chicago

i'm gonna miss it.

self satisfied

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

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

retouchified

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

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

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: