Good Tutorial on how to use a Beauty Dish for different effects in the studio. Lindsay Adler demonstrates how to achieve several different looks with just one light, and gives a few tips on some problems you might want to avoid while using a Beauty Dish.
I had this idea sitting in a Starbucks, watching person after person come in and sit down to play with their smartphone. At first the idea was just something as crazy as someone using their cell phone as a phone, but then I remembered this picture of Lenny Kravitz talking on his cell phone with custom ear piece, and I thought it would be much more interesting to go completely anachronistic and have someone in a public space talking on a piece of antiquated comm technology. And so this sketch was born.
Man, that earpiece is stupid.
A quick post of a recent shot I did…. I was hired for a professional headshot, and talked them into a quick couples shot on one of the sets. I’ve got to say, there’s something to be said for having more than one person in your frame. Suddenly there’s an interaction going on, you get a sense of what they think about each other, and there’s multiple levels happening at the same time. Not a lot of processing in this one, just a black and white conversion and then some dodging and burning here and there. Fun quick shot of a very photogenic couple of people. I like it.
DIY Photography has a great feature up right now about cinematographer Harris Savides, and his work. I had never heard the name Harris Savides, but I’ve definitely seen his work before. His quote ‘I light a room and let the people inhabit it, as opposed to lighting the people,’ really tells you where he’s at as a lighting guy. So many photographers figure out an effect or a lighting trick and then everything they do has that effect or trick in it. Having the style of no style allows you to go to so many different places, and do so many different things. Starting from Why you’re doing something, and making choices from there, as opposed to just doing what you always do…. it’s always better to do something with purpose, instead of as a default.
Joe McNally is one of the best working portrait photographers around. In this snippet from his DVD “the Language of Light“, Joe demonstrates how small changes to a light’s position can result in massive differences in the resulting images. He uses just one speedlight in a small softbox to get great results, because of small adjustments and tweaks to the position.
One of my favorite photographs, this image of Albert Schweitzer was taken by Yousuf Karsh in 1952. It’s a fantastic image, let’s examine it for a minute and try and pull some secrets out of it.
First off, where are the light sources located for this shot? What kind of lights were used, and what qualities did they lend the image? To figure this out the first place to look is to the shadows of the image. Where are they located? Well, for one, the eyes are in a bit of shadow. there’s a shadow under the nose, and the inside of the hand has shadows on it as well. Since shadows are underneath things, I’d have to guess the lights are high up, above eye level, and there’s probably one on each side, which are responsible for the highlights on the sides of Albert’s nose here. The fact that the front of his nose isn’t well lit makes me think the lights are about on the same plane as his face is. The lights are placed to emphasize texture and form, not to smooth the skin.
Karsh liked to use these types of lights:
It’s basically five hard light sources in a box with two barn doors to control light spill. Looking at the picture of Schweitzer, that hardness of light source gives a very specular result on the texture of the skin, giving an incredible amount of detail to the pores and wrinkles.
One other thing that Karsh often did was he’d print out the negative (medium format or larger) and then he’d use a pencil to darken in the lightest parts of the negative. This had the effect of letting him control the shadow levels and gave him an incredible amount of control over the final image’s tonal range. Looking through his work, you see a lot of tonal variation in his images, all the way from pure whites down to pure blacks.
Yousuf Karsh was an incredible photographer, and his style remains as impressive today as it did decades ago. He was a true inspiration for photographers, and there is a lot to be gained from studying his work.
A few more images from my recent photowalks, looking for reflections. It’s a fun theme to work on, looking for reflections specifically. I mostly stole it from Saul Leiter’s work, which is amazing and inspired me greatly. I don’t think I’ve caught anything anywhere near his stuff so far, but it’s not bad for a first attempt.
