Posts Tagged ‘model’
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.
A Thousand Points of Light
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work. — Thomas A. Edison
In one of the photography forums I so frequently haunt, a new photographer threw out the age old existential question: “What makes a better photo, film or digital? Discuss.” Yikes. Let’s just lob the Holy Hand Grenade of Photographic Antioch into our midst and see what carnage we can make!
Ok, it really wasn’t that bad. The responses ranged from the obvious of “The photographer” to “it depends on what you’re shooting and it’s intended use.” But the one that caught my eye was the guy who said:
“I shoot both. I do nature with film as I love the whole process but shoot people with digital due to ease of use and most of my shoots with people are typically upward of 1000 – 2000 photos which would be ungodly expensive with film.”
I’ve never really focused on shooting film, but I do understand the expense of it. What I question about his statement is the “1000 – 2000 photos” per shoot with his digital camera. And I have to ask: why? Why would you want to do that, especially for people? Is there something I’m missing here?
I get that there’s a desire to create the perfect photo. I really get that. But what is it about digital that makes people think shooting 1000+ photos will get them perfection? Don’t get me wrong, there’s probably a time and place for it. But really, is that needed all the time? I wonder if people’s photos would improve a notch or two if they stopped taking the shotgun approach to their art (or work) and thought a bit about what exactly they were trying to create.
From what I’ve encountered, some photographers look at digital as the panacea of recording media. I get the sense that these photogs just snap and snap with wild abandon because, hey, it’s digital … it’s free! But that’s not entirely true. What you’ve gained in saved film processing costs, you’ve now lost due to increased time dealing with more photos during post. You’re now saving large amounts of data off so your archiving costs increase. There’s a larger wear-and-tear factor on your camera. You may or may not care about any of these things.
Now, I’m guilty of doing this on occasion, taking photo after photo of the exact same pose or moment … or maybe even slightly altering it to see if that changes the dynamic of the content. But … does this really help me, as a photographer? I realize I can’t shoot every thing I see (well, I can, but I won’t). I’m going to miss some things. That’s just the law of averages.
But, thousands of images at a sitting? Sounds like a bit much to me.
As for the whole digital vs. film debate? That rages on.
The model above is Scarlet. We were trying different things in the studio. This was my third attempt at this setup. I tried a few times and moved on when I thought I wasn’t getting it. Lucky me, it turned out.
Holy Exploding Thermostats, Batman!
Yes, if Robin was my assistant on Saturday that’s the phrase that would have ripped from his mouth. By 10:30am, it was 85 degrees and I was dripping wet. I’d been talking to this new model for a few weeks hammering out what exactly we were going to do. The place was the Cathedral of Junk. The color was pink. Funny. I had that Aerosmith song playing on the stereo the night before and thought nothing of it.
We arrived at the Cathedral a few moments apart. There was a crew pulling up in a yellow box truck, delivering stage parts for a show from the look of it. I hadn’t thought much about it until after she stepped out of her car and they all just stopped and stared. She was decked out in a black and pink corset, pink fishnet gloves and, and black fishnet stockings with matching pink stripes. It all went together pretty well. But yeah, these guys stood there for a moment taking her in.
I walked over and introduced myself and we went into the backyard after I’d pulled my gear out of the car. She’d never been there before so we did a brief walk through so she could get a feel for the place.
Now, if you’ve never been to the Cathedral of Junk, let me describe it to you. First the Cathedral lives in a quiet south Austin neighborhood just off of South Congress. You pull up to the residence and … well, you don’t see it. It’s a nice little neighborhood. You have houses and flowers, trees and dogs, and the occasional white picket fence. But as you approach the gate, you catch your first glimpse of the Cathedral. The structure is ever growing. 
It lives and breathes as it’s owner, Vince, finds new ways to build upon it. There are bottle sculptures, junk walls, the inner throne, buttresses, stairways to heaven, and even a crows nest of sorts.
One of the photos I’d wanted to get was of her sitting on the throne in a distinctly magnanimous and noble way. The Cathedral is a fantasy and she just fit into it like a pink and gothic fairy. Unlike the cake, this is not a lie. We chatted a bit while I set up one light. With space tight within the inner workings of the Cathedral, I opted to ditch the umbrella and go with a hard light. It was sunny inside, so I just needed to offset the blast of light and try to overpower it a bit. One thing I realized is that I miss using my D40 for times like this. Extreme ambient control and still usable with the SB’s and the Pocket Wizards. 1/1600th of a second was sorely missed that day. But I made due with the D300 and some stopping down.
One thing new that I decided to try was CLS in TTL mode and just using the flash compensation settings. I’m mixed over this. Because there was such a large amount of ambient coming from the sun, I had problems with it picking the wrong exposure value to set on the flash. If I had to do it again I’d use it in manual and just dial everything in. But, it was hot, getting hotter and I wanted to move fast before I passed out from heat exhaustion. Glad I picked up a few bottles of water for us to partake in during the scene resets.
We ended up shooting in four areas: the throne, the bench, the alcove, and the archway. The throne was my favorite. I just love the way she looks there. The archway followed. I wanted some fill coming in from the sun bouncing off the ground and light coming in from the clear, blue sky. I really like the look of that northern light. It is delicate and different from flash. The slightly blue tinge to it just does it for me (and I really want to play more with it; just need to find a good place with a bunch of quality northern light coming into a large window).
By 11:15, I was packing up and calling it done. It was just too hot to be comfortable. I knew I’d gotten at least one good shot. We chatted for a few minutes and then parted ways. The Cathedral was definitely a worthy place to shoot. Even if the heat DID almost kill me. ;-)
The lovely lady in the photos above is Lacey Starr. I met her through Model Mayhem. She was definitely fun and easy to work with. I had her laughing shortly into the shoot. Once that happened, I knew I’d be shooting with her again. And as for the pink? Yeah, I can see how Aerosmith finds it an obsession.
White: The new experiment!
A few weeks back, I picked up two new tools for my photographic arsenal of DOOM! One was a white muslin which I needed for a photo shoot. The second was a Nikon D300. Like chocolate and peanut butter, I’ve discovered that these are just two great tastes that taste great together.
There was a bit of a learning curve with both the camera and the muslin, but I’m slowly getting in the groove of things. I absolutely love the feel of the D300. It’s entirely different from the D40 I started out with. It feels better in my hands, fits better, and I’m finally able to properly play with my 50mm f1.8 (which wouldn’t autofocus on the D40).
I wasn’t sure about the muslin when I got it. I tend to steer towards the dark side when it comes to my photography. I like it low key, lots of shadow, lots of room to hide in. But man, after seeing how well some of these photos came out, I’m thinking I found a new toy to play with more often. The downside to the white muslin is that I still haven’t figured out how to deal with ripples in the fabric on the floor. If I can’t figure out how to get those blown out (without having to photoshop), I’ll have to pick up a few pieces of tile board to hide them.
But, if I keep the photo limited to a 3/4 shot and ignore the floor? Man, it’s just sexy how the light works so well. All of these photos were done with a pair of AB-800′s pointed into the muslin at 1/2 power. There was also an AB-800 shooting through a gridded softbox off to camera right at about 45 degrees off of center. Just enough to light the model and let there be some depth in the photo with the shadow and falloff.
The models for this shoot were fabulous. Definitely going to be shooting with them again I think.
Oh, and stay tuned! I’ll have some teaser photos later this week from the Austin Music Awards on Wednesday. I’m definitely excited about that!
And now, for more photos!
The Red Cloth
“So, yeah, the photo that James came up with for the contest was really good. The barbed wire was a great touch. It definitely made it WAY more deviant than Chris’ photo.”
We sat at Opal Divine’s that morning discussing the bet between Chris and James. The aftermath was kind of hilarious. James with a resounding 11-to-1 win over Chris. Especially with all the smack Chris was throwing around.
“But, honestly, I think the photo I did of Morgan wearing the gas mask was definitely more deviant than James’.”
She walked into the game room where we were sitting. “oh! Gas masks?”
My ears perked a moment and I turned around. She was cute. Spritely.
“Yeah. I recently took a photo of a friend wearing this gas mask she picked up.”
“Photos? Are y’all photographers?”
I looked around at the other six guys at the table. “Yeah. We meet up here frequently to talk about photography and stuff.”
“Cool! I love having my picture taken. I could model for y’all sometime!”
Everyone laughed. Sure, why not? I looked back at her and said half-jokingly, “Sure, give me your contact info and we’ll set something up.”
Funny. Some of the guys assumed that was meant for everyone. She laughed, took some of our drink orders and wandered off. We went back to discussing the photos and other random Strobist stuff.
About fifteen minutes later she came back in and walks up to me, a slip of paper in hand. “Here you go!”
It was her contact info. Heh. I turned to look at the guys and saw jaws drop. Yeah. Definitely funny. As I started to slip the paper in my pocket, one exclaimed, “But that’s for all of us!”
“Yeah, sure.” I laughed, “and you’re more than welcome to ask her for the same …”
A few weeks later, we had the shoot set up.
One thing I’ve learned in the last year is that if you don’t have the balls to ask someone for something you’ll never know if they’ll do it. When an opportunity presents itself you’ll do one of two things: take it or sit there kicking yourself for not opening your mouth. Be bold, live notoriously, whatever moniker you want to attach to this idea … all it takes is opening your mouth and asking the question that hangs at the tip of your tongue.
This is Donica. She’s a sweet girl. We had a lot of fun in the studio. This was one of the shots I was explicitly looking for that night. It’s variation of something I picked out of a magazine last year, the main focus being a red cloth sweeping down across the back and just barely hiding a nude woman. We’re definitely going to shoot again, though, next time I think she’ll be in a mohawk. She’s wild like that. Gotta love a woman who’ll let you fuck up her hair for art.
The Painted Veil
“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
I was talking to my Dad the other day about my photos. He’s been following what I do since he meandered his way onto the grand ol’ Intartubes. He made an interesting generational conjecture about women being tattooed. To be short and sweet: he doesn’t like it. He’s not the first person of his generation and upbringing that I’ve encountered this opinion of.
I found it rather interesting in all honesty. Not because he doesn’t like them, but because in a single generation, he’s encountering someone who is the complete opposite of that idea: me. I find tattooed women to be intriguing. Hmm. Let me rephrase that: I find certain tattooed women to be intriguing. 
I’m not talking about the college coed that goes into a tattoo parlor on 6th Street to get the classic tribal tramp stamp. Picking an image off the wall has no artistic allure for me.
I’m talking about the woman who goes in with the empyrean idea of allowing ink and thousands of tiny bee stings to color her body in ways that make Michelangelo take a second look. A living canvas of flesh covered in nothing more than a lifetime supply of art. Those are the women of singular photographic attraction.
Of particular note is Morgan. I shot with her and her friend Natalie two weeks back. Morgan and I didn’t really have a plan, other than to shoot something with her gas mask. I wanted to do something different and edgy. That’s about the only direction I had. Oh, and tattoos. Morgan has these amazingly detailed tattoos. We ended up doing a significant number of pin-up style photos before and after we played with the gas mask (and a Christmas tree … how’s that for a combination). Natalie joined in on a few and we ended up having a lot of fun with that.
After Natalie left, I shifted over to doing more artistic shots of Morgan. I wanted to see what I could arrange with the tattoos in order to show off the detail and coloring within. A little post with some cross-processing and I came up with some absolutely stunning photos (like the first one).
One of the things I found after doing the photo shoot was how much better my photographs look when I spend just a bit of time on them in Photoshop. Previously, I tended to stick in Lightroom for 99% of what I did because … it was easy and I was lazy. In this case, I wanted to see what trouble I could get into by combining Nik Efex and a little bit of skin work.
Oh. My. God.
The quality of some of my photos increased tenfold. Easily. It was a very pleasant surprise what some work with the healing brush would do (compared to using the spot tool in Lightroom), for example.
I still prefer to do most of my work in Lightroom right now because of the ease of using presets, but my notion on which photos should get some extra work is changing. Spending the time to make some things “stunning”, as a friend exclaimed, is worth it.
As mentioned, the models shown are Morgan (with all the tattoos) and Natalie. Playing with the gas mask was definitely the highlight of the evening. Definitely different and edgy.
You may see more of Morgan and Natalie in my flickr stream.
Livin’ La Vida Strobist
… or maybe we’ll call it “Strobist Pickups”.
On Wednesday, I went to a benefit show held by a local photographer, Jay B. Sauceda. He was doing an open house at his studios in honor of a deceased friend. Jay B. has several of the displayed photos up on his Flickr stream. The photos of Heather and Michelle were some of the most striking. The composition and color was just stunning.
I knew a few of the other Strobists in the area would be showing up so I knew it would be a good evening to hang out and get better acquainted with people I didn’t know. Chris (Definitive Images), Greg, Tom, Julian, Dom, both Peter’s, and a few others ended up gathering around and doing a bit of planning for the upcoming Dunvegan Keep meetup on April 27th. This is going to be a great chance for everyone to work with light. After awhile, some of us migrated outside and came upon Ben, Carol, and James. Food soon became the subject of interest and many of us trekked down to Nuevo Leon on 6th Street. (A word of warning: double check Chris’ directions. ;-) The food was good but the sopapillas were a bit over-seasoned with cinnamon.
After dinner, a few of us were kind of restless so we meandered back to Jay B’s to see if we could find a few other folks willing to do a bit of late-night shooting. I had my gear, Chris had his. All we needed was a model and a place to shoot. Walking back to the studio, I pointed out the outdoor stage (seen in the photo above) to Chris, so we went scout it out. Certainly worth using; the place was covered in graffiti and murals.
Inside, Chris found Michelle, one of the models that Jay B had photographed for the benefit. One simple question later and we had a willing subject, a place, the gear, and some photogs ready to have some late night fun. So, off we all hiked, just a random group of people walking around East Austin with no real plan other than to have fun and take some photos. The photog community in Austin is beginning to gel and become more cohesive, especially when you consider a bunch of us are just amateurs and people trying to break into the business. The pros seem willing to lend a hand, give some pointers, and make it feel open and welcoming.
About an hour later, Michelle and her boyfriend had to depart, so the rest of us decided to set up a group shot for the evening, located around one of the playscapes that was next to the stage. It took us about 30-45 minutes to get the idea down and lights set up. Chris had some good guidance there (as well as when we were shooting Michelle). Once we had everything set up, we got about a dozen timed photos with all of us in the picture (me, Carol, Chris, Ben, Peter, and Andrew). I’m looking forward to seeing the photos once Chris posts them.
The shot above is a three light setup. The main light is a Nikon SB-800 shot into a Westcott umbrella at camera right. There’s a Nikon SB-800 at camera left providing a bit of hair and rim light. Finally, there’s a Nikon SB-800 at camera right that’s up close to the wall providing some illumination to highlight the detail in the mural.
One of the things I learned Wednesday evening during all of this is that if you want to shoot, just shoot. I’m finding that the more I shoot, the more comfortable I become with the equipment. I still need work directing models. I froze up a bit working with Michelle because I didn’t have any idea what I really wanted to come up with. Some of the photos other folks took were pretty cool and it was interesting to watch a photo progress, one move at a time.
For now, more practice is needed and I’m looking forward to doing more Strobist Pickups.
If you’d like to see more photos from this, check out the set on my Flickr stream.