More Lighting
A few days ago I did my first shoot for 2 months and I had some extra toys to play with, in the form of another light and umbrella. So, below are 2 photos and lighting diagrams. The first used the full capacity of my 2 lights plus the ambient light to light the background. The second photo used only natural light. I wanted to demonstrate here that just because you have bags full of lighting equipment, sometimes the best result can be achieved by just simply using the available light and if I where to have inserted any artificial light into that second photo I personally believe it would have ruined it.
Using 2 lights and Ambient:
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Using just Ambient:
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Jakob
Mistaken Identity
Today I went to shoot the southern women’s synchronised swimming event in Petersfield and something very interesting happened which I really wasn’t expecting. I first turned up and spoke to the Press officer who you have to get permission off of to shoot the event. I was carrying my heaviest mobile setup (Canon 40D + Battery Grip, Nikon SB-24 flash attached, Canon 70-200 f/4 L Telephoto lens) and after being asked where I am from and me replying ‘Portsmouth’ I automatically got mistaken for a photographer shooting for the Portsmouth Evening News. But rather then correct the mistake I decided to play along. After all I had the gear and looked the part so why not! So with my fake new identity I not only got permission to shoot but also got poolside access, and by the end of the day I had all the other professional photographers there, shooting for various local papers, believing that I really was the Portsmouth news photographer!
So, if I have to make a point out of this story it would be this: don’t believe people on things just because they look the part. They may well be someone completely different just playing along for fun.
Anyway, I thought I’d also share a few of the photo’s I took at the event with you. Check below.
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Jakob
A Summer Return
As you may have noticed, over this past month and a half I’ve gone very quiet. This was mainly down to the fact that this has probably been the most hectic month of my life so far. I had my A-level exams, and life had just generally taken numerous flips and turns during this month.
But I’ve gotten through it and so I’m back! And what better way to come back then with a new photo for you.
So here it is; my first official photo of the summer. It’s a composite of 2 images, I replaced the sky in it to give a more ‘moody’ feel.
Before & After [Click image for larger view]
Jakob
First Photoshop Tutorial
As promised, i've made a short video showing you some of the processes I go through to create my images. The image I am doing the tutorial on is the second one in my What Lies Hidden series.
Hit play below to see the video:
Photoshop Tutorial 1 - Adding Smoke, Shadow and General Editing from Jakob Aungiers on Vimeo.
Jakob
New Layouts
The new portfolio is online! As I mentioned previously, I felt the old way of presenting my photo’s was a bit cluttered and messed up and also meant I had to make 2 copies of my photo’s (one for full-size one for the thumbnail). This new portfolio version is easier to manage for me and also easier to navigate through for you (as well as, dare I say, a faster way for you to see the images, because of a more efficient loading code). Plus I think my photos look better on a nice, all black, slick background and this has also given me an opportunity to weed out any not-so-strong pictures that I had lying about in my portfolio before.
Well, I hope you enjoy looking through the new portfolio pages. Maybe you could even drop me some feedback!
Jakob
What Lies Hidden
I’ve decided to start a themed series. What Lies Hidden will be the title of the series and I’m hoping to get at least 10-15 photo’s for it. The reason for starting the series will be because I’ve recently looked over all my recent work and I’ve been surprised by how messed up it is, there’s just no kind of general mood/feel between the photos, each one is something completely different, I’ve got headshots, landscapes, modelling shots, panoramics, etc. etc…and I thought it was high time to start moulding my photography into one general, specific area. But, don’t worry, I’m still going to carry on taking random photo’s alongside working on my new series. I’m also hoping to redesign my portfolio page on the website, so expect some changes to that in the future.
About the series itself, I’m hoping to make it a mix of Urban & Rural photo’s that have been Photoshopped to influence a mood of subliminal fear. This will include red glowing eyes in each photo, representing a mysterious creature in the shadows.
Below is my first photo in the series, I took it while on a long cycle in the countryside after I strayed off the beaten path. The lighting setup was very simple for this one, I had an SB-24 with a shoot-through umbrella as the main light off to camera-left in parallel with myself lying on the log and the fill light was simply the sun itself, as at that point in the day it had gotten horribly overcast, so the sky was acting like one big softbox, lighting everything with one big, dull light. For the photo I tried at first having the camera up-close, with the lens at about 19mm, but this gave too much Depth to the photo and showed too much background. So next thing I moved my camera as far as it would go while zoomed to the full 85mm (of my 17-85 lens) to try and get some DoF separation between me and the background, and also to include a smaller background in the photo. Of course, idiot me only bought the 17-85 lens with me, with a min aperture of f/5.6 at 85mm, so it improved the background slightly, but it’s still not as perfect as I would have liked (mental note: next time bring the 70-200mm f/4 L, or at least the 50mm f/1.8!). But anyway, I got the photo and below you can see the original vs. the final edit.
After & Before [Click larger view]
This is one of my longer photoshopping pieces that I’ve done, it took about 3/4 hours from start to end, as you can see I added the red eyes, smoke, and of course did my usual re-touching of Dodge/Burn, levels and colours. The part that took the longest in the photo was the smoke, as I played about with at least 4 different types before I settled on this final composition. I was going to do a video of the shoot and editing process, but 1) I only remembered my camcorder once I arrived at the location 2) It was 10:15pm when I started editing and I was pretty tired, and still haven’t found a good screen-capture program. So I’ll hopefully try and get at least 1 video done on the next shoot in the series.
Jakob
New Additions and new Decisions
After a long bit of reading I haven’t gone for the Cactus V4 trigger set, but instead have ordered the 301-P triggers. These seem to be getting great reviews, and seem a lot more reliable then the V4’s.
In other news, I now have a second light! To be more specific, I’ve bought myself a Nikon SB-24. A really amazing flash, for a pretty decent price! The only thing I need to do now, is order an additional 301-P receiver, another light stand and maybe another set of spare batteries. If I get all that ordered by the end of this week, I think I’ll be all kitted up by this time next week (fingers crossed) and I’ll be able to really start expressing myself with a second light.
Jakob
Waiting for the Cactus V4’s
Well I’ve decided to go for it and upgrade my wireless triggers from what I currently use (the Cactus V2 or PT-04’s) to the brand new Cactus V4 system. Only problem, the website where their being sold, Gadget Infinity, is currently on a very low supply of them, as every single person who uses the current V2/V2s system wants to upgrade and I don’t blame them, the V2’s I have trigger about 90% of the time inside but only 40% of the time outside…and once you get about 20 meters from them (about as far as I have to go to get a tight body shot with the 70-200mm f/4 L)…well, forget off-camera lighting! The new V4 system looks very promising and for a very reasonable price (certainly more reasonable then forking out £300 for a set of PocketWizards!).
Anyway, the Gadget Infinity website say’s that they’ll have 100 units for sale every day, so I’m going to try and get in there early and get a pair on Monday. From then its about 15 days until delivery, so once I get them I’ll give them a little review and let you know how they get on.
Jakob
In the Finals
Well about a week ago I entered the “Bringing Science to Life” photography competition [link], hosted by Southampton University. I entered this photo:
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..and now I’m one of the finalists. I’m attending the prize ceremony next Wednesday (25th) so I’m guessing that’s when the winners are revealed. Top prize is £250, so not a bad little number…things are already running through my head of what I could do with £250. I’m thinking most probably extend my lighting collecting (2 more strobes, 2 light stands, 2 umbrella’s, and new wireless triggers).
But I haven’t won yet, and I might not win at all! So we’ll see what happens. I’ll let you know on Wednesday.
Jakob
Lighting Naturally in the Midday Sun
One of the plagues of photographing models in the hours of about 10am-5pm is harsh, horrible mid-day sunlight. Most photographers tend to either avoid these hours, or use expensive lighting setups to overpower the sun. But, this weekend I had the option of neither of the above as I shot from 2pm until about 5:30pm with a model. Fortunately if you play the sun right, there are still things you can do to make a great photo.
First thing to think about is getting them out of the hard sunlight and into a big shadowy are. This is exactly what I have done on the photo below. But now that you have your model in the shadows, the light on her is suddenly too dull, flat and uninteresting. The simple way to solve this is to use some sort of reflector. I know you can get £30 ones that are 5in1 gold screens etc, but I find that a £1 car windshield sunscreen does the same job! Use this as basically a large light, to reflect the sunlight onto the subjects face, experimenting with different positions to make the light look good on the face.
Before & After [Click larger view]
Lighting Setup [Click larger view]
If you don’t have the privilege of a shadowy area then you need to work on your location choosing skills you can also make do with your subject in the direct sunlight. The trick here is to:
1) use a reflector (or big white wall)
2) shoot in RAW format
What you do (or at least, what I did) was to position my model with the sun at almost 90 degrees to her. Then get her to slightly lift and shift her head towards the sunlight. On the other side of the model place a big white wall, or the reflector, this reflects most of the sunlight back onto the model producing pretty even shadows. Make sure to expose for the model, not the background as the background will be at least 1-stop darker then the model due to the fact that your reflecting the sunlight back onto the model. Most of the time you can get a pretty good exposure with this setup, but occasionally the sunlight might be a bit too bright, or your reflector too small, which is where the added benefit of shooting RAW comes in, as you can use Photoshop’s RAW convertor to ‘recover’ some of the lost highlight detail.
Before & After [Click larger view]
Lighting Setup [Click larger view]
Simple Studio Shoot
I did this one a couple of days ago with one of my regular models, Bianca.
Basically I had the use of my college studio for the afternoon. With the studio there where two 200W(ish) modelling lights. I also brought my own flash (Canon 430EZ) and shoot-through umbrella which I used as the main light for most of the shoot (due to the fact that the two modelling lights give out about as much light as a candle compared to a stadium floodlight, when used with my flash. So I only really used them to brighten up the background screen of the studio).
So all that I actually had to play with was a single light set-up, and the best thing to do when you have only one light is, well, light it at about 45 degrees from one side! This compliments a human face beautifully, adding nice shadows without getting the shadows too dark. And that’s it! That is literally all I did for the whole of this shoot; changed the sides of lighting and also varied the height at which the light was coming from.
Below are two Before & Afters of the shoot:
Before & After [Click on photo for a bigger view]
Before & After [Click on photo for a bigger view]
I’m not going to go into great detail about how I processed the shots, but in a nutshell I colour corrected them, played with the curves and levels, did a bit of dodging & burning and added a vignette.
Some other time I might make a whole post (or video, if you’re lucky!) devoted on an aspect of my post processing.
In the mean time, I hope you’ve enjoyed this post.
Jakob
Everything has a Beginning
So, I’ve decided to start a photography blog.
Why?
Well recently a lot of people have been asking me how I take my photos and what kind of things I do to get my final images.
Well I thought that instead of spending hours talking to each individual person I meet, I would start a blog where I can share what I do and how I do it.
So here we are, on a rather grey English Saturday afternoon. The official start.
What can you expect to be appearing here in the future then? I hear you ask.
Well this is some of the exciting stuff I'm hoping to provide you with in the future:
- Behind the scenes photo’s of my shoots.
- Before and After comparisons, with details on how I achieved the afters.
- If I have time and find a screen capture program, I might do some video tutorial on what I do on Photoshop.
- If I can find a cameraman (or woman!) I might even do some behind the scenes video’s
- And finally, I’m just going to be keeping you updated to what I’m doing and what I’m currently working on.
So fingers crossed, and expect to see things appearing here very, very soon!
Jakob
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