not a how-to or step-by-step description), the book leans more towards the philosophy of his style, creating a fair mix of both to give the reader a good understanding of just what he does and why.
The book is broken up into the following sections.
- Introduction
- A short history of his life and how he got to where he is today.
- Cameras
- A discussion of the various camera formats from 35mm to digital and some techniques to use with them such as selective focusing and motion blur.
- Illumination
- Introducing Michael’s 3 laws of light: the color of light, contrast, and softness. He pairs the discussion of light with 20 or so examples including diagrams of the lighting setups in some of his photos.
- The Medium
- A short chapter on the various mediums used for recording photographs.
- Creativity & Conceptualization
- From team collaboration to props and set locations, Michael goes over the various areas that contribute to the development of a dramatic portrait.
- The Connection
- Michael covers a few topics about establishing a connection with your subject.
- Case Studies
- Michael deconstructs some of his more interesting and “famous” photos.
- Glossary
- Griptionary
One of my favorite photos in the book is of Colin Machrie wielding a princess wand and wearing a horrendously cute pink tutu. The thing that catches my eye with each of Michael’s photos is the character of each person, recording in such a way that brings the person alive.
The other photo that slapped me awake is on page 163: State Pen Nude. It’s a woman, nude, reclining in the arms of the gas chamber chair at the New Mexico State Penitentiary. “Sinister.” That’s how Michael describes the photograph as he jumped at the chance to take it, juxtaposing the harsh reality of death with the soft and delicate beauty of life.
I think for most photogs, the chapters on Illumination and the Case Studies will provide the most benefit to understanding his style. I don’t know that you’d be able to duplicate it exactly, but you might get close over time. Ultimately, this is another book that I recommend for every photographer if only because it has many inspirational ideas within it, both technical and artistic. This, combined with the diagrams and the photographic breakdowns, definitely makes the book worth picking up and adding to your library.
Minimalist Lighting
Kirk Tuck’s book, Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Location Photography