I often get asked ‘How do you do that?’ when I show someone a picture with off camera flash, and of course I am more than happy to oblige as I love to talk camera geekery. I have always been keen on off camera flash, I have practiced it a little bit at home, but I don’t claim I’m a guru on the subject, I just love to have fun with different photographic techniques. In this article I’ll talk about the vision I had for the photograph, the trial and error, the equipment and technique as well as the retouching on a series of images I took with the awesome Nicole and Billy. More after the jump (Click on the title).

The Vision: I aim to visualise in my mind a photograph before I even press the shutter button, with no vision, you don’t have a direction to go in (how I’m going to frame it, what do I want the subject to look like versus the background etc). I knew from interacting with Nicole and seeing some photo samples she sent me, she liked moody skies, good image detail/contrast with a certain edgy feel, so I decided I wanted to go for a hard light for defined shadows and an underexposed ambient light to make the subjects pop in the frame. I know from experience, to deliberately underexpose the ambient light I speed up my shutter speed to darken the areas that are not affected by the flash’s exposure, so in all the ambient ended up being around 1 and 2/3rd stops under. this I knew would darken the sky nicely and give me nice detail in the sky instead of a slab of white. All of the images you see here are either shot with a 50mm f1.4 prime lens or my trusty Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 at 17mm (see photo at top). These focal lengths are multiplied 1.6x to get the actual focal length in 35mm film/sensor terms due to me using an APS-C sized sensor in my camera. I chose shorter focal lengths as I wanted the portraits to be environmental to show where the couple got engaged. To them the photo relives a very memorable time in their lives.

Difficult shooting conditions? I worked around it.

In this photograph you can get an idea of what was happening at the time of the shoot as well as how the ambient light is behaving and how I exposed for it (1/100th second @f4, ISO100). The area out the front of Luna Park in St Kilda was buzzing with people; families, tourists and nearby theatre foot traffic. I knew the only way to make this shot work was to get down low and exclude the crowd from the frame, which also gave me a better ability to include the front of Luna Park with my selected lens.

I had my camera set to ISO100 to get the cleanest possible file, I selected f4 as the aperture, which I chose for two reasons: One is make sure I was in the good ‘sharpness zone’ of the lens, because I knew the lens wasn’t its sharpest wide open at f2.8 and beyond f11 and two, it gave me sufficient depth of focus/field (D.O.F) to keep the subjects sharp. I knew at the 17mm focal length, I’d have a good D.O.F anyway. You can see the background is ever so slightly out of focus, which is OK by me as it is still recognisable. Remember it is not the hero of the shot.

The Equipment and Technique: Speed was the essence here being on location with clients, I didn’t want them to get bored while my assistant Travis and I setup the lights and gauged exposure,so I opted for automatic ETTL by using a 10M ETTL extension cord from Flash Zebra. I setup two Canon 580EX II Speedlights on a bracket with one set to Master (that was connected to the camera via the cord) and the other was set to Slave which triggers optically. Initially I set each flash to High Speed Sync because I was using shutter speeds faster than the max sync speed of 1/250th of a second, but the final shots did end up under that speed, maximising the flash’s efficiency.  I also attached a full CTO (Colour Temperature Orange) gel to each flash to get a warm colour to the light and I used the Tungsten Manual White Balance to make the rest of the image go cool.

Straight out of camera image with the flash position in frame

Here you can see the straight out of camera (SOOC) image taken at 1/80th second @f3.5, ISO100 which is getting into the slower shutter speeds because by this time of the afternoon it was getting dark. The two flashes are visible in the top left of frame and only about 6ft from the subjects, so not too far away I ran out of output power and by not making the shadows too harsh. I used two flashes simply for more power and faster recycle times. You can also see here compared to the image at the top the difference the retouching has given the image. 90% of the image was edited in Adobe Lightroom 3 because it has most of the tools I need. Photoshop was only used to selectively darken and lighten areas as well as sharpen the photograph. I warmed up the image further with the White Balance slider and this made the background almost neutral as well as introducing a great deal of contrast with the various contrast controls you have available in Lightroom. Many of the techniques I use is explained in a previous article I did for a wedding portrait.

The Trial and Error: When I work with flash, I often start without the light even turned on. This gives me a good idea of how the ambient light is going to record and then I decide how I will use flash to build up the light in the picture (unless I am deliberately removing the ambient altogether). Below is the first image in the sequence I used flash in, which is about 2 or so stops under exposed when I metered for the sky. Later I decided this was too dramatic and I closed down to about 1 and a bit stops under proper exposure. the

With no flash to check how the ambient light exposes

Next I introduce the flash and I look at how the shadows were falling on Nicole and Billy, whilst also checking for lighting output to see if I need to add exposure compensation or not to the flash. I will also mention again the blue cast comes from the low colour temperature setting of Tungsten White Balance.

Nicole and Billy being patient while I set my exposure

The compositional elements I was looking for in this particular sequence above is the couple is somewhat framed by the palm trees, which gives an indication of location and a bit of the roller coaster track of Luna Park locks down the context. One element i did battle with was the giant light pole, so I made sure it wasn’t sticking out of someone’s head!

The final edited image alongside a misfire to indicate the light difference

There you have it, another one of the final images that made the cut. Here you can see the difference (with some similar white balance settings) the flash makes to separate the subject from the background. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment here on the blog or on my Facebook page. I’d love to hear some feedback for improvements I can do for future articles. But general praise will be great for my ego too!

Radio Console close up

Dash wide shot

Steering Wheel Audio Controls close up

The subject matter isn’t the most exciting for some, but for some Strobist enthusiasts (people who love to photograph stuff with off camera flash to a point where it is nerdy) this stuff is great! The setup for this was relatively simple and can be achieved with manual flash or ETTL, wired or wireless. I used a combination of wireless manual flash and ETTL flash that was connected to a 10m (30ft) cord and controlled from the camera body. The purpose of the job was to photograph a car radio installation kit in a new Holden Captiva (aka Chevy) and steering wheel audio control interface kit. The images will be used in an industry brochure that is designed to announce the product’s introduction.

Now for the process: With no clear direction for the shots needed, I decided to shoot first and ask questions later and the client was more than happy with the results that I showed them on the back of the camera as I shot the job. The middle shot was photographed first using my Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens set to manual focus, 50mm focal length and f8 for good depth of field. Ideally this sort of work is photographed with a medium format camera and a tilt shift lens in a studio but I don’t have $50k worth of gear at my disposal. The tilt shift lens would have been used to match the product plane with focal plane of the camera to maintain perfect sharpness. I still got it to an acceptable level due to the size it will be printed at. I first determined a base exposure of 1/250th of a second at f8, ISO 100 to knock out the ambient light from the skylights in the warehouse where the car was located. With no ambient light to worry about, I built up the light bit by bit until I got good coverage and balance. First I setup one Canon 580EX-II speedlight on a stand and firing into a soft box to soften the light with an additional Stofen diffuser on the flash head. Here a battery pack and am ETTL cord can be seen.

The 60cm soft box on a stand through driver's window

I fired a few test frames to get the lighting right by using a few different positions through the windows and checked the results on the LCD of the camera. I was getting heavy shadows cast by the steering wheel over the focal point of the photograph, the radio fitting kit. I had to fill the shadows somehow, but I still wanted good contrast and blacks to suit the style of brochure that it was going to be in. First thing was to try bouncing the light back into the shadows, but I didn’t have a reflector with me. It wouldn’t have been any use because it would be too big to fit in the car anyway. I scoured the warehouse to find something white and I found an empty white cardboard box which was perfect. I first tried a small section but it didn’t do what I needed to do, so I had to result in using another flash to get more kick. So I rigged up another Canon 580EX-II flash on a table stand, a Stofen diffuser and a radio trigger to pop the flash during the shutter sequence. This I bounced into a larger sheet of cardboard with the flash mounted on the centre console to create a larger source of light to make it softer. I then experimented with power levels until I got the right balance of light and shadow. You can see here the flash is flagged with a piece of foam (a very commonly used piece of equipment in my bag) to prevent lens flare.

The high tech reflector

I took the photographs on a tripod to slow down the process in getting a good composition and to maintain maximum sharpness in the final file. I also used a suedo HDR (High Dynamic Range) technique on the wide shot of the dash as the shutter speed was too fast to record the lighting on the dash, so the only way to soak it into the shot I turned the flashes off and shot at 1/40th of a second to register the low light output of the dash lights. The two shots were combined in Photoshop and I merely combined the layers and used a mask to paint in the lights. I also used that frame to add more depth to the photograph as the top of the dash was totally black and it needed some life. All photos had to be prepared to a printable standard in post production, so the images had to look flawless. In order to keep my retouching time to a minimum I cleaned the car in the front top to bottom with a good quality cleaner and a towel. Once that was done, I used the air gun in the workshop to blow off any dust on the product to make my job of cloning out the dust specs much easier. I used some layer blending techniques to brighten and darken certain areas to highlight the product better. The image on the navigation was superimposed on the system as it never looks good if you try it in camera. I added a slight gradient of white over it to resemble the glare from the light source.

Well I hope someone got something out of this article as it was a lot of fun to shoot. Feel free to leave any comments or questions.

The final image that made the flyer for UpDown Apparel.

A couple of weeks ago I did another photo shoot for my friend’s clothing company UpDown Apparel in preparation for a flyer to be distributed at Australia’s largest Mini Truck show, East Coast Cruise (ECC). This shoot stretched my technical ability to its best, with the use of multiple off camera flash, a reflector and a model, all the while I had time pressure from the location’s manager.

The venue is a steel craft shop in Hastings, Victoria where most of the trucks built in the area come from, so it was the perfect backdrop for the shoot. The lighting on location was no use to me, as they had mercury vapour lamps in the ceiling which are hard to colour correct and very dull anyway, dull skylights and one garage door opening on the side of building. Even with the door wide open and in the middle of the day, the ambient lighting exposure was 1/30th-1/15th of second at f3.5, ISO100, not an entirely useful amount of light to photograph a person.

To light the scene I used a Canon 580EX II on a light stand using either a shoot through umbrella or a 24″ softbox. To give some edge lighting to the model (Amber) I used a Nikon SB28 Speedlight on a little mounting foot in various different positions throughout the shoot. The Canon was connected with a very long custom ETTL cord to give me accurate exposure quickly. Normally I’d do it totally manually, but time was bit of a premium. I also had the bonus of playing around with the exposure compensation of the flash right in camera, saving me to go to the main light to adjust it all the time. To trigger the Nikon flash I had a wireless radio trigger connected to the camera’s sync port and in turn the receiver was connected to the flash’s sync port.

I took my usual approach of selecting an aperture value first in Manual mode (in this case f3.5) where I new I would have adequate depth of field for the shot I was taking, fast or wide enough so the flash didn’t have to work too hard and it was in the sharpest range of the lens (f3.5-f6.3 is the sharpest range of the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8). I knew my base shutter speed was 1/30th of second, but I wanted to render the background in near darkness. For this I reduced the shutter speed to 1/250th of second which is the max sync speed of my camera and flash trigger. Combined that with an ISO of 100 for maximum sharpness and file detail, the background went into complete darkness. Remember the faster the shutter speed, the less ambient light reaches the sensor in relation to the flash exposure, which is controlled by aperture.

The vision for the shot was a girl emerging from the passenger side of her boyfriend’s mini truck (in this case the actual truck that is part of the UpDown logo), with directional high contrast lighting to give the image an edgy mood. I always used to light literally everything from every direction, but now I take a more minimalistic approach to add more drama. The main light in the softbox was camera right, about 5ft high and about 4ft from Amber. To get some extra warmth in the shot I gelled the flash 1/4 CTO (colour temperature orange). The light was tilted only slight downward to get some light on her legs. Camera left was a big reflector to help fill the shadows only very slightly as I wanted to keep some aggressive shadows. Inside the car I used the Nikon flash sitting on the center console totally bare and set it to 1/16th power. The head was slightly pointed up to get some good edge lighting on Amber and this separated her from the blackness a bit.

There was extensive colour work on this image, even just in Adobe Lightroom, with dramatic combinations of an unusual White Balance, colour level settings and contrast. Nearly every slider in Lightroom was adjusted to achieve this look, but the final tweaks were in Photoshop CS4. Here I did some selective contrast and sharpening layers, retouched some imperfections on the truck, skin smoothing on Amber, selective brightening on various parts of her as well and a High Pass Sharpening layer over the whole picture.

I’m very happy with the result of final picture, even before I edited it, as the vision came together nicely and the equipment performed beautifully. I think that anyone with basic flash equipment can achieve this style of photo with a little practice, but the image would have never come together if I couldn’t picture it in my head before I hit the shutter button. It’s 70% vision, 20% technique and 10% editing. 

In the future I will post some more sucessful pictures of the shoot.

A phone camera shot of me at work with Amber. Photo courtesy of Lachlan Hale, UpDown Apparel.

Today I wanted to take a look back at an image I took at my last wedding (it feels like a long time ago now), at Bianca and Travis,’ Kangaroo Ground, Victoria. I have posted a black and white version before, but I prefer the colour version shown here.

I always look forward to photographing the rings, it is always a challenge to make each one look different, so it really tests out my vision and creativity. The concept for this shot is simple, but it is a somewhat difficult approach, so for the people reading this for technique advice, this one’s for you.

The rings were held in a small felt container, but I thought for a greater intimacy I had the Best Man hold them in the palm of his hand. The light outdoors was a harsh high noon sun, but we had a slightly shaded garden feature in the park across the road from the house the boys were getting ready at. Through the foilage was filtered sunlight which I used to light the rings to really set them off in the photograph. Having the hand in the lower part of the frame gave me the leading lines from all directions (the fingers, thumb and the jacket), combined with the hot spot of light it gave the rings immediate attention in the composition.

I knew in my head I needed a large aperture to throw the background out of focus, so i had a 50mm f1.4 prime lens mounted on the camera and shot it nearly fully wide open at f1.8. The way I approach all photographs I make is I decide on an aperture setting in my head before I even put the camera up to my eye. With experience you will get to know how your lenses behave  at different focal lengths and apertures. By deciding on an aperture first I am making the creative decision to shoot wide open (shallow depth of field/focus) or stopped down to f8 or f11 for maximum depth of focus. I never really go beyond f11 as the sharpness of the lens starts to fall off.

Now focusing at this distance with such a large aperture is notoriously difficult as the depth of field is so narrow, in this case only a couple of centimeters. Even when you change the sensor plane or even move a fraction of an inch during focusing your subject can go out of focus. Combined with the possible movement by the subject’s hands there is massive potential to get an out of focus picture. What I try to do first is set my focus by selecting the nearest focus point (9 points on a Canon 50D and 5D MkII) which I can do while the camera is up to my eye and I lock the focus by holding down your chosen focus lock/shutter button (in my case I use back button focusing using the AE lock button). I then move my head backwards and forwards until I am confident the focus is correct. I sometimes reconfirm focus with the autofocus to be sure I am accurate.

As for metering this shot I used the Spot Meter (2% frame coverage) to pinpoint exposure and I metered off the subject’s skin tone. I know that is the element I want properly exposed and it is close to a midtone to give accurate exposure. I deliberately over exposed a third or two of a stop so I: one, had a good file to work with in post production and two, to deliberately loose detail in the skin.

Processing was simply the Adobe Lightroom recipe I use for most of my wedding photographs, but with selective contrast and sharpening applied to the rings only to make them pop a bit more.

That’s it from me today, but I encourage you to leave a comment which not only feeds my ego it also inspires me to write more about photographic technique.

As promised, here is the Photoshop technique I used to create the image at the top of this post. A request was made from a potential client (who is booked in now for March next year) if I did a particular style of photo processing she liked. I was sent a link to another photographer’s folio and asked if I could do this style. This style I have practiced before on a few automotive shoots I did a year or two ago and also for a gallery of images I did to cover a couple of car shows in New South Wales and Canberra. The style only suits certain subject matter, not an entire wedding for example as for one it would be too time consuming and the client would tire of the look over time.

After the jump (Click on the Title of the article) I have a series of screenshots taking you through the steps taken to achieve this look, so feel free to apply this to your own photographs.

Step 1: Camera RAW/Lightroom

Firstly the image is opened in Adobe Camera RAW (in this case the Photoshop CS4 version) to do the adjustments to the RAW file that came from the camera. This step can easily be done in Lightroom if that is your preferred workflow as all of the settings are pretty much identical. This shot was taken in the shade on an overcast day so I needed to bump up the white balance to make it appear warmer. The basis for this edgy look is mainly achieved right in Camera RAW by bumping up the recovery slider to 70 or higher to to tame the highlights. Fill Light is also bumped up, along with the Blacks and Clarity. This gives the dark contrasty look with heavy detail. Setting the fill light too high will result in heavy noise in the shadows and fringing will occur on the edges, so be restrained in the approach. The key to getting the flat look in the colours is to reduce the saturation slider substantially (-48 in this case) and set the Vibrance slider to taste to give the colours some tone (+75). Standard Capture Sharpening is applied along with some noise reduction in the 3rd Adjustment Panel very much like any other photo I would work on. A heavy Vignette is applied as well to darken the edges and give focus to the subjects. You can use the Tinting panel if desired, but further colour work can be done in Photoshop easy enough.

Step 2: Open in Photoshop

By clicking Open Image in Camera RAW (or right click->open in Photoshop in Lightroom) the image will open in your version of Photoshop. I apologise for the small nature of the menus and toolbars, this is a screen shot from a 27″ monitor. The colour space I normally use in all stages of my workflow is sRGB 8Bit, which is the smallest colour gamut, but that is the colour space my photo lab uses, and it is used on the web as well. I only use Adobe RGB 16Bit when I’m working on a very critical piece, like a landscape shot I’ll be printing on large scale. The sRGB colour space is often much smaller in file size so it is not so much a burden on your computer.

Step 3: Selective Brightening Using Blend Layers

This step you can do a number of ways and this way is by far the quickest, easiest and the least stress on the computer because you will be using an adjustment layer rather than a duplicate of the original file which doubles in size every time you do so. Firstly you apply an adjustment layer (either a Curves or Levels layer) by clicking on half black, half white circle and select form the popup menu. Change the layer’s blend mode to ‘Screen’ in the drop down box at the top of the Layers Palette. The new adjustment layer has its own inbuilt mask, which is the key to this step. The mask is white as default, but we need to change it to black by inverting it. The short cut CMD+I (Ctrl+I on PC) will invert the colour. Select the brush tool from the layers palette or press the letter ‘B’ and in the brush tool bar at the top left of the screen, click on the second box along to adjust the brush settings. Set the hardness to 0 to get soft brush edges. Make sure the brush colour is set to white by pressing on your keyboard ‘D’ for default brush colours and ‘X’ to swap the colours from black to white. Adjust the size of the brush using the square bracket keys on your keyboard (above the ‘Enter’ key) to the desired size. Adjust the brushes opacity to about 8-10% and then paint on the areas you want to brighten up. The more you stroke the brush on the same spot the more pronounced the effect.

In this photograph I painted in (or brightened up) the eyes of the couple, their entire bodies and their faces. Over painting can make the adjustment look overdone, so it is best to progressively paint and not be heavy handed. Make sure you colour in the lines too as the subjects can get an obvious halo around them. You can often see in poorly retouched photos this effect and this distracts from the overall photo. This step shouldn’t take more that 3 minutes.

Step 4: Selective Colour Reduction

Sometimes colour can be a distracting element in a photo, such as, if someone is wearing a really brightly coloured shirt in the background of your photo, but you want it less obvious so the viewer is not distracted from the main subject you can use this technique. You first add a ‘Hue/Saturation’ adjustment layer and in the adjustment dialogue that opens, select from the drop down menu the colour you want to remove. In this case it was Yellows. Once you have selected a colour group you will notice the eye dropper tools become active, click on the left one and this tool is used to sample the colour you want to adjust. The purpose of this layer was to reduce the yellow tone in the skin as in Camera RAW I added some yellow toning to the highlights to make it look warmer, but this gave the couple overly yellow skin so by clicking on the skin I sampled a colour to work with. Photoshop will decide where on the hue scale the selection will be. Reduce the Saturation slider to the desired point, here I only took it to -15. If there was any reason to use a mask, there is one already inbuilt into the adjustment layer.

Step 5: Removing Distracting Elements

This step is not crucial to this overall Photoshop effect, but I wanted to remove the vent in wall in the background. As I shot from a fair distance away with a long lens the depth of field wasn’t shallow enough to loose the wall in soft focus. The first step here is to create a flatten version of the file you are working on. The keyboard short cut requires you to have flexible fingers, but this is how I know how to do it. Press CMD+OPT+Shift+E (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E on PC) and this creates a new layer of all the below layers. Essentially a snap shot of all the adjustments you have made already on the photo. You can now do destructive editing of this new layer rather that damaging the original background layer at the bottom of the stack, so make sure you have it selected (highlighted in light blue). I then use the ‘Polygonal Lasoo Tool’ (shortcut ‘L’) and clicked around a similar shaped brick to the vent. In the tool settings at the top of the screen set you feathering to 1 pixel to get a soft edge to the selection (do this before you click to make a selection). Once I had made a circuit around the brick the marching ants showed me there was an active selection made.

I duplicate the layer the pressing CMD+J (Ctrl+J on PC) and this moves a copy of the selected brick to another layer. The ‘Move Tool’ (Shortcut ‘V’) was used to drag it over the vent. I tweaked its shape by using ‘Free Transform’ shortcut CMD+T (Ctrl+T in PC) and used the warp mode to shape it (right click on the shape and select ‘Warp’). The selection wasn’t perfect but enough not to be noticeable in the final print.

Step 6: Vignette

In almost every photo I work on for a creative print , I will add a vignette or edge darkening as it also known as. This technique has been around since the dawn of the darkroom era to focus the viewers eye to the subject in the photograph as the eye is drawn to the lighter parts of photograph first. This technique is much the same as Step 3, but this time we are darkening, so I added a new adjustment layer (Curves or Levels) and changed its Blend Mode to ‘Multiply’ which is much like combining two versions of the picture and darkening the light values. The photo will turn dark, but we invert the mask (CMD or Ctrl+I) and paint with a white brush the areas we want to make darker, namely the wall and the edges of the photo in this case.

Step 7: Skin Smoothing

This processing technique brings out heaps of detail in the photograph, especially when the Black and Detail sliders are cranked up in Camera RAW, so the bi-product here is emphasised wrinkles, spots and imperfections in the skin of the subject. To alleviate this I created a flattened duplicate layer using the short cut CMD+OPT+Shift+E (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E on PC) and then I duplicated that layer again using CMD+J (Ctrl+J on PC). I have a Skin Smoothing Action I downloaded from the internet for free which makes quick work of this step. I won’t get into how you go about actions as that is beyond the scope of this article, but what it does is simply apply a Surface Blur (Filter->Blur->Surface Blur) to the photo and then it removes it. I then use what is called the ‘History Brush’ using keyboard shortcut ‘Y’ and paint back with a soft brush set to 100% Opacity and 5% Flow the skin, avoiding areas of detail, like the eyes, ears and mouth. If the effect is too strong I lower the layers opacity in the Layers Palette (that is why I duplicated it, so the layer below shows through). Now the skin looks more appealing by being smoother in texture and having less detail.

Step 8: Assess If I Need To Keep Going

There is always a time in a retouching workflow where I stop, zoom out and look at the picture to see if I need to do anymore to the photo. One thing that struck me in this case was the Groom’s suit had an odd colour cast. This can come from the mixed lighting (shade and the overcast sky, which are different in colour temperature to each other) and possibly by the extensive and drastic changes to the RAW file in Camera RAW. I used the Desaturation technique like in Step 4, but I just used the global colour adjustment instead of a certain colour. The layer comes with a layer mask, that I just inverted and then painted in the suit with a white brush to paint away the colour. This gave the suit a more believable colour. I also wanted to darken it slightly to hide the noise present in the shadows of the suit that became pronounced when the Fill Light in Camera RAW was increased. I simply added another Layer Adjustment like in Step 6 and then clicked on the Mask in the Desaturated layer below. I held down OPT (Alt on PC) and dragged with the mouse the layer mask to layer above. It will ask you if you want to replace the mask, so just click ‘Yes.’ Now the suit looks more neutral and doesn’t distract from the beautiful bride.

Step 9: Sharpening

Sharpening is a crucial step in the retouching workflow, whether the photo is for web display or for print. There a many ways to skin a cat, but this technique I used here is especially suited to the look I was going for as it exaggerates the detail and edges in the photo. This technique is called ‘High Pass Sharpening’ and from what I know it applies a filter to the darker light values and adds contrast to the edges of light values to make the edges standout. To apply it I add yet another flattened layer (you should know the shortcut by now) and went to the Menu bar of Photoshop and clicked on Filter->Other->High Pass, which brings up a dialogue box with a slider. The photo will also receive a milky appearance when the High Pass is applied. By sliding the slider to the right the effect becomes more pronounced, so it is a matter of personal choice of how much. In this case I used a value of 67.7 Pixels,which is quite high. Practise with this technique is needed to fully understand what the values will do to a photo.

Once I am happy with the amount, I click OK and then change the layer’s blending mode to ‘Soft Light.’ Don’t ask me what it does, but the results removes the milky overlay and leaves the overly sharpened image behind. you can reduce the layer opacity if it is too aggressive or drag the layer to the trash and start again.

Here is a closeup of the layer stack to show you all the layers used and a better look at the mask thumbnails to give you a sense of the areas painted in the masks. I try to make a habit of renaming the layers (by double clicking on the word) to something meaningful that I understand, so when I return to the Photoshop work file in the future I know what they are.

Here is a sample of the RAW file straight out of camera, which by all means is not much to look at in terms of colour, detail and contrast. This lighting scenario was quite difficult to work to with here, but I used a pop of fill flash to brighten their faces a little as the main source of light was the overcast sky over the top right of the frame.

Sarah waiting for her Groom

This photo critique takes me back to my first ever wedding I did for a sister of a friend of a friend, which is how most wedding photographers start out really. Back then I didn’t know the pressures of a wedding shoot, but I had with me the bride’s brother who was a keen photographer as well for support. We had pretty basic equipment back then with the addition of a hired SpeedLight from Michael’s Cameras in the city. When I look back this image it goes to show you don’t need the world’s best equipment to take a good photo. You just need to now how to use it and understand where the light is and how to use it. Some, if not all pro wedding photographers will agree that good equipment will make a difference to your images, but I mean it in the general photography sense.

This photo was pretty straight forward to achieve, I just used the light of the window which was softened by the sheer curtain which gives a nice soft light that is perfect for a bride on her wedding day. The room she had gotten ready in was perfect, it was well lit with natural light, had a massive ornate mirror on a stand covered in roses, white ceiling and angled walls to bounce flash off and a light coloured timber floor. Because the room was very open and filled with light, the shadow side of her face had opened up a bit so I didn’t loose too much detail. I tried similar shots with the flash bounced of the walls and ceiling to fill the shadows, but the lack of contrast made it look fairly average.

The expression if I remember correctly is her giggling at the fact I made her look out the window to see if her groom had arrived, but she knew very well he wasn’t there yet. The open space to the right is deliberate as it gives room for he subject to look into by placing the focal point of this image (her eyes and face) in the upper left third of the frame. If I had the opportunity to do this shot over again I would probably rotate her body away from the camera a little more as her shoulders are a little to square to the camera, making them appear too broad and it takes away from the other compositional elements as well and probably crop a little more aggressively and dynamically. I’d also use a lens with a wider aperture to reduce the depth of field to remove distracting elements that didn’t need to be there, like the pattern on the curtain behind her. The blotchy appearance on Sarah’s shoulders and chest come from shadows cast by the lead beading on the glass of this beautiful house.

Post processing of this image the way you see it now took place 3 years after it was actually taken just so I could practice a little in Photoshop. There is nothing drastic here, but I just softened the skin ever so slightly, brightened the eyes with a ‘Screen’ blending mode on an adjustment layer, some slight contrast was introduced and selective sharpening was applied to here eyes, mouth, jewellery and hair. The colour was removed by desaturating and then I introduced a yellow tint using the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. The image is actually reversed from the original as I wanted that orientation for my new price list. I encourage any feedback and comments and don’t forget you can follow me on Facebook by clicking on the link at the top of the page.

Sarah & Geoff out the side of the Royal Carlton Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne

 This kind of image had to be created, unlike what most people call ‘photojournalistic’ or ‘reportage’ style when you shoot ‘as it happens.’ My vision for this photograph was to have the side of the building as a feature and to frame the couple somewhat with the door frame. To flatten the perspective I needed to use a long lens (in this case it was taken with a 75-300mm lens) and take the picture from a fair distance back to get my framing right.

The camera was mounted on a tripod to stabilise the wobble from the long lens as this was taken on the shade side of the building. The sun was particularly harsh at that time still so I put the couple in the shade which flattens the tones quite a bit rather than having deep shadows.

The couple’s directions were simple, I said just to take a seat and talk amongst themselves while I set up the camera. This is so they felt relaxed and weren’t really camera aware, so I waited for the opportunity when they went for a kiss. On the day I tried different crops, orientation and even used shorter lenses up close, but this one worked the best.

If I was to take it again, I would move the couple to my right a bit and up a step or two to centralise them more with in the door frame and the reflection from the fountain would have lit them up a bit better too.

My post processing was quite in-depth as well, back in the days I had more time to fiddle with a photo in Photoshop. I first used a ‘Screen’ Blend Layer using Curves and painted away the mask around the couple. This brightened them up a bit to ensure they were the focal point. I then used on a duplicate layer a Shadows & Highlights adjustment to reclaim the details in the dress and to boost the darkest shadows. The rest was done with Nik Color EFX plugin to further enhance the image to give it more oomph. Here a details enhancer layer was introduced to boost the building’s details and the warming filter was used to give the image a golden glow.

Once flatten it was printed on Kodak Endura Metallic paper and mounted on Archival Grade Acrylic for an ultra modern picture mount of which I have a sample of. Feel free to comment and give feedback, I’d be interested to know what you think.

You will here me harp on about vision all the time, it is the foundation for photography. Most people think it is a matter of point and shoot and better the camera, the better the picture, but before I even raise the camera to my eye I will have some sense of what I’m going to take a picture of and what the final print will look like. I even consider what post image processing I will need to do to bring that photo to match my initial vision.

Here is the first photograph I will look at, it is of good friends of mine Nicole and Tim Holmes, who’s wedding I shot in January this year, this photo is one of my favourite from the day.

Nicole & Tim Holmes Wedding, The Briars Mt Martha, Victoria

I’ll first start with the equipment as that is the most asked question from keen photographers, but the least important. I used a my Canon 400D DSLR (something you can pick up used for under $500) with a vertical battery grip and a Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 zoom lens. This choice of focal length (in this case 17mm on the lens, which is 28mm on the old film scale) was chosen simply due to the distance I was from the subject. I was pushed right up into spider infested grape vines to get the framing I wanted. Most photographers hate the main focus of the subjects to be in the centre of frame, here i was being deliberate. If I tilted the camera down more I would have resulted in an unusual distortion causing the heads to look too big and the bodies taper off to really skinny which is not true to reality and isn’t flattering. If I tried to bend my knees more and get lower I would have been taking the photo from an unflattering position for the bride, but the main reason was to capture that lens flare which I find pleasing. In the past you were always told not to shoot towards the sun or any bright lights in the fear you would get lens flare. I also wanted to have the greenery as a frame for the couple as this gives isolation to the subject and they stand out more.

The image appears relatively natural and I simply captured a fleeting moment, but this was very posed from the start. The groom is quite tall, so he is standing behind the bride on the lower part of the slope (the vineyard was on a slight hill). I had the bride shove in close and connect their bodies for a sense of intimacy and I told them to look at each other. Simply telling them to do this, they must of remembered the reasons they were there that day and both of them broke out in a natural smile. Forced smiles never look the same in a photograph, so I consider this as something that I won’t do at a wedding. The flowers were brought up into frame simply for something for the bride to hold and to add an extra point of interest. I utilised this location in many different ways to result in several pictures to used in the wedding album. This is so I can capture a great range of images if the location is fantastic as well as if any other locations are not great with poor light I have safety images to fall back on.

Metering in this lighting condition is usually quite difficult but I was aware of the problems the camera might face when it came to metering the scene. Due to the massive contrasts between shadows and highlights the camera would go for something in-between, but to make sure my mid tone areas exposed properly I used the centre-weighted (or a.k.a Spot Metering) metering mode  and metered off the grooms face. My camera was set to manual mode and already set fairly close to the setting I wanted as I had taken already a few shots prior to this one. While the couple got into position after directing them I took a quick snap shot to make sure the exposure was right. I then quickly reviewed to see what my camera’s histogram was showing to me and then I composed the shot properly. The aperture used was f5.6 which is the sharpest aperture of my lens and I wasn’t too concerned what the depth of field (or depth of focus) was. I simply wanted a sharp image of the couple from top to bottom. The shutter speed I selected was 1/50th of a second which was the minimum I would go to avoid camera shake. Finally the ISO setting, which is the last I usually set was ISO100, so I would get a nice, clean and noise free image. You camera is always going to produce the best files at this setting.

No flash or reflectors were used so the image is totally natural light. Lastly there is the post processing. I keep my processing fairly guarded as this is my own recipe that makes my style, but I will say the white balance is quite warm, there is slight colour toning introduced and there is a vignette applied to darken the edges to make sure the focus of the viewer is on the faces. The images besides the toning is totally straight out of camera and all that was needed to retouch was a few bits of dried flower petals on the suit from earlier in the day and a very low amount of skin smoothing in Adobe Lightroom.

If I was to take it again, I would compose more to the right to get rid of the space to the left, I would try to introduce some space between Nicole’s arm and her body and maybe see if Tim could bend his knees a bit more because he’s as tall as me! There you have it, feel free to comment and ask any questions.

What I’m looking for is some feedback from my readership on what type of tuition would suit them. All adults learn in a different way and with all of us living very busy lives need a fast and convenient way. I am not looking to provide any qualifications so you can go out and take over the world, but to show you how to think like a photographer and get the most out of a camera. Would a video on a DVD suit, a PDF that you can print out and read in your own time and at your own pace, face to face and one on one training or in a group?

For those who are interested (Melbourne based people to start with) please send me an email to marcel@mvphotography.com.au with ‘Photography Tuition’ in the subject line and tell me how you would want to learn, what subjects you like to shoot, what specifically you want to know about in photography, computer workflow or image retouching and a rough indication what you think is a fair price to pay relative to the product you are receiving. I’m only gathering information at this point so I can tailor a great universal training platform. Thanks in advance to anyone that takes the time to respond.

Regards, Marcel.

No this isn’t a wedding image, but one I took past Geelong of a mate’s car while on the move. Vehicle tracking shots as they call it is difficult to do and can be dangerous unless you are firmly seated and belted in (like I was here). There was a storm approaching and I thought this was the ultimate background for this type of shot. A slow shutter speed of about 1/50th of second was used to blur the surrounds and to keep the car sharp, I instructed my driver to keep exact pace with the other. This is a cheaper and easier alternative to strapping a camera rig to the actual subject car itself.

For a successful composition, you always have to give a moving object some room to go into, it gives a better sense of dynamics and speed to the photograph, rather than just a picture of car. Post production was carried out in Adobe Lightroom.