Lighting with refections

Another Jewelry related shoot. I might be getting a rut but I did learn a lot on this shoot. The background or substrate for this shot was a very refractive material that was almost black, a bit like black acetate. The main or key light did two things for me on this shot. Fist it lit the product and second it provided the reflection to separate the subject from the background. This key light was a strobe shot though a 20 degree grid spot and then though a large piece of frosted plexiglass that was being flown over the subject. By bringing the Key Light very close to the plexiglass I could create a small circle of light that would reflect off the substrate. Another way to shoot it was to move the Key Light way back and then put a flag or cutter on the plexiglass to create a hard line. A third way was feather off the light off the plexiglass to create a soft edge on the reflective surface. A secound light is set up low and to the left of the camera. It's job was to create some sparkle to the silver jewelry. It has a 40 degree grid spot and was set to a lower power than the Key Light. In a shot like this it is important to remember that refections are like a rubber balls. They bounce off a surface on the same angle that they strikes it. So I had to angle the lights so the camera could see the refection that I wanted it to see. Here is a bit more tech stuff. ISO was 100 Shutter was set at 1/125 and the aperture was set to f/16 and f/22 I bracketed each shot with the aperture. I turned the image stabilizer off and set the focus to manual. The image stabilizer was having some trouble. I think it had something to do with the reflection. By putting the camera on manual focus I could place the focus plane in the front third of the subject to maximize the depth of field. Well this is a pretty complex shot so if you have any questions please leave a comment. Of course no one is reading this so I won't hold my breath.
Aloha for now

Jewelry Shoot

Well this is a little like the last post. This was not really a head shot the idea was to show off the jewelery. For this shot I used a “Clam shell lighting technique”. I put a soft box over the top of the subject,very close. Then I put a large bounce card at the bottom and popped two small lights off of that. One light would work but I wanted to keep the recycle time down so I used two a there lowest setting. I needed to hit a f/16 to get everything in sharp focus so the power was set at much higher than it was set for the head shot. In addition to the soft box and the bounce card I hit the left and right of the face with a grid spot. This hard light coming from the back gave the face some shape and highlighted the earrings. You have to watch for the light and make sure you don't light up the nose. That can be nasty.

Head Shot

This was a pretty successful head shot I thought. The background was kinda unique. I had shot in the black paper and wanted a different look. I had some hard board laying around the studio, it's a thin flexible board looks like peg board with out the holes. Well its not to heavy so I hung it with a quick clamp and a auto pole. It took about 2 min to set. Then I bounced the background light off it and bumped up the power a bit. I used the shoe reflector so I could create some graduation. I was shooting at f/5.6 and if I had metered it would got about f/11 at the background right behind the sitter. My lens was the 85mm prim so the trick bit is staying on top of the focus. There is very little depth of field with that lens at f/5.6 so it's important to reestablish focus after each shot. The short depth of field gives the background a nice glow and because the background is flat it bounces the light right back at you. The only real problem was that I was using a scrap and it was only about 4 foot square so I had to work to keep it behind the subject. Hey what the hell if it's not a little hard it's not really art. Tech Stuff Key light was a soft box about 3 feet from the subject. The background was 6 feet behind the subject and the camera was about 4 feet from the subject. There was also an umbrella on the right that was a working as a fill light . The lighting style was cross and the ratio was darn near 1 to 1

Lighting 101

Lighting 101 a class for anybody interested in lighting as a photographer. Topics will be on camera flash, dedicated and non dedicated flash, studio equipment, bounce cards, reflectors, and more. This is a hands on class with a minimum of lecture concentrating more on real time learning. The class is limited to 8 participants and will run 6 to 8 on three consecutive Mondays. First class is Monday November the 9th the fee for the class is $100.00 Check my Blog at www.hiphotoworkshop.blogspot.com for more information. You can contact me at john_chisholm27@yahoo.com

Photo 101 Class
Starting Nov 4th
This photo class will cover photo basics like Aperture Shutter speed ISO how to navigate your camera and composition. The class is held at studio F22 in Kaimuki and will run for four Wednesdays. Each Class is 2 hours running from6pm to 8pm. Contact John at 808-285-1907 or E mail at john_chisholm27@yahoo.com

Portrait Professional

Portrait Professional Rocks
this is a new retouch software that I got over the Internet and I think it's real great. The best part about it is that it is real fast. I retouched this same photo in Photo-shop and it took me about 20min to finish I used several layers and a lot of stamp tool and it came out pretty good, I did the same shot in Portrait professional and it took me 2 min. from open to save. That's fast ...super fast. I think the final result is was better than my photo-shop attempt. The Portrait Professional smoothed evened out the skin whitened the eyes and the teeth and removed small wrinkles automatically. Then I used the detail brush”. to hit any thing that it missed. Portrait Professional will also reshape the face to, “make it more beautiful” and as scary as that sounds it does work and you can dial it up or down separate from the skin details or turn it off completely. The best thing about the skin detail is that is leaves the skin texture and removes the blotches and wrinkles so the shot doesn't look over touched or super soft. The software it very easy to use. All you do is map the face with the outline it provided and tell it to process the shot, and boom your done. If you want to turn the effects up or down then just save the shot and move on to the next shot. Like I said it takes about 2 min. for each shot from open to save so you could retouch all of you shots and your client won't ever have to see a single untouched shot. I think it is worth a look you can download a free trial that you can play with it, however, if you want to save anything, it will cost you $60.00. That is a pretty good deal I think check it out at http://www.portraitprofessional.com/
Aloha

Photo 101 Class

A new photo 101 class is starting up this next Wednesday. Class starts at 6 pm till 8 pm and will run for the next 4 consecutive Wednesdays. Classes will be at studio F22 address is 3442 Waialae #4 Honolulu Hi 96816 phone is 808- 285-1907. Topics of call will be exposure F stops ans shutter speed understanding your camera white balance file size etc. Lens types light and how it effects you subject. for more information or to make a reservation please call or E mail john_chisholm27@yahoo.com

Okay here is a new toy. Well new for me. It's the Mila Grid flash diffuser. It's pretty cool. Looks like a big fly swatter and you bend it over your flash. What it does is soften the light coming of the flash so you don't get that nasty flash effect look to your shots. I shot this with flash on 1/16 power about 5.6 on camera flash. ISO was 400 and I am getting just a light touch from the flash to open up the shadows but not overpower the shot. The Idea is to make look as if the is no flash at all. You can see some catch lights in the eyes and that is the only tip off that the was flash used. Oh by the way http://www.milagrid.com/ I got mine in a couple of days
Aloha

Raw vs J peg
OK I am a convert,with a few exceptions. I used to use j peg for most of my shots and I would only use the Raw mode if I was unsure of my exposure and wanted to back up the J peg with a raw file just in case. I had shot a couple of jobs on Raw and it had taken so long edit the shots and I was going to convert them to J peg anyway it just seemed like a big hassle. But that was before I started using Lightroom editing software. When I shoot I raw I always shoot the small J peg too. Lightroom stacks the J peg and the raw on top of each other so you only see the one file. Also when you edit and adjust the file it converts the raw the same way. So raw give me more “latitude” and that means I can save more photos that I would have to toss if they were shot in J peg only. Here is a good Example from a job I shot a the Honolulu Art Academy. This was my first shot and I bounced the flash but it hit a little hot. So I adjusted and shot another. But since this is live action the shot with the worst exposure has the best expressions. However with a Raw file I can adjust the shot and pull down the exposure in light room and save the shot. So I am going to shoot allot more Raw files. More on this later
Aloha For now

Nickey#1

This was a shot that I did in my studio, I wanted to give it the feeling of being shot late in the day. To do this I used two lights one with a cool filter and one with a warm filter. The warm filtered light was set at about 45 degree angle to the background right of the camera, with the standard reflector and orange filter clamped to it. For the cool light I also used a standard reflector and clamped a cool blue filter to it. However instead of putting the cool light at 45degrees to the background I set a 5 foot by 2 foot mirror at 45 degrees left of the camera and bounced the light off of it . The mirror to gives the light a very directional look and will produce a sharper shadow. I set the model very close to the background so she would cast a shadow.
So what is going on here is the shadow from the cool light is being filled with warm light so it looks like a warm shadow and the warm light's shadow is being filled with cool light. When the two lights mix on the model and on the background they neutralize each other to some extent and make a white light. Changing the color of the filters and the power of flash will change the overall color balance. This is an example of how a shadows are a good opportunity to add some color. Please let me know what you think

Photo 101 Class

This is a photography class for anybody just getting into photography serious and would like to know more about this controls on their camera. I talk about f stops shutter speeds lens selection composition with balance file size. And a lot more stuff. The class starts July 8th and runs every Wednesday for 4 Wednesdays ending on July 29th the time is 6 to 8 pm and the location of the first three classes will be studio f 22 The fourth class is an excursion or field trip. The Studio address is address is 3442 Waialae #4 There is parking in the back for those who come early otherwise street parking is free and available. Contact me via E mail Classes do fill up but walk ins are welcome

Chinatown shoot

Here is a shot that I took the other night in Chinatown. We had a ton of lighting gear and a portable generator but I got this with an on camera flash and no tripod. OK here how it worked I used a long lens to pull in background and compress the image about 105mm set my focus to continuous because the model was walking into the shot my ISO was set to 640, Thats about as high as you can go with out to much noise. My shutter was set to 30th of a second and my f stop was F4. I wanted F4 so I could get a nice blur on the background. My white balance is set to flash. Now the tricky part was getting the flash to a little soft and directional at the same time. I could have used the big soft box and studio strobe that we had but the problem with that was it was to powerful and it would overpower the background light. The lowest setting on that flash would have got me a f11 and I would have to drag my shutter to about 2 seconds to get the background in. So what I did was to set my on camera to 1/8 power and pointed it straight up (in the vertical format it would point to left.) Then all I needed was something to bounce the flash off of. There was a guy that we were using for security and he had a white shirt and a broad back. So I had him stand just to left of me with his back to me and used him as a bounce board. Now in hindsight I wish I bought a big foam core or a pop open reflector but this was a good improvisation. I also made sure that the model was walking in a pretty dark area so she would not blur to much. You can see a little blurring on the edges but I really like that.
Please feel free to comment thanks for checking my blog out tell your friends

ALOHA

Aloha and thanks for stopping by the Hawaii photo workshop Blog. My name is John Chisholm and I teach a photo class in Hawaii at my studio and on location.
What I am trying to do here on this Blog is show some simple and not so simple photo techniques in straight forward steps. Please check the Blog often as I will be adding new examples every week. I hope you get a lot out of this Blog.
Aloha and Happy shooting