day 19 - one light does the work of three

today was a bit of a technical challenge.... i wanted to use one flash to provide three light sources. so i set up my flash (sb-28, of course) on a light stand behind me. i angled it down so that it provides hard rim light across my shoulders and head. then i set up, in front of me and camera right, a white reflective posterboard, angled to catch light from the flash spilling past me and reflcting it back up onto my face. thirdly i set up alisia's beauty mirror on the floor camera left, and angled it so that it would reflect hard light back up in an uplighting fashion.

it was difficult without a modeling light or assistance to have the mirrored light hit where i wanted it to everytime.... i'm not sure what it's doing in the picture up there, probably illuminating my leg or something important like that.

as you can see, one light has enough to make a well lit picture. it's a bit more difficult to work the ratios this way.... you can't just dial your reflective flash's power down like you normally would. here you have to rely more on the inverse square law, and if you want say the reflective source lower, move it further away from the subject. for higher, the opposite. the problem with that is as the reflective source gets further away, it also gets relatively smaller, and as a result, harder.

here's the setup shot, other information is in the metadata:

From tim's 365 (this is my year)

ruminations

i was reading malcolm gladwell's "outliers" the other day, and got to the part where he talks about iq tests. there's a section where he mentions that there are basically two kinds of iq tests, convergent and divergent.

a convergent test is where you're given a set of facts and then asked to converge on the right answer. in this type of a test, there's only one right answer, and it's your job to figure it out. for example, what number comes next in this series: 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 16, ____?  there's only one answer, only one way to evaluate what's going on here, only one interpretation that fits the information given. [it's 22, each new number is the old number plus (n+1)].

a divergent test is one where you're given facts and then asked to interpret or use those facts in ways that diverge.... the example given in the book is the brick and blanket test. basically you're given 60 seconds to come up with as many ways to use a brick as you can, then 60 seconds to come up with as many ways to use a blanket as you can. you're scored based on how many different things you came up with, and how different they are from each other. example answer:

brick:
to smash things
to use as a paperweight
to grind up and use as pigment
to build a house with
to play catch with......

i was thinking about these two types of iq tests, and i came to the conclusion that what i like about photography is that it requires both types of intelligence. you have to both converge on answers (why isn't there any light on this area, how can i get more light over here without ruining over there.....) and diverge (what other ways can i set up my lights and camera, what would it look like if i did this setup, or put the flash over there.....)

i think when i first started taking pictures i didn't explore the divergence side very much. i saw how people set up lights traditionally, and i did the same thing. my goal was to converge onto the same solution other people had converged upon.

now, though, converging seems less interesting. diverging is where it's at. how many different ways can i set things up? is there some other way to do things that would make the picture better? what are some other ways people do this sort of thing? are they better?

diverging has more failure, it seems. most of the time, trying something new doesn't work. but i think it's important. divergence gets you halfway there, then you add some convergence to make the picture work. that seems to be the formula i'm following these days.

well, that and trying to master other people's kung fu.

day 18 - rembrandt light

this is rembrandt light. rembrandt light has several defining characteristics:

     1. the shadow from the tip of the nose extends down to the corner of the mouth
     2. there is a triangle of light on the cheek that is farther from the light.

rembrandt light isn't flattering to everyone's face. it's not doing me many favors up there, that's for sure. i have deep set eyes, and in order for the light to get up under there, i almost have to be looking straight up at the light. but if i look up too far, i lose the nose shadow, and it's no longer a true rembrandt.

done correctly, the rembrandt setup lends weight and importance to the subject.... there's a lot of associations with nobility, since you're looking up into the light, and since it was nobility who were paying rembrandt's bills.

strobist info:
nikon d60 on a tripod. iso 200, 1/125th of a second f3.5
sb-28 at 1/2 power through beauty dish, about 5 feet above and to the left of the camera.

day 17 - softly lit outside night landscape

"do the softly lit outside night landscape thing. use the big ass softbox, and take more than one picture.... one with softbox lighting something, one without. keep the ambient low for both, but present so that you can see clearly that there is no lightsource in the one w'out a light. merge the two pictures together in photoshop."

i saw this guy's online portfolio once, and he had all these amazing night shots, where ordinary objects were amazingly well lit with no apparent lightsource in sight:

http://www.timsimmons.co.uk/index.php

and after thinking about it for awhile, i think the way he's accomplishing this is he locks his camera down on a tripod, then takes multiple exposures with big light sources in the frame, then uses photoshop to mask out any evidence of his light source. like with this one:

http://www.timsimmons.co.uk/gallery/Palm-Springs-Airport-Fence-2004.jpg

yeah, it's fantastic. so i tried to reverse engineer it and do something similar myself. so this is my backyard, and that's one of my chairs right there. i used a 40" alienbee softbox with a sb-28 stuck in the speedring to light this, set at 1/8th power. took 3 shots, moving the softbox each time. then i composited it together in photoshop, exported it, and here it is.

it's a fun technique, and it's pretty easy to do. this was really just a test, to see how hard the easiest possible version of this would be.

strobist info:
nikon d60 iso 100, 4sec exp at f3.5
sb-28 in a 40" softbox 1/8th power, triggered 3 times via pw.

day 16 - glow people

i saw a photography blog recently that had a photographer shooting celebrities, and he had, all on camera right, a softbox, a beauty dish, and a small softbox. one above the other, the small softbox for uplighting, the beauty dish for directional, and the large softbox for his main.

he didn't explain any of it, but i thought it was great, the way he was essentially creating this extra large wrapping light source on camera right. light was hitting his subjects from slightly above, from their left, and from slightly below. and the effect was wonderful. it looked like his subject was glowing almost. you couldn't easily tell where the light source was coming from, it almost seemed to be coming from within.

so that's what i wanted to do with this picture. i set up a silver reflective 42" umbrella high camera right, my homemade beauty dish level with my face, camera right and my lumiquest sb3 on axis with the camera, just below frame. here, this is the basic setup, just imagine a silver reflective high camera right:

From tim's 365 (this is my year)

that's my beauty dish on the right, and the top of the lumiquest sb3 at the bottom... and of course my awesome gym shorts complete the ensemble.

i was planning on using the reflective 42" as my main light source, and set it to 1/4 power initially, but then i decided i liked the beauty dish to be stronger in the mix, so i powered that up to full, and let the 1/4 silver umbrella work mostly as a fill. and of course, the sb3 is my uplight.

the camera is propped on a bookshelf, so there's not a lot of great focusing going on. i put a vignette on in lightroom, and darkened some pictures we still haven't hung up in photoshop. that's it. you want more info? check the metadata. i'm out.

day 15 - gradient control

for this one i wanted to explore having two opposing gradients on a background, one that goes from light to dark above the other, which is going from dark to light. i was hoping that some tension would come out of it, that the top would be pushing forward while the bottom pulls back.

but no tension ever emerged. instead all i have is a bubble of light that merges with another bubble of light. very little tension. very little contrast.

not a complete failure, though. i have a new thought for this approach..... move one of the lights a few feet off the wall, and use it to illuminate a subject. the opposing lights would then create contrast between the dark side of the subject and the light side of the wall, and vice versa.

i think it's going to work. and i think that will create the tension i'm looking for. it's just one step forward, conceptwise. i'll do a post showcasing this expanded idea soon.

day 14 - mailbox at night

 

mailbox at night. it's weird, how accustomed to shooting in my living room i get.... tonite i wanted to get out, go across the street, and hit this mailbox. the original idea was to get some out of focus headlights in the background, but sadly at 2am there wasn't a passing car to be found. so instead i shot the ground the mailbox is firmly affixed to.

side note - i'm manual focusing this one..... my 50mm lens has screw-driven autofocus, and my nikon d60 can't handle that sort of thing. so until i get my act together and buy a d3, it's all manual focus with the 50mil. my advice? shoot a lot. even if you think the focus on the last one was dead on, shoot some more.

words to live by.

strobist info: got one light, an sb-28 on a stand high camera left, with a cto gel through a 42" umbrella. it's probably at 1/4 power or so. i'm hand holding my d60 at 1/2 second and f1.8 -- that's why the non-flash affected areas are a bit shaky looking. after correcting for the cto cut on the flash, the streetlight went a nice shade of green -- i thought it made a nice color contrast. that's it.

day 13 - b/g/w cube

this idea is from a how-to-light dvd i watched a while back. it was more of a light-the-movie-set type tutorial, but it had some great information in there that applies to photography as well.

so, the goal of this shot is to take a picture of a white paper cube so that one side is white, one side is grey, and one side is black, using only lighting techiniques. my solution was to have the naked light source on the white, a reflector (piece of white paper) on the grey (adjusting the distance to control the shade of grey), and a piece of black construction paper as a subtractive fill on the black side (just outside of the frame). and there it is.

to make it more of a challenge for myself, i actually did this three times, changing each time which side was white, which side was black, and which side was grey. once you know the principles involved, it's not that difficult.

strobist info: there's actually no flash involved with this one. i used a desklamp with a bare bulb about six inches away from the cube (the cube is probably a 1/2 inch square on each side). then a sheet of white paper as a reflector for the top, and black paper as subtractive fill for the left. i used my old camera, a sony dsc-v1 in manual mode, at 1/4 second f4.0 -- slight vignette in lightroom and a curves adjust, and that's it.

day 12 - as above, so below

for this one, two light sources, both hard, one above and one below. i don't do a lot of hard light, and i think it's something i should probably work on. seems like there's a lot of great possibilities for using hard light creatively... and that's what i'm going for here.

i'm not really that cocky, it's just the light.

the shadow on the ceiling was an unexpected bonus. i did a little adjustment brush action in lightroom, tried to hide the couch behind me, and toned down the color shift on the ceiling, and that's it. 

seriously, my arms are not that big.

strobist info:
nikon d60 on a tripod, iso 100 1/125th of a second, f8.0
sb-28 at my feet, at 1/8th power
sb-28 above my head, at 1/4 power, cto gel, zoomed in.

day 11 - beauty light

work one big soft light source above, one small light source below. maybe gel one or the other for some color contrast in there.

this is a slight variation on a beauty light.... that's about as beautiful as i get right there. for this shot i set up an umbrella high camera left with a cto gel on it at 1/4 power. then, another sb-28 at 1/16th power through a lumiquest sb3 low camera right, aimed up at me. the raw daylight balanced lumiquest light comes thorugh with a blue tint to it after the white balance is adjusted for the cto gel on my main. that, combined with the uplighting effect from it's position created this really soft, almost hollywood look.

the light on the wall behind me isn't a bad photoshop dodge and burn, it's actually the result of my shadow from the lumiquest darkening the wall on the left side of the picture. i put a vignette on there in lightroom, and that's it.

one unexpected thing is that my eyes have different specular highlights, my right one has the 42" umbrella, and my left has the sb-3. it looks a bit odd, i'm not gonna lie. 

strobist info:
nikon d-60, iso 100 1/25th second @ f3.5
sb-28 high camera left through a 42" umbrella at 1/4 power, cto gel
sb-28 low camera right through a lumiquest sb3 at 1/16 power