shootin kids

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

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

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

big ring flash

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

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

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.