2013 365-6

Week six it is then.

04/02/13

A pack of little skaters and skateboarders arrived today in the post. This was quick try at getting something with one of them, using a bit of black string and a fruit bowl. With the aperture set at 3.5  the background came out black and covered up the string from which the wee man was suspended. Lost detail in the oranges though.

05/02/13

Still cracking on with single light flash portraits. This is my daughter Ellen taken using an SB-700 flash unit fitted with a small softbox and was fired on high speed sync (auto FP on Nikon) with a shutter speed of 1/2000. Nice shot of Ellen - even she liked it and she's a hard audience to please. She was delighted that a lot of her friends saw it on Facebook and complimented her on it. Result all round.

06/02/13

I returned to Belmont Park this evening to try out one very long exposure shot of the wooden statues there. I was aiming for 20-30 minutes in order to get some star trails, but sadly there was too much cloud cover to pick these out . I did capture one star trail in the top right-hand corner but it really just looks out of place. The statues themselves came out pretty well on a 30 minute exposure although I noted some "hot pixels" when zoomed in. Probably why it's recommended to take a large number of shorter shots (i.e. 200-250 30" exposures) and combine them in the appropriate software in post production. We live and learn.

07/02/13

A long time ago, I ordered some business cards in an attempt to promote my photography. People always ask me if I have a card, website, etc. The cards were, frankly, rubbish and I never actually handed any of them out because I was a little embarrassed by them. This week I finally bit the bullet and sat down to do it properly and that meant researching print firms and thinking about the design of the cards. Moo Print seemed to come out on tops in terms of quality and service, so I went for them. I used one of their existing designs, modified it to suit me and uploaded five high quality jpegs. The cards arrived today (five day turnaround) beautifully packaged and presented. They look (and feel) really high quality, complete with a funky case than fans out to display your cards in all their glory. I love these and definitely won't be embarrassed to hand them out.

08/02/13

Half price Haribo sweets? I'll be having some of these. The fantasy mix seemed to be the most promising in photographic terms - big and colourful. This is my packet of sweets set on a sheet of perspex, suspended between two chairs in the kitchen with a flashgun placed directly underneath.  Colourful enough, almost in a stained-glass window way.

09/02/13

More single flash portrait practice this week. This time using a honeycomb grid to modify the flash and make the light more directional. No backdrop used here - the highly directional light wiped the background out (my cluttered living room) and there was very little post-processing needed with any of these shots.

10/02/13

Fresh meat session (i.e. newbies) with Belfast Roller Derby this afternoon. Always fun to see new people on skates and there was a big crowd turned up today. I was shuttling between the fresh meat session and the intermediates/advanced training. I think I'm now about 95% sorted in terms of using lights with roller derby. This rear view belongs to the fantastic Rosa "Sigourney Cleaver" Hughes.

One Light portraits

I've started working on using my off-camera flashes to take portraits - this is, I have to admit, very much a learning process for me but I do feel like I'm getting somewhere with it. This week, I tried out two different set ups and techniques which give very different results. Shots 1,2 and 3 were taken on a Nikon D800 with a Nikkor 60mm f2.8 lens

The first set-up was using a basic clam-shell approach to lighting.

1

Self Portrait

This used a black backdrop. The lighting was one Nikon SB-700 flash above the camera and pointed down onto the face at roughly a 45 degree angle. An Interfit Strobies softbox was used to modify the flash. Underneath was a gold reflector also angled at 45 degrees towards the face. This was shot with the flash on TTL mode and camera settings were 1/160, f8 and ISO 100. Plus points about this approach are the even lighting, lack of shadows, catchlights in the eyes and making the subject "pop" from the background. This is very easy to do and produces very pleasing results.

The second approach I wanted to try was using high-speed flash sync (or auto fp on Nikon cameras) to take some more contrasty black and white shots.

2

 Ellen

This shot used the flash as in the first shot - up above the camera pointing down onto the face (but with no reflector underneath). The flash was set slightly further back to "feather" the light falling on Ellen's face. As I understand it, feathering reduces the light as you're only getting the reduced light from the edge of the flash burst. Interestingly, this was taken in my rather cluttered and untidy living room, with no backdrop used. The very short burst of flash was enough to light Ellen's face but the light fell off very sharply, leaving the background under-exposed. The camera was set to 1/2000 f8 and ISO 100.

3

Sarah

The same camera settings, with the light placed up high to the left and again pointing down. As above, the face is lit really well, but the background is pretty much pure black.

The plus points with this approach are more dramatic shots, greater contrast between light/dark areas, no softness (due to high shutter speed) and it means you might not actually need to use a backdrop.

The next evening, I broke out a nifty little honeycomb grid for my flashgun. I've never used one of these before and wasn't sure what to expect. Just to add to the "let's see what we get" approach, I also stuck my 70-200mm f2.8 lens on the camera. The shots below were all taken with the flash and honeycomb slightly above Sarah and off the the left of the camera. Settings were 1/250, f5.6 and ISO 100 with the flash on TTL mode. Again, I wasn't using any backdrop here - the highly directional nature of the honeycomb seemed to light the subject (Sarah's face) with no spill over onto the background, probably because of the angle of the flash.

4

5

6

7

Deadlifts

Was invited to shoot a deadlift competition in Ayslum Gym in Newtownards at the weekend. Nice bunch of lads and a great atmosphere - challenging but supportive with some people lifting personal bests. Having never shot weightlifting before, this was a challenge. I used a three-light set-up with two lights set behind the lifters on either side in an attempt to make them "pop" from the back ground. The third light was an on-camera SB-700 set as master for the other lights and to provide fill-in light on the faces. The full colour set can be seen here:

Flickr Set - Deadlift Competition

I also tried out processing some of the shots in monochrome, more out of interest than anything else and here's how they turned out.

367-50 Week 34

It's been a strange week in many respects for me, and I've found myself doing some things I would never have imagined doing. None of which are going into the blog this week, because it's beard removal week here on 2nd Shooter. People have commented in the past about how they think that my beard or lack of it reflects my mood. I think I can say that this is the first time I've grown a beard and then shaved it off for purely photographic purposes. So, here's the plan. Having spent a month growing a full beard, I'm going to shave some off each day until I'm clean shaven by the time that Sunday rolls around. In other words, seven self-portraits all taken and processed identically. This is either going to be spectacular, or incredibly dull.

2/07/12

So we start with the full beard. The Rolf Harris, or The Gerry Adams depending on your point of view. This had to go, mainly because the sides start itching like mad when it gets to a certain length and shocking amount of grey (who an I kidding -white) on my chin makes me look and feel like I'm in my 90's.

3/07/12

I have to say that I'd never tried this look before, probably with good reason. Tuesday's facial hair was a challenge to wear all day, and my youngest daughter was quick to point out that I looked like Wolverine. Which I took as a compliment, until she explained that it wasn't. I did discover, however, that this looks really good with my buff/bandana on. Very redneck.

4/07/12

This is me in my natural bearded state. I've had this goatee for a couple of years now, and have worn it on and off over the last god-knows how many years. Maybe a bit bushier than normal, but that's what will probably be growing back once this project ends.

5/07/12

The Buffalo Bill look was something I kinda enjoyed, and it was fun sporting it to my ex-partner's graduation at Queens. As noted above, that was something I'd never envisaged happening, but it all worked out quite pleasantly and my youngest seems to have enjoyed the day, which was why I did it in the first place. I kinda like this look, strangely enough and kept it for as long as possible before shaving and heading towards my least favourite look of all, the moustache.

6/07/12

You didn't realise that there was another Chuckle Brother? I really don't go for the solitary 'tache at all. It reminds me of police officers or something. I was a little embarrassed to go out of the house like this but stuck it out. Avoided public places and didn't go anywhere were people might have recognised me though.

7/07/12

This was rather fun. My attempt at a Clark Gable moustache ended up making me look like a 1940's/1950's wide boy - George Cole in the original St Trinian's movies perhaps. I did try to throw in a "dodgy geezer" expression for this one - it seemed appropriate.

8/07/12

And here's a picture of my da. I'm not sure how I feel about looking in the mirror and seeing my dad looking back every morning. On the plus side, it makes me look a few years younger (I know I'm deluding myself there, but hey) and requires much less maintenance that any sort of facial hair. Bare face for a little while, I think and then welcome back goatee beard.


Technical details? Usual Nikon D90 with a Nikkor 60 mm f2.8 lens. ISO 200, shutter speed 200 and f 5.6. One flash above and left on half power, one below and right on one quarter power. Both flashes at 45 degrees to the subject and shooting though umbrellas. Post processed in Lightroom4 using a black and white/yellow filter and given a dark vignette.

Backlighting

I recently saw some stunning black and white portraits shot with two flashguns, on in front and to the side and the other behind the subject to provide a nice backlit halo effect. It was wet, so I took my little apprentice and part-time model Sarah to the garage and had a go at creating something similar.
The kit was my D90, 50mm f1.8 Nikon lens with my old Nikon SB-28 speedlight and Trish's raher more splendid Canon 580-EX2. The flashes were triggered remotely by a set of youngnuo wireless triggers.

The setup was the SB-28 in front with beauty dish set at 1/2 power with the 580-EX2 behind my subject's head set at 1/4 power. This allowed a shutter speed of 1/60 with a reasonable depth of field for portrait shots.

This gave a nice effect, although having one light off to one side (right) did cause some problems with shadows on the face.

A reflector might have helped here, but I didn't have one handy so opted to move the front light around until we lost most of the shadows.

In terms of processing, Lightroom struggled a bit with the black and white conversions. With a bit of fiddling, the black and white conversion presets that use red and orange filters seemed to work best with the skin tones. Also tried out the bleach bypass preset as well:

I think if we were to try this again, we'd use a reflector for some fill-in light on the other side of the subject's face and hopefully reduce the strength of the front flash gun a little.