Posts Tagged ‘Tutorial’

Strobist Car Interior Photo Shoot

December 10, 2010

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.

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Strobist Lighting Shoot for UpDown Apparel V2

November 25, 2010

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.

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Photo Critique 4 – The Ring Shot

September 17, 2010

It has been a very long time since my last post, I’ve been busy with helping set up my parents business and helping organise my own wedding….. well, watch it being organised. It’s funny when people say ‘You can’t shoot your own wedding, so who is going to do it? Alot of pressure!’ Well I’d like to shoot my own wedding, but I had thought about it, it’s just going to be too difficult, so we have employed the services of an amazing professional studio based in Brunswick West. I’ll no doubt be putting the images into an album I’ll design to show people in person.

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.

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Photo Critique 3 – Bridal Portrait

June 13, 2010

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.

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Photo Critique 2 Wedding Formal Portrait

May 25, 2010

Welcome to part 2 of my photo critique series. I have dug up a photo from the archives from my first ever wedding that is one of the client’s favourites of the day.

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.

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Photo Critique 1 Wedding Formal Portrait

May 16, 2010

As promised it is the first post of a series of photo critiques of my own photographs that I have taken at weddings or even just out and about. I aim to get the photography enthusiast side of my readership (or even potential wedding clients) some little insight in what is the photographic process from vision to print. As a photographer I analyse images all the time, where ever I see them, magazines, the Internet, television or ads at bus stops. I look at each photo and try to deconstruct it, the lighting, the equipment and anything else that makes the image, doing this makes me a better photographer and it adds to my own vision.

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.

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May Catch Up with MV Photography

May 12, 2010
  • Thanks to all that contributed registrations of interest with MV Photography for Digital SLR training. I am still taking ideas and feedback, so read the post below for further details.
  • I am still choosing a quality photobook supplier for my range of wedding photography albums. There of course is an extensive range, but I’m choosing carefully to ensure quality and great value.
  • New business cards and brochures are in development at the moment, so stay tuned.
  • More of favourite images from the archives will be posted in the coming weeks including some that have never seen the light of day from my trip to the United States in 2008 and some more wedding photos.
  • To give you all a taste of some photography training I am posting some of my own images with critiques attached. This is to show some of the thought processes when I’m behind the camera, the metering and focusing modes I used, the use of aperture and shutter speed as well as elaborate on my vision for the photograph from capture to print.
  • In the coming months I will be running a quick and easy competition to any followers out there. Stay tuned for the details, but you can win a mounted, limited first edition landscape print from MV Photography.

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