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