question the tools (Tim Lewis Photography)

Saturday Market / Occupy Eugene

2011-10-15T23:09:00.000-07:00

Went down to the Saturday Market today, to do a bit of street photography, and came across the beginnings of an Occupy Everywhere style protest. A lot of cool people, with cool signs and a message. The Oregonian says there were about 2000 people in attendance, which is pretty big for a town this small. Got a few shots i liked, there were a ton of other photographers around, so I'm sure it's well documented. Good times.

Click here to see more.

camera projector background

2011-10-12T09:54:00.000-07:00

I found this article the other day online about modifying an old film camera into being a type of flash-powered projector. A bit of work destroying an old camera I had laying around, and it was done. It's interesting, I got slightly different results..... that lighting pattern behind me there is the front lens of my flash, projected up on the wall. A fun project, and all it took was one destroyed camera.

Natural Light Nature

2011-09-07T01:40:00.000-07:00

i've always found natural light nature shots to be kinda cliche and a bit boring.... i guess i just haven't found a way to put my stamp on it yet. i really just look at it as a way to try and make an image as interesting as possible, while limiting yourself to no lighting, and very few camera tricks or techniques. it's a bit of a technical challenge, but sometimes it all works together correctly, and you wind up with a great image or two.

click on if you want to see more....

Reprocessing old shots

2011-08-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

i've been going back through old shots and reworking them w' new techniques and approaches. it's interesting to see how much a successful picture relies on the post processing and editing involved. mediocre shots can become interesting images when the processing supports the image, rather than detracting from it......

more after the jump.

Backyard Spiderweb

2011-08-20T11:34:00.000-07:00

thinking about starting a "found architecture" project. looking for designed patterns whereever i can find them, and then photographing them. this one was in our backyard, i spritzed it with water to reveal the pattern a bit more, much to the chagrin of the architect..... but i like the effect.

yousuf karsh style

2011-08-12T03:48:00.000-07:00

i've been studying the greats of photography, and worked my way up to yousuf karsh. he had an amazing style, especially for having been working back in the '40s and '50s.

doing a karsh style image is a pretty big technical challenge. there's a lot of lights in play, and a lot of minute adjustments needed to get just the right angle on everything. the specular reflections on the skin is especially important and difficult to achieve.

but all told it's a very rewarding style. this is only my first attempt, i plan to explore this approach much more thoroughly in the future, it seems to be very rich with possibilities.

Whiteaker Block Party Pictures

2011-08-07T05:54:00.000-07:00

had a little bit too good of a time.

I went to the Whiteaker Block Party today, and got a few shots off before my camera battery ran out. For those of you not familiar with Eugene culture, the Whiteaker is the most Eugene of the neighborhoods, and they throw a free block party every year. Block off some streets, a bunch of bands and djs play, and everyone has a good time. Click through for more pictures.

got his eye on the door

always more fun to talk on a cell phone while in the middle of a crowd

bike valets

guy screenprinting tshirts on the spot

a band performs

very fashionable

best view

line for food cart

guy checks out spotlight in wonder

Ninkasi's Food Cart Cook-off

2011-08-02T00:34:00.000-07:00

I attended the 2nd annual Ninkasi Food Cart Cook-off last Sunday, and was there to witness Devour take the First Place Prize as voted for by the attendees. I got a lot of good crowd shots, and was able to document some of the more colorful individuals in attendance. Click through for more pictures.

Spencer's Butte, Eugene Oregon

2011-07-31T13:55:00.000-07:00

just a quick handheld hdr shot. thought it came out kinda nice.

Bite of Eugene - Street Photography

2011-07-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

dude loves apples.

Took my camera out yesterday to the "Bite of Eugene" festival extravaganza yesterday. I really just walked around and tried to take pictures of interesting looking people before the light faded and things got too dark to shoot well. Got a few good shots, click through to see 'em all.

bouncy castle overrun by adults

dragon tamed

here comes the hot stepper

Adventure Galley Plays

guy in a shirt quoting ben franklin eats dessert

awesome hat guy texts away

got places to be, man

people flirtin

incredulous

backlit dreads

Compositing Away

2011-07-13T04:54:00.000-07:00

Starting to work on more concept based stuff, Trying to get to a point where doing a composite and edit is second nature like lighting and shooting has become. This is just a quick idea that a guy might try to fly without having the proper resources or know-how. Doesn't usually end well.

now that's a one light setup!

2011-02-06T23:15:00.000-08:00

i went to a workshop last year put on by zack arias.... he's a big proponent of the "one light" aesthetic, where you keep your lighting setup very simple.... one light source, and that's it. while i respect that in a purist sense, i almost always want to set up a light for the subject, a light for the background, a rim light, an uplight...... the list goes on and on.

so for this post, i wanted to see how far i can get to that goal using only one light. i used dean collin's trick of using a translucent panel with a light behind it as my main, and then manipulating the raw light that goes past the panel to provide my rim and fill.

it doesn't take any longer to set up than setting up three or four lights would.... the sacrifice you make comes in the form of being able to easily adjust the ratios of the lights against each other.... if i wanted to make the background darker, say, or the uplight or rim light stronger, it would involve changing the relative distances to the lightsource, or putting up thicker material as a scrim, or moving farther away or closer to the background. it's not impossible, it just requires a lot more creativity in your approach.

i'd like to do a project where i recreate all my favorite lighting setups with only one light.... it would definitely be a challenge. i'd have to buy a lot more mirrors and reflectors and goboes.

-tim feb'11

chris, erika, and slayden

2011-01-07T07:41:00.000-08:00

a couple of pictures i took last october, of chris erika and slayden. i was really happy with how they came out. they have one of the happiest babies (slayden) i've ever met. it was a fun shoot.

tones

2011-01-01T05:26:00.000-08:00

i've been trying to preserve tonal range and qualities in my post processing work lately, and i feel like with these i'm getting closer to what i want to see. a lot of good tones and colors in the backgrounds, and some decent stuff in the foreground. i have no idea what that pink thing is. alien seed pod? weird cabbage? super mario brothers level boss? seriously. no idea.

post growth

2010-12-29T20:54:00.000-08:00

i'm always working on taking pictures. i figure that great lighting is the key to great pictures. so, mastering lighting is the most important thing i can do. however, every now and then i realize that lighting isn't everything.

for example, this picture. i took this picture a year ago. i processed it, decided it wasn't very good, and left it to sit on my hard drive, forgotten. then the other day i was going through my old pictures and i came across it. so i reprocessed it, and decided it was decent. so here i am posting it.

what's interesting to me isn't how i thought it was crap, and now i think it's good. the interesting part of the story is that how i go about doing my post-processing has changed dramatically in the last year. i used to emphasize dark, ominous shadows and heavy handed contrast. now i emphasize a wider tonal range and crispness.

i think the best thing about my day-to-day practice regimen is that i have to go from start to finish, all the way through the process. set up lights, take pictures, edit pictures, run post processing, photoshop where necessary, export, post..... by practicing the entire workflow, i slowly, gradually improve step by imperceptible step. until a year later i can rework an image from something crap into something decent.

2010 is almost over.....

2010-12-28T04:56:00.000-08:00

in the last year, i took 25,700 pictures. i like to think that if you show up and do the work, the results will come. so while i'm pleased that my shutter count is up there, i wish it were much higher. but i'll get there.

a cold rain's gonna blow...

2010-12-20T16:46:00.000-08:00

alisia

2010-12-15T11:10:00.000-08:00

headshot

2010-12-09T14:51:00.000-08:00

this is a professional headshot i did for Dr. Paulina Caban ND. it's the typical headshot setup, beauty dish high camera right, reflector under the chin, i put a large-ish octa-type light behind her, to make it super easy to get a clean white background. i'm pleased with how it came out. it's a good moment, good viewer interaction, and a hard-to-mess-up lighting setup. done and done.

not amused

2010-12-07T00:33:00.001-08:00

back in the lab

2010-11-29T23:19:00.000-08:00

split lighting. man, i have never really cared for it. but i figured i should probably explore it anyways, just to make sure i'm not missing something amazing that everyone else has figured out years ago.

anyways. so this is my interpretation of it. i've got a big soft fill floated out in front of me to throw a lot of wrapping light onto the dark side of my face, and then a gridded snooted 3 degree flash basically doing an accent light on the left side of my face. add a light for the background, and a light into a reflector on the floor for a bit of up bouncing light, and there it is.

one thing i do like is how the accent/split light is defining shape and texture across my face and clothing. i could definitely see using this technique to define someone's musculature and edge out every muscle group, while at the same time not letting the shadow areas go to black.

so that's something to keep in mind.

setup shot:

hdr photoshop

2010-11-19T14:33:00.000-08:00

this is a picture i did for a local business. i quite like how it came out. i feel like this is a step in a more commercial direction for my work. i just bumped up the amount of ram on my mac, so now i can do more intensive photoshop things, and not get the spinning beach ball of death every two minutes. plus it seems like my vision is moving beyond the "purist structure" of only using lightroom, and only tweaking the image so far. now i'm more interested in what mood and concept i can create, how many ideas i can pack into a single image, and still make it captivating and visually interesting. it's an interesting new dimension i can explore. i'm looking forward to it.

hacking hipstamatic

2010-11-18T00:57:00.000-08:00

so, i found a post by isayx3 that talked about how to apply effects from the iphone app "hipstamatic" to your photos in photoshop. it's fun, and pretty easy to do. basically hipstamatic has some gradient blob images that it overlays on your iphone pictures to make a "light leak" effect. kinda like when the back of your old 35mm film camera didn't close up tight enough, and light got in and contaminated the film.

of course, with the hipstamatic app, you can't control it much. you press the button, and maybe you get a cool image, maybe you don't. pull apart the app, drop the gradients into photoshop, and suddenly there's a lot more options. you can choose your blend modes, you can play with opacity, with position, mask bits out, rotate the blobs around.... there's a lot of options.

it's a fun effect. it has a retro feel, since modern (usually digital) cameras don't have a back door that can accidentally let light in. or film to be contaminated in the first place. so it makes the picture feel like it's of an older generation. like it had been taken with film, on a beat up old 35mm camera.

it's interesting how aesthetic choices like putting a gradient blob on a picture can evoke certain responses in viewers. as photographic prints age, the whites yellow, and the blacks take on a blue tint. when you dig a picture up out of a forgotten drawer or ancient chest, it's going to look that way. and with photoshop and modern digital images, you can manipulate pictures taken recently to look like they've been forgotten and aged for a couple of decades. you can push that button in a viewer's head, just by shifting the colors around a bit.

of course, digital images don't fade and color shift like that. which means twenty, thirty years from now pictures taken these days won't have yellowed whites and blue shadows. they'll look exactly like they do now. maybe by then photography technology will have progressed to the point that our current pictures will have a certain "look" to them, a certain charming simplicity, just because they're not in holographic 3-d, or whatever breakthroughs in technology will occur in the next two or three decades.

seems like the past often looks quaint. i just wonder what it is about the pictures we take today will look simple and "retro" in hindsight.

faces of eugene - 003

2010-11-15T10:59:00.000-08:00

new hdr composites

2010-11-06T05:17:00.000-07:00

a few new pictures..... the backgrounds here are hdr shots, 5 exposures blended to give that wide range of tones, and then the foreground subjects were shot on grey paper, and composited on top later.

i want to begin to focus more on composite type images... there's a lot that can be done with these types of techniques. and it's much easier to shoot someone in the studio than it is to get them out at some random location.

what do you think?

that ridiculous smile

2010-10-25T17:29:00.001-07:00

my new diffusion screen

2010-10-21T03:38:00.000-07:00

a couple of months ago i ordered a bunch of ripstop nylon online. i found a seamstress here in eugene that knew what she was doing, and i had her stitch it up into a 7' by 5' panel, with pvc pipes as a frame. now i basically have a super large panel i can put between a light source and my subject, and bounce super soft light at them.

the best thing about this setup, in my opinion, is that if youre bouncing light through the panel, there's still a lot of hard light going past the edge of the panel. so you have this raw undiluted light that you can use to light a background, or bounce back with a mirror or reflector or just let wash around the room and provide a bit of ambiance.

i'm not doing any of those things here. in this picture i'm using my diffusion panel as a super large uplight fill. i've got two sb-28s pounding light up from beneath it, almost enough to compete with my ab-800 powering down from above with a hard-ish beauty dish.

so yeah, loving the diffusion panel. so many uses. it's like the world's largest softbox, without the sides. you can't go wrong with it.

faces of eugene - 002

2010-10-14T17:16:00.001-07:00

faces of eugene - 001

2010-10-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

i've started a personal project -- a series of "dignified portraits" where i'm approaching people i don't know and asking to make their portrait. so many people don't have access to getting a professional portrait made, i wanted to give people that might not be able to have a portrait made a chance to get a professional portrait. this is the first picture of the series.... taken at river road and the beltline.

down-town

2010-10-11T17:25:00.000-07:00

i went downtown today to scout out some photo locations. ran into a friend of mine, who quickly became my test subject. didn't bring a flash with me, just my camera and the unusually-bright-for-eugene sunlight. i found a few good places to shoot in the future.... it was good to get a bit outside of my comfort zone, shoot without a flash and a studio. makes things feel new. makes things feel fresh.

first from new studio

2010-10-04T02:47:00.000-07:00

it's been a while.

since my last post, we've moved across country, and now we live back in eugene, oregon again. it's good to be back. we've moved into a place with a big garage, which i've promptly taken over and turned into something of a studio. gone are the days of low ceilings and rearranging furniture. now i can shoot wider, and put lights higher than ever before. these are exciting days to be alive.

anyways. for this shot, i wanted to get some strong color gels on things, and pop out the subject with a gridded white flash. it's all hard light, which made for some interesting shadows on the background. it was a good experiment. something to try next time i'm in front of an interesting or crazy looking wall.

it's good to be back.

setup shot:

no text. just picture.

2010-08-27T05:59:00.000-07:00

baha'i temple

2010-08-20T03:26:00.000-07:00

the only baha'i temple in north america, and i live maybe two miles from it......

i dragged a tripod along, and tried a few hdr shots of it.... it was a nice cloudy day, so i tried to bring the clouds out without making it look too fake..... hdr has that grungy quality that it brings to everything, it didn't really flatter the building, it more just made it look like it was set in one of the lord of the rings movies..... but there it is. i might go back and try reprocessing a few of the hdrs, see if a decent mask and cut layering job will bring the tonal range without the grunge..... so, maybe more to come?

chicago

2010-08-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

i'm gonna miss it.

self satisfied

2010-08-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

i've been getting bored with desaturated things here lately, so i decided to pursue doing a really strong background color gradient for a change. i have a roll of white seamless paper in my living room, but i usually only use it as a 3/4 backdrop, since pulling it out can be such a pain.

the biggest problem i encountered on this shot was getting enough distance between myself and the background to maintain separate lighting situations. i didn't want key light to spill from the front to the back, or blue background light to spill from the back to the front. the key to keeping things separate is distance, or if you don't have distance, you can gobo it.

luckily our living room is just long enough to do the job. i decided i wanted the key light gridded.... so that i'm sortof half silhouette and half properly exposed. i used a reflector to fill a bit on the dark side of my face, and let everything under my arms go to black. the blue background lights were set to fill with the center just slightly hotter than the sides, and i set up a gridded flash flying in the middle to make the clean center glow.

all in all, it came out allright. i would like the glow to be a bit tighter, and maybe the blue not quite so saturated, but then again, i did this so i would have some color up on the blog again, so maybe not......

i guess i'm ready to start shooting cheesy glamour stuff now.

setup shot:

also in the arsenal

2010-08-02T05:27:00.000-07:00

so, i've been trying to shoot more and talk less lately. trying to get to know some of my less-often used modifiers, and trying to reverse engineer a few things i've seen people do here and there online. so in the spirit of all of that, here's a bunch of pictures i've taken here lately, with setup shots and nothing else. enjoy.

experiments with light

2010-07-27T00:06:00.000-07:00

retouchified

2010-07-22T23:01:00.000-07:00

i've been working on mastering the amy dresser technique of retouching.... this is my first real attempt at using it. it's pretty different than my usual technique. i can see how using it aggressively could result in some really fake looking images.... but i usually lean toward the less-retouched, more textured results, so i think i should be allright.

this shot was taken with a 42" shoot-through umbrella providing light for alisia's face. the background is the front of my medium sized alien bee softbox. i just set it up and kept taking test shots, increasing the power each time until the background was snapping to white. it didn't take long.

anyways. i'm pretty happy with the results here. alisia looks great, and the snap-to-white background is quick and easy to do. done and done.

flared

2010-07-20T10:27:00.000-07:00

i saw zack arias do a similar shot a while back, and i wanted to play with this lens flare idea... so i set up two lights shooting straight into the camera. at first i thought a reflector would be enough to fill the middle, but that proved too unwieldy, so i brought in the big gun, my 40" softbox. from there it was easy to power up and down until i had just the right amount of fill.

setup shot:

hot lights

2010-07-19T01:38:00.000-07:00

i got the idea recently to do a setup with a mix of flash and continuous lights, each illuminating a different part of the subject. that way the cont light creates a blurry action feel, and the flash creates a sharp, detailed component. i don't have any studio hot lights though, so i had to grab a desk lamp and the base of a lava lamp to provide the continuous part.

these setups are just fun. you never know what you're going to get, there's an interesting color twist to it, and the more motion you put into it the better the shot comes out. i think the next time i do this setup i'll get someone with long hair, or some kind of swinging element to incorporate into the shot.

camera info:
on a tripod, at f 2.8, iso 100, 1/3rd of a second.

bonus super action shot:

setup shot:

onelight workshop

2010-07-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

i attended a onelight workshop on monday, put on by zack arias. it was a really great experience, meeting a lot of amazing photographers, and getting to listen and ask zack questions..... the whole thing was invaluable. about halfway through the workshop, we broke into groups and broke out our cameras. at first zack set up the lighting and shot, but at the end we were freed to set up our own shots and do things for ourselves. here's a few pictures i got from the event:

so, i had a great time, met some great photographers, and got a few new ideas that i'll be exploring over the course of the next few months with my photography. if you have any questions about the workshop, or how any of these pictures were shot, ask away and i'll get back to you as quick as i can.

alisia + grandma

2010-07-07T11:34:00.001-07:00

jp

2010-07-01T02:52:00.000-07:00

hdr experiment

2010-06-29T01:52:00.000-07:00

i keep wanting to like hdr, i really do. but i'm just not feeling it. anyways, alisia looks really great here. so that's something.

i think this is the one i'm allergic to

2010-06-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

like meisel

2010-06-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

i've been studying the work of a lot of fashion photographers lately, and i came across an ad campaign by steven meisel the other day, for lanvin. he did a series of shots where he was duplicating half of the image in photoshop and flipping it around, to make a whole out of two halves. the effect was really interesting, surreal but not immediately identifiable. since i've been working on my photoshop a bit here lately, i thought i'd give it a shot.

so this is my initial attempt. i'm about to modify the idea slightly.... i have a few tweaks to try that i think will improve the overall concept.... the lighting in my shot isn't as good as in his. i was thinking one hard light source would create a lot of interesting shadow areas on the form, but the hard light created problems in terms of facial symmetry, and took away some of the close-to-reality-but-a-little-bit-off quality that meisel's picture has. adding a soft fill light will probably help.

version 2 coming soon......

shootin kids

2010-05-31T05:08:00.000-07:00

so i got the chance to shoot some kids down the street the other day. our neighbors have these two ridiculously cute kids, cedar and griffin (cedar is the girl, and griffin is the boy with the awesome mullet). i haven't really had much chance to shoot kids before.... it's not really an area i'm focused on, but i figured i could take a couple of risks and try going in some new directions.

so i put together two setups. the first is pretty straightforward portrait stuff. a softbox (with grid) for key, and a cto gelled flash behind the subject for a bit of golden sun-going-down-back-there light. i set up in the shade near our apartment, a row of bushes for background.

the second setup was in front of a old weathered wooden fence that was conveniently about ten feet away. for this concept i wanted to go in some new direction, so i set up a five light rig. i had a gridded 16" beauty dish for key, my ring flash with moon unit + big ring for fill, two hard back lights for rim, one on either side of the subjects, and one on the ground putting a dramatic gradient on the fence behind them.

it's amazing how one light can turn a boring old fence into some crazy dynamic background, y'know?

so yeah, two setups, one simple, one complex. it got a bit dicey, i didn't have the five light setup ready to go when they arrived, so i had to adjust my ratios on the fly..... never an ideal situation. but i guess that's part of the fun, making people wait while you troubleshoot and get things just perfect.

i'm pleased with how everything came out. nice to shoot outside of the living room, and i think the five light setup really went well. that picture up there of them making faces, especially. i guarantee you, five years from now, that's going to be their parent's favorite picture in the world.

bonus shots:

shot through a grid

2010-05-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

i was working a split light - low fill setup, and i was a bit bored with the results, so i grabbed my 20 degree grid and hung it just in front of the lens of my camera. it was close enough to the lens that the camera still autofocused through it, but it caught and diffused light in an interesting way that i liked.

i took this picture with the focus on the grid, just for reference's sake.

i keep looking around the apartment for other things to shoot through. it's harder than it sounds.

setup shots:

cheap triangle ring light

2010-05-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

i've been getting more and more into the work of michael muller, and the other day i came across these three pictures on his website that were obviously lit with a ring flash, but had unique triangular catchlights instead of the typical circle:

it's a cool twist.... i like the asymmetry of it, that the triangle "ring" is wider at the top than it is at the bottom.... it adds an interesting effect to the way the light falls on the subject's face.

so i was thinking about that, and i remembered the cold cathode tubes i bought a while back so i could do some light painting like this. i figured i'd give 'em a shot. i wired it all up, and velcro'ed the tubes into a triangle, shot through it at 1/60th of a second, f 1.8, iso 200, and got some good shots.

my tubes are blue and purple, so i had to desaturate the pictures a lot in order to for them to look decent. plus the tubes aren't as bright as they would be if they were the white ones..... looks like it's time to order some new ones from newegg.... and you can't beat the price, especially compared to my alien bee ring flash (400 american dollars for the abr vs.... maybe 25 dollars for the cathode tubes after shipping and radio shack battery packs and everything). for more information about light painting using cathode tubes, check out diyphotography.

it's not a perfect solution.... it would be more useful if my camera could operate decently at a higher iso.... and i don't think you're ever going to get that weird ring flash "dark halo" around your subject.... that's an idea, setup right up against a wall, see what kind of shadow the triangle throws. hmmm......

setup shot:

flowers and headlights

2010-05-06T06:09:00.000-07:00

big ring flash

2010-05-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

i have a sort of a love/hate relationship with ring flashes. i really like the glow-type feel they give to foreground subjects. but at the same time, i don't like how everything in the picture has the same diffused tone to it..... there's less contrast, since everything the camera can see is getting light from the ring flash.

so there's this kind of push-pull in me when it comes to using a ring flash.

one technique i've been using is to set up a gridded beauty dish high above the subject, and feather the light falling from above so that you get a bit of directional light to compliment the all-over ring glow. i've been getting some good results with that.

the picture above is me trying out my new "big ring" diffusion panel for my moon unit ring flash modifier. the moon unit is a modifier that sits around the ring flash, and reflects a lot of light forward. the big ring diffusion panel is a giant white ring with blacked out panels preventing any other light from coming through. it looks like this:

so the giant ring is the only light source in the picture of alisia up there at the top. since the ring is so large, it's not producing that tell-tale "dark halo" around her, but it's still giving her skin that glow, and creating those crazy reflections in her sunglasses. i really like it, it's doing everything i like in a ring flash, and not much of the stuff i don't like.

and as an added bonus, it creates crazy catchlights in people's eyes:

crazy smile

2010-04-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

i've been forcing myself to work only in black and white a lot here lately, following advice from David duChemin, and it's forced me to really focus on tones and contrast, instead of only paying attention to pretty colors like i usually do. i decided i needed a new facebook picture, so that was the goal here. i almost never smile in pictures, so i figured i'd give it a shot. i think it came out well.

setup shot:

spring trash the dress event

2010-04-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

this is a picture that was taken at last sunday's spring trash the dress event, coordinated by melissa diep. i wasn't really happy with the original shot, i like to have an idea of what the picture is going to look like in my head, and then try and move lights and adjust things until i've created the picture in the camera. with this setup though, i never really had a chance. it was a clear sunny day, mid-afternoon, nothing to provide shade, hard bright sunlight...... everything i avoid when choosing a setting or location.

so i didn't like my shot straight out of camera. after taking a hard look at it, i decided i would do a joyce tennison type treatment, cut the subject out of the background and treat each one separately, and maybe do some extensive toning and darkening of the background.

i'd never tried anything like that before, and it was a bit tricky, but ultimately easier than i had expected it to be. just one mask to separate, and then a lot of tweaks to make it look the way i wanted it to. it was a more design-like process than anything else.... you add an element, see if it adds or detracts from the overall image, and then try another, ad nauseum.

so yeah, not my usual style, but that's part of the charm. i might start trying this approach on pictures that i have more initial control over, instead of letting this be a "save the picture" approach.

meetup

2010-04-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

these are a few shots from a meetup i attended a while back. they came out really well. i applied a joel grimes-ish "wet look" to the picture up there in photoshop, and i think that was really successful. it just added a slight bit of slickness to the skin highlights that reads really well. i love it when i learn a new technique.

the new lens flare

2010-04-05T12:27:00.000-07:00

set this one up with my ring flash just outside of the frame, throwing a lot of light into the lens, crushing the black tones in the image and giving it a sort of action-y feel. i really nailed the focus on this one, for which i'm pretty happy.

setup shot:

red label

2010-03-31T17:46:00.000-07:00

i've wanted to try some product-style shots of a bottle or a glass of liquid for a while, i had heard of a technique involving cutting a hole in a board and then lighting the bottom of the bottle through the hole so that it has a sort of a glow to it. melissa diep set up a contest to take a picture of something red, so i grabbed this bottle of scotch and gave it a shot. i think it came out well.

setup shot:

a few new shots.....

2010-03-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

workshop pictures

2010-03-17T23:44:00.001-07:00

i went to a photography workshop on sunday, hosted by John LaVere, and got to play with all kinds of lights and modifiers and models. it was great fun, there were hot lights setup to burn in motion, strobes to freeze details, a makeup artist, and three different sets to work on.

it was really great getting into a real studio, and seeing how other people work. i mean, i know how i light, but i haven't had a lot of opportunity to see how other people light, and i think that's really valuable information to have. it at least shows you other possibilities, other potential ways of doing things that you might not have thought of, or don't currently have the equipment for, or whatever.

good times.

other pictures:

parabolic ring flash

2010-03-16T18:59:00.000-07:00

i got an 86" silver parabolic umbrella the other day, and wanted to take her out and see how she performs. for this shot, i set the umbrella (it's really huge. i mean, really really huge....) behind the camera, so it sorta functioned as a really big, really weird ring flash.

the parabolic umbrella is unlike other umbrella i have..... because of it's parabolic nature, it has really strong focal points, points at which a lot of light is focused at a small area. kinda like a flashlight with an adjustable spot. it's crazy, you can see the whole umbrella light up when you stand at the foci with the modeling lamp on. you really know when you're on your mark.

so yeah. i'm still getting to know the parabolic.... i'd love to take it outside, but i'm afraid of what an even small bit of wind would do to it..... i mean, it's more than seven feet across, and built like a sail....... i'd be lucky to catch it before it crossed the wisconsin border.......

almost forgot the setup-ish shot (this is what my living room's looking like these days):

nick

2010-03-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

i've been doing a lot of shooting against my white backdrop lately, and i got nick here to pose in front of it for a minute while i fired off a few rounds. i like the results, i've got to say. this is a four light setup, two light behind him, one just above and in front of him, barely out of frame, and one camera right, at low power to keep shadows from going too dark. i mean, drama is great and all, but if your subject's face is nothing but black hollow areas, that might be a problem.

ode

2010-03-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

these pictures are from about a month ago..... had to sit on 'em until the client let me release them out into the world. anyways, i took a few pictures of a band i know here in chicago playing live.... not really my thing, shooting live events, but some of the pictures came out really well, so i'm posting 'em here.

moody light

2010-03-09T14:15:00.000-08:00

i've been working the restricted light-thing for a couple of weeks now, trying to get optimal results, and this is just about the closest i've gotten so far to what i have in my head. my idea is to light the "front part" of the face more than the "back part" of the face, thereby wrapping the jawline in soft shadows, creating a sort of emerging from the darkness-mysterious look.

and of course tako had to be a part of it, so there she is, always the scene-stealer.

trying out a new style

2010-02-26T08:04:00.000-08:00

thought i'd try something new with my post-processing. so for this one i restricted the gamut in order to give it more of a film-from-the-70s look, and put a fairly heavy holga-ish vignette on it, tweaked the colors a bit, and that's it. it's not my usual super-modern style, but i think it's an interesting departure. i could see using this approach on a alt-country band, or someone really old. looks a bit like an action, but it's not. 100% hand crafted.

just another day at the office

2010-02-21T04:57:00.001-08:00

jen

2010-02-12T23:45:00.000-08:00

this is jen, i shot her the other day. this is just quick and dirty, f1.8 on the lens, small 24" softbox just above and in front of her face, and a silver/white reflector just out of frame below her chin. it worked well. the light source was very well controlled, the short depth of field worked to bring attention to her eyes, and the reflector created a more sophisticated lighting look to her face.

i'm pleased with it. i think we shot for 20 minutes and got up out of there. if it hadn't worked i had a backup plan or two, but luckily it worked. and that's it.

too many dresses, not enough trash

2010-02-11T15:25:00.000-08:00

another shot of nicole from the trash the dress shoot last sunday.... i took this one using a ringflash, i liked that crazy weathered wall, and thought the ringflash would look good on it. i don't usually use the ringflash as a ring, but i figured might as well give it a shot. it came out pretty well.

super cool hair and makeup provided by Diem Angie Nguyen.

bonus shots of adrianna:

and another

2010-02-10T14:14:00.000-08:00

another trashed dress

2010-02-09T17:41:00.000-08:00

another picture from the trash the dress session on sunday.... i like the mysterious quality of all the shadows and darkness in the picture.

picture from winter trash the dress shoot

2010-02-08T21:48:00.000-08:00

took this at a trash the dress photoshoot i attended on sunday. i like how this one came out, it was a great get together, great makeup artists, great models, everything was great. melissa diep put it all together, and she really made it great. more pictures to come.

btw...super cool hair and makeup provided by Diem Angie Nguyen.

smooth toned self portrait

2010-02-07T01:28:00.000-08:00

i was experimenting with different lighting setups, and in between two different settings i forgot to change the aperture on my camera from about f20 (i was using my alien bee at near full power) to something more reasonable for my sb-28 at 1/8th power.

so i took a picture at that ridiculous disparity, and saw this image. and i liked it. something about the way the shadows are wrapping, and the grey tones that are there are very smooth and nuanced..... i don't think it's the most amazing picture of me ever taken, but there is something nice about it's simplicity and ethereal-ness. it's not a look that is going to work on most people, but i like it.

old picture

2010-02-06T17:51:00.000-08:00

this is an old picture i never posted anywhere, i don't remember why. but i still have it, and i still like it, so i thought i would post it here. this is my friend corrina and her daughter. shot this in a park in eugene at sunset, i was standing on a bench to get the angle right, and the sun was setting behind them, giving that warmed up backlight glow.

i think this is the type of setting i'm going to have to start aiming for..... less in front of a wall, more outside with colorful things out of focus in the background.

i have a trash the dress shoot tomorrow, so i'm getting everything i'm going to need together. camera? check. softbox? check. light stands? check. smoke bombs? check. it's gonna be a good one.

white seamless

2010-02-04T18:34:00.000-08:00

so, i just bought some white seamless paper to use as a background, and this is my first attempt at doing the white with no detail thing. i think it went pretty well.... i didn't pull out quite enough of the paper, so i caught a bit of the light meant for the background on my face and clothes, had to do some dodging and burning in photoshop to even things out, but all in all it came out really well. tomorrow i'm getting a roll of charcoal seamless in the mail, that should be really sweet.

a pre-photoshop image:

hard light addon

2010-02-01T11:47:00.000-08:00

so, i'm usually trying to kill the ambient light in my pictures. however, i think that's something that i'm going to start moving away from.... move from all flash to a mix of flash and ambient. in this picture, it's almost all ambient, with a kicker flash, hard aimed at my face to wrap some dramatic shadows on me. camera left we have an open window, with grey skies outside throwing in cool light, and camera right we have an incandescent lamp throwing warmth up into the wall and ceiling.

i think it's a pretty good balance.... without the flash, my face is complete shadow. with it, i suddenly have ominous features and definition.

more to come.

ring flash

2010-01-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

i was trying to describe a ring flash to my friend jp, and he just wasn't getting it. so i did a quick setup and shot these demo pictures, so he could see how the camera + ring works. it's pretty simple, really. the camera lens looks through the hole in the center of the flash, that way when the flash goes off, there is a "ring" of shadow around the subject. hence, "ring flash". as you can see, it can be handheld, although it does tend to get a bit heavy after a while.

the back end:

sexy, isn't it?

photoshop kungfu

2010-01-16T01:51:00.000-08:00

i've been working on my photoshop kungfu, and this is an old picture i was using as practice.... i kinda like how it came out, so i'm posting it here. yay!

shadow play

2010-01-12T03:12:00.000-08:00

so, the idea originally for this one was that i wanted a pose that was casting a big shadow on the wall behind me. big shadow means the light source needs to be low and hard. so i set up the light low and hard. problem with that is low hard light makes people look terrible. you get all these weird face shadows.... it's like holding a flashlight under your chin to tell a scary story. not a good look 90% of the time.

so, the solution is to gobo the light coming up from below, so that there's a shadow area where your face is. and then gridspot a light from above to light up the face area. this way your face looks good, and you get the crazy shadow behind you.

this is my first attempt at this, and it's a quick and dirty proof of concept type thing. it works, it definitely works, but it could be a lot tighter than this. in this shot light from above is spilling past me and hitting the wall, eating away at my shadow a bit. and my gobo below is throwing a whole shadow area around my face, so that it looks as if my shadow has a giant soft-edged head.

with a little tweaking, both problems could be fixed. but this is just to see how easy this type of shot is. turns out, it's pretty easy. i could use this technique for any subject that is supposed to be formidable. be great to use this with short people most of all, have them stand in front of a huge brick wall or something.

setup shot:

hdr

2010-01-07T23:07:00.000-08:00

never really dug the hdr thing.... can't really use it for portraits, all that noise looks kinda stupid, blah blah blah. but it does do stuff like this kinda nice. and maybe i can figure out a way to make it do portraits or something.

oh, and that's our street right now. they say we might get 10" of snow. cool.

new equipment....yeaahhhhh!!!!!

2010-01-06T21:54:00.000-08:00

yep, so today i got some new equipment in. i got an alien bee 800, a vanguard battery pack, and an alien bee ringflash (that's the ab800 and ring flash up there in the picture). so yeah, two new flashes, each of which is three times as powerful as any flash i had before. and i'm not going to lie, these lights are pretty sexy.

so i spent most of today getting to know my new lights..... this is the honeymoon period, when we're exploring each other, finding out all those little quirks that are so delightful right now, and will drive you crazy in about a year.

but yeah, the best thing is that now i can throw huge amounts of light around. i still have my small flashes, and i'm still going to use them a lot, but anytime i need more power (for outside, or lighting a large area, or something far away..... whatever) i'm reaching for these.

so, like i said, we're still getting to know each other. but i took this picture, and i quite like it:

it's everything i'm drawn to in a picture. dark, moody, mysterious but lit well. i was using the ring light as a ring light, hence the ring shadow there..... probably will get tired of that look really quick..... but for now, i'm feeling it.

anyways. new lights are always exciting.

a few new shots.....

2010-01-04T13:46:00.000-08:00

day 365 - last day

2009-12-26T07:21:00.000-08:00

so, here it finally is, the last day of the 365..... it's been a good run. i've learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes, figured a lot of things out. it was a great learning experience, that's for sure. one of my rules for this was that i was going to keep things limited to lighting..... no crazy photoshoppin, no texturing or even dodging and burning of the images..... i wanted to get really great at lighting. and i think i have. i feel like i've really mastered my equipment at this point, i know what's going to happen if i put this umbrella here, and that reflector there. there's a predictability now that i never had before.

so what's next? well, since i've barely touched photoshop in so long, i probably need to re-up my game there. i'd like to start doing more composited type pieces, maybe start to work in some graphic design stuff on top of or behind my photography. and really start thinking in terms of concept more, and execution less. get back to my art school days, to try and make things that are solid conceptually, from beginning to end.

there are so many different types of things you can do in photography, and i want to get into all of them, really.

i'm really looking forward to shooting other people again. that'll be nice. not spending hour after hour staring at myself will be a welcome change.

i'll probably continue to put things here on this blog, but probably not as regularly as i have been. so that's it. see you people around.

setup shot:

day 364 - mirrored light paint

2009-12-23T15:25:00.000-08:00

i started this one out thinking i would do it all up in camera again..... the idea was to take a picture of me waving around the light saber, and then using the nikon camera effects, duplicate the picture, flip it horizontally, and then overlay it it back onto the original version.

but, apparently nikon didn't think anyone would ever want to flip a picture in the camera, because that's not an option. so i had to do it in photoshop. i kept it quick and dirty, got in and got out, and that's it. the reason one half of the image is darker and less contrasty than the other is due to differences between how my camera handles raw files and how photoshop handles raw files..... i could've fixed it, but i kinda like the asymmetry in all that symmetry.

day 363 - flower

2009-12-22T09:22:00.000-08:00

alisia got some flowers, and wanted me to take a picture of 'em, so here it is. i did two setups, one natural light, one lit with a softbox. she liked the natural light one better, i prefer the darker, more mysterious softbox lit one. but anyways, figured i'd post 'em both. did a crazy gradient/vignette on the natural one, just to pop the center out some.

my choice probably just reflects a prejudice to lit photos. so prejudiced.

day 362 - overlay

2009-12-22T01:19:00.002-08:00

did this one in-camera, if you can believe that. i just found out my camera has a multiple-exposure mode. i knew some nikons did this, but i didn't know that mine did..... it's not in any of the shooting modes, it's down tucked away in the image adjustment menu.

anyways, having found out about it, i wanted to try it. so i set up and took the usual picture.... big softbox camera right, 32" trigrip bouncing light back up into my face.... the usual. shot a bunch of those. then i went outside, put the camera into manual focus, put the lens as out of focus as it would go, and took a bunch of pictures of all of our neighbor's christmas lights.

came back inside (it's cold out there) and used the "image overlay" feature on the camera to drop a bunch of out-of-focus lights on top of my super-in-focus portrait.

it's cool, it takes me back to film days, when you'd click the shutter and not know what you got until you got back to the darkroom..... there's a certain mystery to it, and when you finally get your test print you're either elated or saddened by what you did or didn't capture.

i guess this brings what feels like an element of chance back into things. i could do the exact same thing in photoshop, with much greater control over it, but it's more fun this way.

day 361 - zoo

2009-12-22T01:19:00.001-08:00

at the zoo. no setup shot, just alisia's surprised happiness, and a handheld sb-28 @ 1/64th into an sb-3 camera left. got the exposure set to catch the christmas lights, and that's it. a quick picture with a lot of lights in the background.

day 360 - warmed

2009-12-22T01:19:00.000-08:00

setup shot:

day 358 - light saber

2009-12-18T03:53:00.000-08:00

i am interested in using cold cathode tubes to create a reshapeable light source.... so i could set up say eight white cathode tubes like spokes in a wheel and use them as a ringlight or a light halo. the cathodes put out a surprising amount of light for how small they are, i was able to shoot this at 1/160th of a second, f 1.8, iso 800....... and this is just one blue and one red cathode. eight white ones would be at least four times brighter, probably more since white is going to be brighter than the colored tubes (they're just white bulbs, with blue striping painted on them to make them blue, or red for red)..... i don't like working at 800 iso, but nik noiseware does a decent job of knocking sensor noise down to manageable levels. see the setup shot for noise levels before noiseware was used.....

setup shot:

day 357 - high contrast

2009-12-18T03:48:00.000-08:00

i'm using the silver disc reflector here, which i almost never do. it's interesting, very different from the white reflector sleeve. this gives a much more contrasty feel.... which is nice. i usually wind up cranking up the contrast in lightroom, but with this silver reflector i barely had to turn up the contrast at all. so that's something.

setup shot:

day 356 - blue menace

2009-12-18T03:46:00.000-08:00

alisia got home as i was setting up for a quick shot. so i got her to model instead of me. it's better this way, trust me.

setup shot:

day 355 - abstract

2009-12-17T02:30:00.000-08:00

i put electrical tape on the blue tube every inch or so, to get that striated look. waited until it was dark outside, then turned off all the lights in the living room and turned on the light saber. set the camera to a 2 1/2 second exposure at f 9.0, and kept hitting the button until i got one i really liked.

i really like this one. especially the purple glow on the ceiling. my only wish is that the bottom right corner didn't drop out of the frame like that..... but what're you gonna do?

setup shot:

day 354 - cathode portrait

2009-12-17T02:28:00.001-08:00

cold cathode tubes again. this time i wanted to set up a portrait on top of the abstract, so i got alisia to stand in front of me, set up my 40" softbox camera right @ 1/4 power, and had it rear sync on a two and a half second exposure. pressed the button, waved the cathode around, and here it is. cathode portrait.

day 353 - cold cathode

2009-12-17T02:28:00.000-08:00

i ordered some cold cathode tubes from newegg the other day. they're these small thin bulbs that are usually used by car geeks as ground effects, or by video game geeks to make their computers look "cool" with a transparent case. anyways. they run on 12 volts, so it's easy to put the camera on a tripod, wave one of these around, and get a cool abstract design thing.

day 352 - shadowy

2009-12-17T02:27:00.000-08:00

i'm still digging this type of shot, you have to be careful about your black levels, though. it's easy to overwhelm this type of lighting with your black tones. usually i'm pushing up the darks in lightroom, if you push them up here it all goes to noise and blotchyness.

setup shot:

day 351 - squinty

2009-12-17T02:26:00.000-08:00

oh yeah, staring off into the sunset, trying to remember how i got here.

setup shot:

day 350 - warm flesh

2009-12-17T02:25:00.000-08:00

this picture looks to me like a "allright, bye, i'm going to work honey!" kind of shot. i like it, but that's the only feel i get from it.

setup shot:

day 348 - somber suspicion

2009-12-16T21:48:00.000-08:00

lately i've been feeling this main-light-only-grazing-the-subject setup. using a reflector to provide fill makes it a very simple setup, and there's a good degree of difference between the "raw" light and the reflected light.

setup shot:

day 347 - big smile

2009-12-16T21:46:00.000-08:00

i was trying to get a convincing smile out of my recalcitrant model. finally started fake laughing, and then took the picture as the laughter stopped, but the smile hadn't faded yet.....

setup shot:

day 346 - like a star exploding

2009-12-16T21:45:00.000-08:00

all my batteries were being charged, so i challenged myself a bit to do up some one light type things. this one's allright, i like the super brightness in a dark room effect it has.

setup shot:

day 344 - subtle skien

2009-12-16T21:43:00.000-08:00

been going for this subtle mysterious type light for a bit now.... i keep getting closer and closer to what i want to see. this one's allright, dark but not too dark.

setup shot:

day 343 - window blinded

2009-12-16T21:42:00.001-08:00

setup shot:

day 342 - second coming of tim

2009-12-16T21:42:00.000-08:00

setup shot: