smooth toned self portrait

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: