Finally got around to testing out a new backdrop I got ahold of. This is a paper backdrop that comes in a large roll. Obviously you can get them in lots of different colors and they tend to be cheaper relative to Muslin backdrops. Also, being paper they tend to have a surface that works a little different from other backdrops as they tend to have a paper texture surface so light on them can look different depending on the angle. Plus, if they tear, they usually have lots extra, so you just cut a that point and start from there.

There are downsides though, as with everything, the fact of the matter is that they do tear after you use them a lot, even if you are being careful. It’s paper and after a while it tears. Furthermore, these are even less water friendly then most other types of backdrops because, well, paper. The rolls can be heavy and tricky to put up and might benefit from some assistance. Finally, if you don’t have a good setup up to hold the backdrop then you are going to have a problem. I would only use this roll on my expensive heavy-duty backdrop stand as I have no doubt the light backdrop stand would collapse under the weight.

As for lighting, I am using a clamshell light setup for these photos. Two strobes with softboxes. The key light had an octagon softbox with a grid and was just in front of the subject but high aimed down. Then a gap then on the floor was a rectangle softbox aimed up at the subject acting as a fill light, no grid with this one. It looks like a clamshell sort of, so they call it a clamshell setup.

Rembrandt and butterfly

A quick post as I am knee deep in work. Here are two single light techniques that tend to work well. The first is a Rembrandt technique which results in a heavy shadow on part of the face with a triangle of light on that side of the face. You can notice I don’t exactly look thrilled in that shot. This is because I find it tedious to setup which means I probably need more practice at it. Seriously though, it can be a challenge to do but it worth the effort. To set it up your light will be slightly higher than your subject and just off to the side. You want the light at about a 45 degree angle to your subject aiming down that is. But some adjustments will be necessary.

The next shot is a bit easier and called the butterfly technique. The butterfly is the shadow formed under the nose which tends to look like a butterfly. The light is close to overhead and directly in front of the subject. This is one of the easier single light techniques and is one of the first ones you might want to get the hang of.

In both cases, you can complement it with a reflector to fill in some shadows on the dark side of the face but don’t over do it so much that you lose the effects that make these what they are.

5 different ways to utilize a backlight.

All these photos were taken with the key light in the exact same spot – just off to the side and just over the subject. It was a strobe with an octagon softbox. What is changing for these is the back light position. In all shots the backlight had a reflector dish on and a pinkish gel (my subjects current favorite color).

In the first shot, the light is behind my subject on the floor aimed straight up. As you can see it hits the back and some spills off on her hair a little. Next up is one you’ve seen me use before, which is as a rim light. The light is directly behind her and aimed about at upper torso level. Notice that the color shining through her hair looks more reddish – what is happening there is that her hair is acting as a different color gel, mixing to produce a reddish color. The pink is still there, you can see it spilling over on clothes a little. That’s just something to keep in mind for this type of lighting with a gel. The third and fourth ones are similar. The third one the light is off to the light and aimed right mostly at the backdrop. That’s why there is a cone effect. The fourth is similar in that the light is on the ceiling aimed down. In both cases the light goes from pinkish to purplish ever so slightly.  Finally, the last one has the light aimed at her hair acting as a hair light while also lighting up the background.

There are more ways to do this, but that’s 5 basic ways to utilize a backlight in photography.

Anyway, I currently have openings for photos sessions especially with Valentine’s Day just around the corner. Now would be a great time to start booking that. Book during the next two weeks and I will do a session in the park for $150, that’s $100 off my normal asking price.

More single light with a reflector work.

Here is another single light with a reflector. The strobe has an octagon softbox on it. It is overhead and aimed down at a 45-degree angle aimed at the subject. Just off to the side and a little lower than the subject is my reflector with the white side. The reflector utilizes the light from the softbox and acts as a fill light.

When doing a simple light set up like this, one of the main things I use to gauge quality is the reflection of the light in the eyes. Do not make this the only thing to adjust off and don’t let sticking to it hold you back but it is a good place to start.  Those lights tend to help pull the subject in to the photo so if you need to move a light to get a better light in the eyes do that. As to where exactly you want that light, well that is up to you.

Finally, another trick when working with one-year olds is go with what gets them to move. In her case, me singing “the wheels on the bus” got her smiling and doing the round motion with her hands. Sometimes it’s a toy, sometimes it’s a song, but try everything you got to make it happen.

More faking golden hour.

These photos were taken at golden hour on a cloudy day, so we had to make some of our own sunlight. There are several ways you can do this and how you do it will depend on your gear. Obviously first and foremost you need some sort of light and the light you have will decide everything. Speedlights have considerably less power as opposed to strobes but that just means you need to get them closer. Strobes offer a little more leeway but keep in mind you need to consider where that spread of light is coming from to make it convincing.

In the case of these photos, I used my strobe with an orange gel just off to the side and angled aiming slightly down to the subject. If you were using a speed light, you’d likely want to do this as well but due to the size and strength of the light. In this case, I did it that way because I didn’t really have any brush or trees to hide it behind to make it look like the sun was just over the horizon, so I made the light just off to the side. You’ll also notice the slight glow and lens flare on some of the photos – that’s what having a strobe just off to the side can do.

This technique sound easy on paper but it really requires practice because you are trying to recreate something that people see almost every single day. If it isn’t right, they will notice but if you can figure it out this trick just might save a photo session that needs that sunlight on a cloudy day.

Also, don’t forget the orange gels. Get a pack that has various hues of orange and don’t be afraid to stack them if need be.

Self Portraits. Also, you should have a business plan.

This is another reminder to do self portraits every now and then. This will help you relate to anyone you take pictures of which can only help make the session go more smoothly. Furthermore, it helps you practice poses from the perspective of the subject. This can only help you pose other subjects later. It is easier to tell someone how to get into a pose if you have been in the pose yourself already. Finally, it just makes for good practice.

Anyway, this is a short post because I am finishing up our business plan at the time of this post (and the time of these photos). If you lack a business plan, now is the time to working that out. Assume your competition has one, and if you don’t, they are going to be one step ahead of you at every point of the year.

Sometimes projects go sideways - learn from them.

Welcome to the new year. I was playing around with a few items and to be perfectly honest it didn’t pan out, until I switched them to black and white. This makes sense because it was a heavy mix of shadows and lights.

The original concept was light coming in from window hitting the subject and the flower (fake, fake flowers are awesome) However, the harness I use to secure my fake window and the fake window I use were in my storage unit, so I had to use a small plexiglass piece and secure it in a less secure manner which just didn’t end up panning up. The light did reflect through it though but the gel I was testing out didn’t quite work once I got back to my desk to processing.

This happens and the two things you can do when it does is first learn from it and see what you can salvage from it. In this case, I learned quite a bit, I have lots of notes to carry into the next practice session, but I was also able to salvage it by grayscaling it. Never assume you will luck out though, sometimes will have nothing but a lesson and that’s okay as long as you are willing to learn it.

Happy New Year!

And may the upcoming year be as good, if not better, then this past year!

Merry Christmas!

May you be surrounded by good friends and good family today!

Also, it was a two light setup. Two softboxes, octagon, on two strobes. Each on either side of the subject. I prefer octagon softboxes because I like the shape it makes in the eyes and frankly it comes down to a personal taste choice on that one.

Anyway, merry Christmas!

Just one nightmare before Christmas this year.

Deep inside Santa’s Workshop is one room where no elf dares to go for it is here it is said that Santa has placed the heads of his worst enemies he was forced to slay. Just before Christmas, Santa goes to this room and can be heard performing strange rituals and talking to these heads, some have even heard things talking back to Santa. What could Santa possibly want to know from such evil beings? He asks who their friends are, monsters love to boast about their friends as it makes them feel powerful and important, even dead monsters. At which point, Santa writes down every name on his naughty list.

Walk an honest path and choose your friends wisely.

#Nightmarebeforechristmas

A quick post about texture and black and white photos.

When you convert a photo to black and white aside from taking away the color you can do a few things to up the moodiness of it with your photo processing software. For starters, mess with the shadows and the lights. Obviously those two contrast with each other and you can really kick things up a notch by playing around with those two sliders. Next, and more related to this post, explore any options you have that affect texture and clarity. That is, you want to increase the texture quite a bit and clarity a tad. Doing so will make people look more worn and dogs more… dog? It’s easier to show then to explain. In the first photo with this post is a picture of a mastiff just grayscaled. The photo after it is the same photo except texture has been kicked up a lot. Notice how it affects the fur and wrinkles.  The next few photos are further examples of texture increased as well as one of two kids (the little one was due for a nap at the time this photo was taken so we went with moody for these photos).

I got out to the Clayville Outdoor Train Garden this past weekend. Here are some photos from that adventure. If you are in Maryland and near Pasadena, I suggest checking it out. If you do check it out, they are collecting money to help two families, each of which has a little girl with cancer, so please go and donate if you can.

And on to some photography tips. For starters, you need to find out if photography is even allowed. This is as easy as simply asking. Most places have email or social media, or you can even ask at the location like I did. Regardless of how you ask, I recommend asking to avoid being asked to leave.  Often, places want you to photograph anyway but some places don’t so ask.

As for what lens to bring, do your research and consider your goals as well as what conditions the location itself might create. In this case, I didn’t want to be changing lenses as it was outdoors and was going to be relatively crowded so I opted to take just one lens. Since we were dealing with hobby trains, I opted to go with a lens that could zoom in, so I took my telephoto lens.

Finally, for settings consider your conditions and go in with a plan to save time. For this, I knew I would be outside, I knew I’d be in a crowded area, I knew it would be nighttime with some lights and I knew the trains would be moving.  This all tells me I’d be photographing moving objects in a low light area where I might only have a few seconds for some shots. My ISO would be high (4000 to 6000), my shutter speed was about 1/350 – 1/500 depending on what I could get away with and my aperture was as a low F-stop number. I like to select my focus point and keep it to one point however for this I did not move it so I always knew where it was for faster for focusing.

It was really cool, and you should check it out.

Back Light Session

Here is another single light session with emphasis on the back light. I set the light behind my subject so that they would eclipse the light. This created a light silhouette on them and by setting it high enough I could get a light spill over to light them up ever so slightly. The main thing to keep in mind with this sort of technique is that your subjects understand or have someone who understands that a bright flash is on one side of them – you don’t want to blind them. The other thing to keep in mind is that they are eclipsing the bring flash and if they don’t a bright flash will be coming your direction.

When working with babies, have a parent around to make things run more smoothly or at least have an assistant. It is tricky to operate a camera and watch a baby at the same time and you don’t want something to happen to the baby while you are distracted so get an assistant. In this case, I had her mother hold her on the stool and interact with her. Go figure, babies like their parents and parents can get a good reaction out of their babies.

When processing photos like these consider carefully what you have as these sorts of photos tend to lend for some creative cropping and temperature adjusting as well as lending well to gray scale. If your subject is looking into negative space, emphasis that. Change the mood by adjusting the temperature more towards blue or red depending on what you are going for. Finally, these always tend to look well as grayscale.

Single light with a reflector.

Here is another set of photos with a single light, not unlike the setup from the previous post I did. The only major difference is that I included a reflector and used it as a fill light by bouncing light back into my subject’s face. In this case I am using the white side of the reflector to bounce strobe light into her face. Keep in mind reflectors often come with a silver side on back and tend to be reversable having a gold and black side. Each side has it’s uses but do keep in mind that the silver and gold sides add those respective color.

For the subject herself, I did a “take her as she currently is” approach and sometimes that’s worth it. Kids get messy, go with it sometimes because those messes tell stories. For posing, her mother was on set and of course she responds to her name. Obviously, with a one-year-old you aren’t getting advanced poses most of the time so give them things to long around at and go with that.

#marylandphotographer #annearundelphotographer #photographytips

More Low-Key Lighting!

Another round of low-key photos. I am figuring out a lighting setup I want to use for an upcoming photo session plus with the weather getting cold I am inside more, and low-key is just fun to do.

This time I put the light source (a photography strobe with an octagon soft box) above her and to an angle. Obviously, I have her turned in the direction so some of the light hits her face and then starts to fade off. When doing this sort of stuff just think how the moon phases operate and work from there.

I also did some processing trickery by editing out the softbox for most of these. The closer your light source the harsher your shadows and harsher shadows is something you want in low-key lighting. So I put my softbox very close to my subject to the point where it is in the photo. Well, it isn’t in any of these photos because it I removed them. The thing to remember, if you do this, is that it is easier to remove if the background is consistent – in low-key photos the background is usually black – and if your light source doesn’t overlap with your subject in any way.

For posing, I let my subject bring a toy in. This kept her happy and made it easier to give posing direction. She can actually hold something to her chest or look at something in her hands. Don’t discount the uses of toys with younger subjects. Also, for the last photo, it was just out of focus but I liked the pose so I grayscaled it, which is something you can do something in attempts to save a blurry photo.

Quick low-key session

I’ve been working long hours so here is another quick post and a quick session. The beautiful thing about low key lighting is that it is easy to do as it can be done with just one light. That’s also why I recommend those just getting started with lighting to dive right into it because there is a lot of room for error. Even if you fail to get the shot you want, you will likely get something decent out of it. Any session where you have a good chance of walking away with something, even if it isn’t what you had in mind, is a good session for beginners.

That stated, for this one I had a speedlight and a snoot. The snoot turned the light into more of a narrow beam closer to a spotlight which in turn creates a quicker light falloff. Since it is a single light, you can set your F-stop down to reduce the other ambient light sources. Would you believe this hallway had the normal hallway lights? Yeah, the settings washed those out easily, so the room looks dark. I was also going for speed, so this session actually only took 15 minutes to do. That includes setup and dismantle.

For poses, any look can work but thankfully lowkey lighting works great for sad, concerned, or frustrated, but also can work for most other emotions. This makes for a really nice photo session because you can often start with that apprehensive feeling a lot of people have regarding getting photographed, immediately show them how cool you can make them with just that feeling, and then easily get them to relax and show other, happier emotions. It’s just a really cool photo style and worth understanding.

3 tips for an easy photo session.

These are from a quick photo session or more like “hmm I’ve wasted a holiday week and should really do SOMETHING!” sort of photo session. So here are some quick tips so you can do that too.

First, get a hat. Baseball hats are okay, but fancy hats are better and more fun. And I am not just talking about kids, adults you can do this too. Everyone has at least thought once or twice “wow I’d look cool in fancy hat” and everyone would be correct. Get a fancy hat, where something casual and watch the works happen.

Second, try for golden hour with one caveat: golden hour is only good if you have a decent location. If you surround yourself with buildings and block out any horizon, then golden hour kind of becomes pointless. So how do you find a good golden hour location? Easy – about 30 minutes before golden hour for a nice relaxing walk with the intent of finding a good location for golden hour. Pay attention to where the sun, what the horizon looks like, and what the lights and shadow looks like. It sounds complicated but when you go for the walk and find the spot it will all make sense.  Don’t forget to look up when golden hour is as it changes depending on the time of the year. You learn to appreciate the summer and winter solstices.

Third, ask for attitudes. Everyone has them and if you know which attitude your subject is leaning towards then veer into it. Often that will take them off guard and get them to lighten up a little. After that, getting other emotions gets easier and if it doesn’t then go with the attitude and get good shots of that instead.

Photography exercises to practice.

One goal you need to be constantly working towards is figuring out how to use the light you have to bring out your subjects. Two key areas are filling in shadows on the subject and bringing the subject out from the background. Both are very vague as they will depend on what you are trying to do but

An easy way to get the hang of bringing your subject out from the background is get a black sheet, have your subject wear black, and have at it with your lights. After a little frustration you will get the hang of it and have the basics ready for you next photo session. The reason I recommend black is that black absorbs light, making this whole exercise a bit more challenging.

As for dealing with shadows, we are in the key and fill light territory. In that area you just need practice. However, you might want to jump into low-key lighting which deals with heavy shadows to really get an understanding what is going on with your shadows on a larger scale. Alternatively, you could try Rembrandt lighting, which is just another form of low-key lighting.

Anyway, this was a two-light setup. There was an overhead light that was creating a backlight cone which helped to separate the subject from the background and a light just up front with an octagon softbox and a grid. If I didn’t use a grid, then the light would washout the backlight and defeat the point of it.

Another simple photography trick.

Often, candlelight is too dark to use when you are using other sources of light. This means you can either work with them in processing or you can do some fun lighting hijinks if you have the lights and gels to make it happen. For this post I’ll explain how to use your lights and gels to make a lantern look like it has a bright candle in it. Please note, this is just one piece of a bigger puzzle, presumably you’d have more in your photo then just a lit lantern, but this explains how to get the lantern part of it down.

By no means is this the only method.

Anyway, for this trick you want a lantern, a speedlight, a gel, and someway to affix the speedlight behind the lantern. For this setup here, I went with the easy chair setup but with proper placement you could have someone holding the lantern. I put the lantern down on the chair and placed the speed light behind it. Without a gel you get a bright white light. At this point you should experiment with how bright you want it and how high up you want it, understanding that if you put it too high you might have to edit out the speed light.

After that I added a warmer gel color and eventually added a candle. You can play around with this setup and really tweak it to where you want to get it. If you have a person holding the lantern you might want to have a light on them with a gel that has a similar color to the gel you are using aimed at them to make it look like the candle lighting their face some.

It is another neat little trick that is worth practicing because you can do so much with it.

#marylandphotographer #annearundelphotographer #photographytips

Coming in from a Frame

A quick and easy update because I will be back from a photo session over the weekend. More on that later if I can get the permission to post about it.

Anyway, I’ve a seen a lot of “people coming out of picture frames” or “climbing out of a picture frame into our reality or whatever you call it” photos lately. They are relatively easy to make and are similar to the floating photos I’ve done in the past but are even easier to make then those. It is a four-step process, but you need to use a tripod for these and have access to a PC with photo processing tools that can do layers:

1)      Photograph the location without the subject.

2)      Photograph the location with the subject holding the picture frame.

3)      In your processing tools, take the two photos and stack the one with the subject on a layer over the one without.

4)      Erase the parts of the subject you want out of the photo. In this case, I erased almost everything except her upper body.

You may want to do minor details, like have your subject hold the from the inside to help with the illusion and maybe even work in a different background for the inside of the picture frame (though that does make lining things up more difficult. Also be mindful of where you want shadows – if you want shadows.

Bonus tip 1: Start with the subject and let auto-focus set your focus for your, then turn it off and DO NOT MOVE THE TRIPOD. Then photograph the area without the subject with your focus already set since you switched it to manual.

Bonus tip 2: Try and take a classy photo, that way if you mess something up you still end up with usable photos.

All in all, this is a good photography project to try as it shows you some photo processing basics, basic storytelling, and focusing tricks you can carry on to other photography projects.