Sometimes bigger isn’t better

December 17, 2012 by admin | Leave a comment

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… I love work with people that have creative ideas and open minds. I love sitting down and trying to get a concept to work with another artist. (Brandon) K-Truth is such an artist. Check out is hip-hop music and website Here. On this shoot I brought my interfit 400ws strobes with me and a gigantic octabox, along with some small flashes for the smaller spaces. I have worked in some tight spaces before but I have to say, this kitchen might take the cake for a portrait. For several of the shots I had to ditch the modifiers all together and use the cone reflectors with barebulb. Luckily, these shots all called for a bit of edge and hard bare bulb light was perfect. If you’re gonna do work in tight spaces with white or light walls, control of your light is everything. I really need to invest in some grids to help control my bigger lights!

For this shot I really wanted some light separation between K-Truth and the background, however, the tight space meant the lightstand I placed behind him was in the shot. I decided to create a composite to help with this situation. I took several shots of the space without my lights or my subject in the frame with my camera on a tripod. I then placed my lights without touching my camera and took more photos with K-Truth in the frame. You have to be extremely careful not to touch the camera during this process or it will throw the composite completely off. Because I knew I was going to create a composite I was able to use my giant octabox and not worry so much about all the light I was throwing around.

Then it was as simple as processing the room and subject photos separately but equally and bringing them together for the final image you see above.
This one here wasn’t a composite at all. I feathered the light as far forward as possible, so as to keep as much light away from the kitchen cabinet and walls as possible. In order to add separation I shot wide open at f2.8. I’m a big fan of all the rectangular shapes in this image. All shots were processed very similarly by adding two very low contrast layers together in an overlay mode in order to create contrast yet keep details in the shadows.

These last two images were both lit in the same fashion. The most difficult part of photographing inside is controlling that light! Add to that, light walls, and the request for a dark photos and you’ve got some challenges ahead. My only modifier was my huge octabox, which gave me no clearance to shoot below it in such low ceilings as well as throwing around a TON of light. This created a much brighter photograph than I wanted. I reminded myself that I wasn’t shooting family home portraits and put the gigantic modifier away. This called for much harder light with much more control. I decided to use my strobes with only the silver conic reflectors. The result are these last images here.

Fun with Family photos

December 12, 2012 by admin | Leave a comment

Here’s a couple of my favorite shots from my last family shoot! Stay tuned for some easy tips on achieving those great family photos!

A cool background is fun, but family photos and portraits are all about the faces. A little color to tie in what everyone wearing is just enough to make everything work!
Here’s a tip if your just starting your home studio. Get Black paper! It takes colored gels better than any other color you could use! And what doesn’t go with black?

Here’s the biggest tip of them all!!! Just have fun!!! The more stress you put on the perfect smile, the less likely you’re going to get that winning shot! Explain to the parents the goal is to have a good time and capture that by pressing the button once in while. That alone is harder than most people realize. Happy shooting!

Screne capture full edit from start to finish (Video)

November 14, 2012 by admin | Leave a comment

Hello world! I’m excited to share with you all a video I made demonstrating lightroom and Photoshop editing. If you are interested in the actual process of screen capture, read this next paragraph. If not, skip this next paragraph.

So I thought it would be fun to try a screen capture video tutorial running through all the steps I take in order to edit a photograph. I’ve tried to use several products in the past to complete this task to no avail. The biggest problem I have run into when using any screen capture is the time limit on recording. Some programs are gracious enough to let you know when that limit has been reached and automatically halts the recording (jing is an example of such a program). Conversely, programs such as Camstudio have file size limits with no such warning before, during or after recordings. Once you have exceeded the file size limits these programs say and do nothing. Upon completion of your recording, the program attempts to save the AVI file (no idea why they use this gigantic format) and promptly fails with a lovely message telling you all your hard work is for nothing. As the saying goes, “you get what you pay for!” Camstudio is open source and is completely free.

There is another option if you’re willing to pay a little cash up front by the name of Camstasia. It doesn’t seem to have the same time limitations as Camstudio, however I haven’t tried it out just yet. It also comes with a pretty sweet editing suite. It lets you add annotations, zoom in on the video capture, and helps you upload to your service of choice such as Youtube or Vimeo straight from the editing program. I have only used it to edit and post and can’t comment on the screen capture attributes and capabilities. Camtasia will run you $299!!

Enough with the software, lets get on to the Tutorial.

This is an 8 piece tutorial(because I had to deal with 2gig file size limitations on the videos), and really is only 7 pieces because the last is just a look at before and after previews of the image. Thanks to Maya Kaspi for letting me use your beautiful face in this edit! If you have any questions at all, please feel free to leave comments or concerns. These techniques are all pieces that I’ve learned from other photographers and retouchers online and if you have better ways at doing any particular step in this tutorial please chime in!! We’re all here to learn!

K-Truth Revisited

June 19, 2012 by admin | 4 Comments

This is the second time I’ve come back to my shoot K-Truth, a Seattle Hip Hop artist. There is just so much great footage to take from and edit. I think this speaks volumes for the subject himself! Just a very interesting, confident, and emotional man with something different to bring to the table. This shot is one of my new favorites. I love the lines, the symmetry, and the overall atmosphere.

Camera and Lighting info:

I shot at 1/60 and iso 400 to try and let in more natural light. 40mm to show more background without getting to wide and stopped down to 7.1 to insure all of him was in focus.

The lights on the walls add a nice glow to the tunnel itself. Some of this glow even gives a nice rim to this arms and sides of his jacket. There is light placed directly behind his head adding even more rim light to his shoulders and head. My favorite part about this rim light are the particles you can see in the air behind him. I think it helps add depth to the image. The rest is lit with an extremely small Octobox just above his head and out of the frame.

Editing in Lightroom and Photoshop:

I really like Joel Grimes affect of

taking the original image and bringing up all the shadows and taking away the contrast.
open image up in Photoshop as a smart object
copy layer to create a duplicate smart object
bring that layer back into camera raw and convert to black and white adjusting luminosity values and you see fit.
open back up into Photoshop and merge the layers down.
Create a copy of the layer and add about 16px Gaussian Blur.
Change that layer blend mode to overlay and decrease opacity to around 40% or whatever looks good(Should add quite a bit of contrast)
Create another layer and add 2.8px of Highpass filter to bring back detail
I then exported to Nik Silver Effex and increased structure and added color cast I wanted
import back into Photoshop and changed opacity to around 70%
add some salt with a pinch of pepper and there you go!

I’ll try and make a video tutorial if anyone is interested. Just let me know.

Specialize and forget the rest

April 3, 2012 by admin | Leave a comment

I had two clients cancel this last weekend and had been exited to use my new octobox for quite some time. I decided to…..

just hop out on the deck and take a few reading with my light meter to see what kind of Aperture I could get. I know, I know, I promise I’m not that vain! I wanted the shot to be more interesting than me in a grey t-shirt, so instead of putting clothes on, I decided to take clothes off. The human body is so much more interesting. And, yes, I am happy to see you but that is just an ipod in my pocket my good friends!

I’ve heard it time and time again, “It’s best to specialize in a specific niche and work those angles“ I haven’t gotten completely specific but I’m sure of one thing! I’d much rather have complete control over the lighting situation than not. Now before I go any further I want to clarify that I don’t mean shooting only studio style shots. I’d actually prefer not to shoot in the studio and become more of a environmental portrait photographer. I’m not talking about pollution and recycle centers but pictures of people in their natural surrounding. I don’t mind the big ball in the sky. I can work with that, He moves slowly, has a pretty constant temperature, doesn’t flicker at a given frequency(that my camera can see) and is just overall pleasing. I also don’t mind shooting indoors and balancing lights such as the tungsten and florescent(rather not) we find in all our commercial buildings and homes(I really hope you don’t have too many florescent lights in your home!) So to make this perfectly clear, what I don’t like to do is hold down the shutter button and burst 32 photos in 5 seconds or less that I have to then go back into Lightroom and cull to find that perfect image, which in my mind isn’t perfect at all because I didn’t light it. Occasionally I love to shoot live concerts, weddings, and performance arts but what makes me happiest is lugging my giant bags with batteries falling out of this pocket and that. Using my wireless triggers to fire off cameras, which fire off other wireless triggers, which in turn lights my subject exactly how I meant them to be lit! So with that said I need artists, models, graduating seniors and the like to photograph. If you know someone, I’m building my portfolio and will have discounted prices for the first 10 people that come my way for photographs!

Lighting info:

Canon EOS 7D
1/160 @f16 ISO 100
EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM @ 24mm
Interfit 400EXD @ full power through Large Octobox Camera right

A single rim on my back left shoulder and head would ahve gone a long way to help separate me from background, however the single light is all I wanted to use this time around. Had I not been trying to overpower the son I could have turned and put my back to the sun instead and used it as a rim light. Maybe next time! 206-579-9456 call and schedule your appointment now to take full advantage of my discounts!

Little flashes with Big Results…..TTL or not TTL, that is the question!

February 13, 2012 by admin | Leave a comment

I ran outside and used my manual radio triggers to shoot this shot from outside the venue. I had my lights still inside but triggered them from outside. The result is nice bright lighting without the subjects knowing that a giant foot long lens was pointed directly at her.

There are so many different facets of photography, I can’t see how anyone could ever become tired of shooting. I’ve done everything from landscape, to wedding, boudoir and senior portraits and sport photography. I haven’t done enough of each to really know which ones I love the most, but I can tell you that there are pieces of each that I absolutely love. If I had to pick, I’d say I’m leaning towards wanting to shoot portraits that really tell a story about that person. I really hate not having ultimate control over every lumen of light that hits my subject. More about that at a later time, but for now I’d like to talk about getting back the basics with the speedlites and TTL.

A couple weeks ago I was out to shoot a sweet 16 Birthday at the Clise Mansion in Redmond, WA. I shot it all with a 7D, a 24-70mm and a 70-200mm 2.8 lens. I could have used a wider lens as well, but my 10-22mm is on the fritz and needs some work! I shot mostly the dance floor area with two lights, on stands, in opposite corners of the room. I shot almost exclusively in TTL mode.

For those of you who don’t know TTL stands for Through The Lens. This refers to how the camera decides how much light it needs from your flashes to get the correct exposure. Generally, as I understand it, the flashes emit a short burst of light and the camera looks at the scene and decides how much more or less light it would need from that initial flash. Computers have come a long way and inside our cameras are little processors that are probably more powerful than our computers 10 years ago, albeit,

Three speedlites here. One to the left of the camera and behind about 4 ft. My 430exII on top of the camera using TTL as well another behind the subjects(tried to add a little separation)

I turned up no real specs on these processors through a google search. Let me know if you guys find anything showing mhz or ram. There’s one caveat; it’s a computer doing the thinking for you! If you’re looking to had some backlighting or flare to your photographs TTL is not really up to the job. At least, not without some serious fiddling around with. The problem is, when you fire a camera off camera using TTL and that light shines into your lens, your camera says, “whoa buddy, that’s bright” and lessens the overall exposure to compensate for the flash coming into the lens. One thing I might try(if I use ttl again) is to use spot metering instead so that no matter how much light is introduced into the scene, the camera meters only for that meting spot. Unfortunately, Canon’s spot metering stays in the center of the frame which is exactly where I first learned not to put my subject. If I remember correctly, Nikon’s spot metering follows the focus point(10 points Gryffindor{Harry Potter…don’t ask}).

This little puppy to the left here is Phottix’s new Odin Trigger and receiver. As you can see it has three different groups of flashes it is controlling(A,B, and C). This bad boy wirelessly transfers that TTL signal to the flashes so that you can use the system to control multiple flashes off camera! They are competing with the industry standard Pocket Wizard TTL triggers.

Using Shallow Depth of Field here to make the BDay girl pop but still show her in the context of her friends. The Flash in the left hand corner and behind the girls adds a nice rim light to the hair.

here's that Magical Backlight I was talking about. I love the Lens flare here but I had to save the photo as the exposure was extremely low using TTL.

Was I using any of these awesome creative tools? No…..I used Canon’s own Infrared optical triggers built in to their speedlites. Overall, I wasn’t very impressed as I was running from room to room and didn’t always have line of site to my flashes, which were placed in the corners bounced off the ceiling. Infrared triggers need to be able to “see” the other triggers for them all to work. That along with my backlighting issues I was facing was really proving to be difficult. Wide shots were out of the question as shots were coming up quite dark. Next time I think I’ll go completely manual, except for the on camera speedlite, which I will use in TTL mode. It is worth mentioning that you can use these triggers and ones alike to control your flashes in manual mode all from the camera! This is something I think would have come in quite handy during the Birthday Party!

Do what you love!!!

February 6, 2012 by admin | 4 Comments

Long before I took my first off camera lighting photograph I was shooting every piece of landscape I could find! I didn’t know a thing about light but I knew what I thought looked good and it turns out others thought it did too! If any of you out there love to shoot landscape as much as I do and have attempted to make a run at selling your work, you probably have come to find out just how difficult that can be!

The more I looked into it the more discouraged I became. It seemed anyone who was making money off of there landscape photography was hustling their butts off dragging their work from street fair to coffee shop in the hopes that at least one of their pieces would sell in order to justify the loads of money spent on the frame alone. For those of you who don’t know, frames typically cost more than 5 times more than the piece it’s protecting! Moreover, if you get the high quality, anti-glare, museum glass, your talking astronomical figures. Then you have to try and turn it around in this economy…not fun! At least not for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good challenge, and I have no qualms about hustling, but I just felt I was going nowhere! I always tell people I started with Landscape photography, “but unless your Ansel Adams, it just too difficult to make a living at it!” Maybe I’m completely off basis here and just didn’t do the right things(probably the case) but I decided to move on and turn a new leaf. Hence, my move to portrait work.

What I don’t think I understood, as a landscape photographer, was just how much I love light and how it reacts with my subjects. Bringing my own flashes and light into the equation was just too much fun! There was something new to be learned every time out! No shoot was exactly the same and that was too enticing to pass up for me. I have, in no way, mastered light but I have certainly come to understand it more. I believe it shows in the progression of my photography as I’m sure it does in anyone’s work if they really put forth the effort to understand how the light is affecting their images. I challenge all of you to take a look at the images you really appreciate. Take a moment to figure out where the light is coming from and how it is reacting with the subject. This can be applied to landscape and portrait photography, to product, and lifestyle photography.

I have come full circle and have a renewed love for landscape photography. I now look at my frame differently. You can ask yourself a few very simple questions to help your photography, no matter what the genre. Here are a few to help you:

What is my subject?(It’s nice to have a great overall image with at least once place where your eye can stop to rest and say, “ahhh, this is where I’m supposed to be looking.”)
Is my eye being drawn to it? (remembering that your eyes are drawn to the brightest and sharpest objects in the photograph. Do you have leading lines flowing to your subject?)
How’s my composition?(Should my subject be in a specific third of the image, is my horizon straight, or does it need to be?)
Where is the light coming from.(Is it helping to shape my subject or is it causing my subject to fall flat)

Does it tell a story or give a general idea? This is completely subjective but worth giving it a thought while shooting.

Lastly, especially if you are shooting with a tripod, make sure to move around a bit. I am sooo guilty of this! It’s so easy to set that tripod down and shoot pointing your lens in a different direction, but believe me you gotta do more! You could be just inches away from your most amazing shot yet but may never know because your tripod stayed glued to one particular position!

First take your camera OFF your tripod when searching for your frame. I generally walk around with camera and just peek through the viewfinder every once in a while until I find something I like. Scott Kelby of Kelby Training online(you should totally check it out if you haven’t already!!! Totally worth every penny!) said something to the tune, “when you think you see something good, it’s there, you just have to find out how to shoot it! Work the angles, shoot vertically and Horizontal until you find it!”

Move the stem up and down.
Zoom in and out
Move the tripod left and right

Happy shooting everyone!!!

Never Give Up!

January 30, 2012 by admin | Leave a comment

There’s nothing quite like finishing a project you had almost given up on. While rummaging through old files on my computer I came across a half finished composite I had started six months ago. It’s always fun to look at your work and think about what new techniques you would apply to it now. However, a trip down memory lane can be a serious time trap. You need to make sure that your eyes are almost always looking forward, only stopping every once in a while to take a look in the rear view mirror. Sometimes you have to take a step back back to see how far you have gone, the larger picture.

When I took this photo six months ago I was really big into HDR. I was doing a lot of real estate photography at the time and I was only just starting to really get in to off-camera lighting. Just like any other HDR shot I started by setting up my tripod and framing my shot. At this particular time of day the sun was shining into the building fairly brightly, as you can see from the sunlit floor in the middle left-hand side of the frame. As I recall, windows were placed only on the west side of the building overlooking the lake. I’m not sure if it was the bracketed photos that I took but I was never able to achieve the a very good HDR from the photos I had taken. This left me with only the option to cut out each individual window. This took quite a bit of time and even when I was finished with that I was not pleased. You see, when the sun shines in two brightly or your exposure is too bright the light tends to wrap around your subject, enveloping it. This means that you lose complete detail in parts of the frames of the Windows as well as the pillars. This is quite problematic when trying to replace the windows with a different exposure, as the window frames don’t quite match up or turn out right. Suffice it to say this took about 10 times longer than I had imagined it would but I was determined not to use the failed HDR.

Fortunately for me all four of the subjects had previously been cut out six months ago when I first started this project. I had to make some final adjustments and fine-tuning but the work was mostly done. I use masks for each person so that mistakes were made they could easily be undone and believe me mistakes were made! The best part about composite like this or at least the way I shot it is that each person was really where I shot them in the frame. This means when I cut around them any imperfections should not show as the background is truly the same background. Shooting it this way afforded me the ability to get my lights in as close as I want them and wherever I wanted them, within reason.

For almost everyone in this photograph the key was shot with an intefitexd400 light through a small softbox. The fill was provided by Paul C Buff 64″PLM through a white diffuser. Most of the room lights were provided via a speedlite three small octadome or through a small grid.

As far as actual editing goes there wasn’t much to it. A couple curves layers, one for the background, and one for the sky outside. I always use a healthy amount of dodge and burn on my subjects and finally everything was sharpened with a high pass filter. I ended up with a 15 layers TIF file about 2 GB in file size. With this file was open in Photoshop and only Lightroom running in the background, Windows task manager showed five gigs of memory being used! I can see where more than 6 might come in handy as I’ve lost all of my work at least twice with out of memory errors! Don’t forget to Save!!!! Again I have to say thank you to Dave Hill for reinvigorating my passion for composite photography. Hopefully I’ll have more images soon to play with and show you all.