Archive for the ‘Lighting’ Category:
My two favourite pastimes…
I raced at the Marin Dusk till Dawn mountain bike race at the weekend. Some may say I’m crazy as I opted to compete as a solo rider – 12 hours riding as many laps as I can around a 10 mile course. After all the riding I’ve done this year I was surprised at the physical toughness of the course and how much I fell apart after the laps mounted up. I was wrecked at the finish, but I did manage 9 laps and a reasonable 50th place. I’m happy; and I’m recovering!!
The photographers on site had a real challenge – night time racing – really really bright lights and moving subjects. Not easy. Joolze Dymond was shooting on behalf of the organisers and the BCF and she had some creative approaches to her shots. I approve.
Subscribe to the comments for this postBerlin Street Art
I follow a lot of photographers and photography resources on the web. Boston’s Big Picture often comes up with unusual and visually stunning pieces. Today’s offering features street art celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall (20 Years!! Jeez, how old do I feel!?) I like it enough to share it here; have a click though, it really is worth a look just for the sheer scale of it. Clicky.
Have a browse through or bookmark the site for future reference, it’s worth a few minutes of your time.
Musical friends
Dan and Jez came around last week to try out some lighting setups and have a general evening of camera play, it’s something we started last year as a way of learning and sharing ideas – we even have a Flickr group dedicated to it! Anyway, Dan had just bought himself a new guitar so brought it along too – it’s metallic black so a real pig to light properly! We ran out of time before we got that far but I did manage to grab this set of Dan with his new toy. They’re lit with a single overhead umbrella and the black and white conversion has been done in Lightroom.
Nearly a month into 2009 already and I’m still behind! I’m finishing up my tax return tomorrow and then catching up on all the left-overs from the Christmas rush. That should allow me to start planning ahead for the first weddings of the season in April.
On a personal note, when I’m not taking photos I’m a cyclist and this year I’ve signed up to ride in the blue ribband mass-participation event in the world – L’Etape du Tour. It’s basically a mountain stage of this years Tour de France and is attended by 8 or 9000 like-minded crazy bikers! The stage itself is from Montelimar to the summit of Mont Ventoux in Provence, 108 Miles and over 3000 metres of climbing thrown in. The Ventoux itself comes at the very end after 92 miles and is basically 16 miles at an average of 7% uphill! Next weekend my preparation begins in earnest when I’m off down to Ashdown in Kent to ride ‘The Hell of Ashdown‘; a 67 mile sportive with 2000 metres climing (with some gradients of 25%!!). Next week I’ll really know if I’ve got the form and the legs to tackle L’Etape or if I need to rethink my training! Sponsorship details to follow…
Never work with children and …
Yep, animals! I’m always game for a challenge, providing there’re no expectations and at a recent shoot I was asked if I could get a picture of the dogs. Now, there’s a distinct difference in size between a King Charles spaniel and a 3 year old girl (and her older sister) so the lighting had to change to suit. I kept it simple; maintaining the same ratios and positions, just dropping them down as low as they’d go. The dogs didn’t really want to play ball together, but keeping the camera to my eye, one of the dogs parked itself in a near perfect position and started begging for a treat – snap!
This was the result:
Click it for a larger version…
If the situation was different and I was preparing to shoot the dogs specifically I would have chosen a different background; something to show them off a little better. As it is, the kicker light in the back right of the frame does a pretty good job to define the dog’s outline against the dark cloth. I’ll probably try Photoshopping out the visible folds in the fabric just to see if it improves the image at all. Overall though, I’m happy!
Shoot the kids!
My day job is generally office based but occasionally it gets me out an about. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to travel to Las Vegas to attend a conference, alright for some eh?! Anyway, in preparation to go away I realised that I didn’t have any recent portraits of my boys – a perfect excuse to set up the lights in the living room and get snapping!
They’re getting less tolerant of me and my camera these days and I only got a handful of shots of each of them – I preempted that state of mind and made sure that my lighting was spot on using Nicky as a model before getting them to pose. These are my favourites:
and
The lighting is from three sources; there’s an umbrella softbox overhead at the front giving the main light and then two shoot-thru brolleys either side and behind that are adding the wrap-around rim light effect, the power is turned right down to keep it subtle. They’re flagged to stop light falling onto the background, which is a big pop-up reflector leaning against the patio door about 1.5 metres back. I shot these with a long lens to compress the perspective and make the most of the black background.
In retrospect I should have added some fill below their faces to lighten the shadows, a simple white reflector on the floor in front of them would have done trick I think!
Thanks for looking in!