It ain't much, but I am sure it'll be enough to get the speculation started around these parts. More coming Monday, of course.
-30-
-30-
Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Winter Treat: Frozen Hummingbirds
(No, not for eating. By the time you pluck and de-bone 'em, there's not that much left, anyway...)
__________
Okay, so maybe you can't light up Grand Central Station with a few speedlights. But if your subject is two inches long and flaps its wings 50X a second, speedlights rock.
For one, you can keep dialing a speedlight down to get insanely fast flash durations (1/25000th of a second, anyone?) which effectively becomes your wing-stopping shutter speed when you overpower the ambient.
That's what reader Pat Hunt did, anyway. Hit the jump for his setup, and more amazing hummingbird photos.
__________
He's Got The Beat
At 50 beats per second, you have to remember that you are talking about an entire wing flap cycle during that time, so a 1/25000th of a sec flash duration is going to comprise about 1/500th (give or take) of a flap.
That's enough to almost freeze the wings. IMO, the "almost" part makes for a more interesting image, too. Incidentally, that 50BPS is in the same frequency range as a mid-range bass note coming from your stereo, which is why you hear the wing beats as a low buzzing tone.
Here's the setup (click for bigger):
He's using four speedlights ('800's and '600's) to essentially surround the bird. He's using CLS to fire them all (piece of cake at close range) and has them dialed down to 1/64th power minus an additional third of a stop.
Pat even used an umbrella swivel to hold the feeder. Style points for that.
The exposure is a balancing act, in more ways than one. First, if you want the black background you have to get your flash exposure well above the ambient. (Or you could always stick a piece of poster board in the background, as Bradford Fuller did.)
But you do not want to waste any of that flash power, as each notch up in power costs you some flash duration. Pat used a normal, 1/250th sync because it was sharper than the pulsed flash of the higher-speed FP sync method. He also uses an umbrella to shade the scene from ambient light if the sun is at a bad angle.
Other particulars: No exposure compensation, low ISO for latitude, and a little juicing in the RAW converter to make it pop.
Regarding how the pre-flashes affect the birds, Pat said, "It varies with species. The chickadees and hummingbirds don't care much about the preflash or flash proper unless they are jumpy for other reasons. The jays are a whole different class of intelligence and paranoia and are extremely sensitive to whether belligerent neighbors are nearby."
He goes on to say that they took great care not to molest the birds, even to the point of giving them lots of runs at the food without popping the flashes.
Here are some more of Pat's images (mouseover for full frame):
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
If this doesn't work for you (it can be a little hinky) click here for Pat's Flickr set.
__________
Speaking of Hummingbirds
Here's something you don't see every day.
Emily had a special hummingbird treat when we visited Costa Rica last month. I never would have thought they would light on her hand like that, but it happened three times.
She has always had a way with animals of all kinds. Kind stays perfectly still, and assumes they are willing to make friends at any given moment.
Of course, Pat's multi-light setup makes my on-camera-flash, point-and-shoot shot look pretty lame. But still...
__________
Okay, so maybe you can't light up Grand Central Station with a few speedlights. But if your subject is two inches long and flaps its wings 50X a second, speedlights rock.For one, you can keep dialing a speedlight down to get insanely fast flash durations (1/25000th of a second, anyone?) which effectively becomes your wing-stopping shutter speed when you overpower the ambient.
That's what reader Pat Hunt did, anyway. Hit the jump for his setup, and more amazing hummingbird photos.
__________
He's Got The Beat
At 50 beats per second, you have to remember that you are talking about an entire wing flap cycle during that time, so a 1/25000th of a sec flash duration is going to comprise about 1/500th (give or take) of a flap.
That's enough to almost freeze the wings. IMO, the "almost" part makes for a more interesting image, too. Incidentally, that 50BPS is in the same frequency range as a mid-range bass note coming from your stereo, which is why you hear the wing beats as a low buzzing tone.
Here's the setup (click for bigger):
He's using four speedlights ('800's and '600's) to essentially surround the bird. He's using CLS to fire them all (piece of cake at close range) and has them dialed down to 1/64th power minus an additional third of a stop.
Pat even used an umbrella swivel to hold the feeder. Style points for that.
The exposure is a balancing act, in more ways than one. First, if you want the black background you have to get your flash exposure well above the ambient. (Or you could always stick a piece of poster board in the background, as Bradford Fuller did.)
But you do not want to waste any of that flash power, as each notch up in power costs you some flash duration. Pat used a normal, 1/250th sync because it was sharper than the pulsed flash of the higher-speed FP sync method. He also uses an umbrella to shade the scene from ambient light if the sun is at a bad angle.
Other particulars: No exposure compensation, low ISO for latitude, and a little juicing in the RAW converter to make it pop.
Regarding how the pre-flashes affect the birds, Pat said, "It varies with species. The chickadees and hummingbirds don't care much about the preflash or flash proper unless they are jumpy for other reasons. The jays are a whole different class of intelligence and paranoia and are extremely sensitive to whether belligerent neighbors are nearby."
He goes on to say that they took great care not to molest the birds, even to the point of giving them lots of runs at the food without popping the flashes.
Here are some more of Pat's images (mouseover for full frame):
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
If this doesn't work for you (it can be a little hinky) click here for Pat's Flickr set.
__________
Speaking of Hummingbirds
Here's something you don't see every day.Emily had a special hummingbird treat when we visited Costa Rica last month. I never would have thought they would light on her hand like that, but it happened three times.
She has always had a way with animals of all kinds. Kind stays perfectly still, and assumes they are willing to make friends at any given moment.
Of course, Pat's multi-light setup makes my on-camera-flash, point-and-shoot shot look pretty lame. But still...
Monday, February 9, 2009
Hanging Loose with Bil Zelman
Around here we sometimes get bogged down in the technical aspects of light. That's okay. This is a niche site and we are not trying to be all things to all people. But balance is important in photography, even in the technical stuff itself. So today, we are going full-bore non-technical by visiting with San Diego-based photographer Bil Zelman. His airy, moment-oriented photos are loose, honest and have an unscripted, natural feel to them.
It's almost as if he whips out the old 127 film camera from the '70's, fires from the hip and all of the planets line up. Except that Bil puts a lot of work and conscious thought into making sure all of those planets line up right when and where he needs them.
Video, pix and Q&A, after the jump.
__________
I was introduced to Bil's work through an excellent interview in A Photo Editor. In it, he talks about why he engages in pro bono work for selected charities, and what he gets out of it.
I encourage you to check out the interview, even if you do not think you are interested in that type of work. He makes a great case (much better than I did) for the mutual downstream benefits, which are significant.
Appropriately, Bil's style is one that can flit effortlessly between his pro bono charity work and high-end commercial work. Take a look at the following video to get a sense of who he is before hitting the Q&A below.
__________
Q&A
When we spoke earlier on the phone, you mentioned that your initial focus on a shoot is not on light but rather on determining the emotional needs of your subject. You also have very little time in many cases. What kind of an intersection are you looking for during those few initial moments? Are you well-researched or winging it?
Every shoot has different needs. If you're shooting someone with a tight schedule, as celebrity personalities usually have, you've got to be prepared to get a great shot in 10 or 20 minutes -- regardless of how they feel.
It's usually impossible to gain someone's trust in 20 minutes, both in real life and on set. But I try to be genuine and involved in their part of the process as much as possible -- even if it's not necessary. Helping them to make wardrobe choices and showing interest in what color eye shadow the stylist is going with are tiny, easy little things that let people know that I really care about making this photo. And they’re that much more likely to trust my opinions later if I'm pushing them to do something unexpected.
Knowing current things about the person really makes small talk that much easier, and I do try and hold conversation while shooting whenever possible. If what I'm doing is so technical that I can't entertain them, I'll sometimes have a trusted assistant ask them a question or hold their interest. On my first shoot with Taylor Swift, I actually brought a friend of mine who is a guitarist and the two of them ended up playing while I shot.
Shooting good portraits is equal parts psychology, trust and technical expertise -- with the technical part probably being the least important. (I'm going to get hate mail writing things like that here huh?).
Your shooting style is loose and natural, and yet the light always seems to to be working for you in lots of subtle ways. Can you talk about why you frequently prefer to use dark cloths for subtractive lighting rather than working above the ambient with strobes?
For one thing, it's easier and often faster to set up a few black cloths than to drag out the packs, heads, modifiers, run power cables or generators etc.
I easily own $25k in lighting gear -- Speedotrons, Dynalite, Elinchrom gear etc, -- and often pack it all into a cargo van and bring it along just in case. But the best results are often found more simply. If I can find nice flat light, and sculpt it into something more contrasty and dimensional, it looks a lot more natural. I don't have to worry about staying within shutter sync or using ND filtration to knock things down, waiting for recycle times or having all those incredibly annoying flashes going off and ruining the mood. (Sorry Strobists!)
And don't get me wrong- There's a time and place for strobe, but it's only a tool and there are lots of other ways to work. In order for me to achieve a very natural looking light source with strobes and still have room for my subject to move around, I'd need HUGE light banks like the ones car shooters use.
I remember that you specifically had it in for "green uplighting," as you called the light reflecting off of grass outdoors. That is to say that you love to kill it with a dark cloth on the ground. Can you really help shape someone's face with just a black cloth on the ground?
Absolutely. Everyone ends up shooting in mid-day sun and positioning their subject in the shade of a tree at sometime or another. When that person's standing there they have two light sources: The blue light coming from the sky above and a bright green light coming from the sun hitting the grass below. You can't color balance for them both. What ends up happening is you set your white balance or filtration to warm the scene and take out the blue main light, and leave this bright green "up light" under their chin and in the sockets of their eyes, etc. I see it all the time in print.
Throwing a cheap black cloth on the ground in front of them not only corrects the color issue, but it also gives the lighting more contrast on the vertical axis. Which, in turn, gives everyone a better looking chin line, which makes people look thinner, etc.
Ideally, in this situation I'd throw an 8x8 cloth on the ground and set two black 6x6 scrims on either side to bring out their cheek bones. This configuration is the one use on the Tommy Shaw portrait and the blurry female model as well -- both of which were shot in backyards in "normal shade".
For the record, I had a sail maker sew pieces of black Duvateen together into 8x8, 12x12 and 18x24 configurations, along with grommet holes every 16 inches which can then be tied to regular background stands and raised. Scrim Jim makes great frames, although they're pricey and there are other options. You could buy black cloth anywhere and have someone hand hold it, throw it over two ladders -- whatever. The camera won’t know you didn’t have a sail maker sew them up.
Also, black felt is actually shiny at a forty-five degree angle and doesn’t work very well. Stick with the dull stuff the movie industry uses like Duvateen if you can.
One thing you said in an earlier conversation really stuck with me: "Focus is overrated." As a long-time news / sports shooter, that kinda made my head explode a little. But at the same time, the look resonates. What is it that will make you decide to veer so far away from convention on a shoot? Do you play it safe and shoot both ways? That must take a lot of confidence in your personal vision -- how do your clients react to this?
This brings a smile to my face. One of my best commercial clients has often offered to pay me more if I’ll make more of the images sharp. But I still like to shake the camera...As far as blur goes there are all kind of beautiful things you can do with it. (But please, no more 1995 ”pop-the-flash-and-drag-the-shutter stuff”). You see it in great work everywhere from Richard Avedon to Sally Mann to Robert Capa.
Like anything, it’s a style thing. Standing still and racking your lens out of focus probably won’t be very interesting. But if you're walking backwards and you're subject is waking towards you and you're shooting at a 30th with a 50mm, you’ll probably get frames where the person has motion blur and the background doesn’t and vica-versa. This can bring a lot of excitement to a shot, separate the subject from the environment and also give your subject something to do other than stand there and look at you. Make your subject DO THINGS.
One of my favorite looks is shooting T-Max 3200 and shaking the camera while I shoot. The image comes out soft, but the large grain gives your eye something to focus on when you’re viewing the print. Visual texture is something fine print makers used to talk about all the time, from grain structure modification with developers to darkroom paper choices. But most of those things are now overlooked. Blur can be one of them.
I’ve kept my Nikon D2x solely for it’s awful noise at high ISO for just these reasons. It can be painterly and gorgeous with the right subject matter.
In general, many of your photos are stripped of the Nth-degree technicals and are built entirely on emotion and moment -- a leap of faith that is impossible for many photographers to make. How did you make that jump? A little at a time, or all at once? How has it changed you?
You know, this is so hard to answer!
I’ve always shot very quickly and playfully with a lot of direction and background changes. I don’t believe that there’s a single image on my website that’s been cropped at all, and I’ve always been that way.
I take the kind of photos that don’t really need much screwing around with, I suppose. And I wouldn’t be the guy to do it if they weren’t. Photoshop was something I resisted using for years, but I’m now pretty good with it and clean things up and sometimes remove things and such. But I would never use it to try and make a dull photo interesting -- which we now see a lot of.
People have been making remarkably impactful images for 150 years without HDR or high pass filters and I suppose I’ll end up being one of them. Perhaps I’m boring?
Don't take this the wrong way, because it is meant as a compliment: In many ways, your work has evolved (or maybe regressed?) into a look that is almost childlike. Like those projects that give cameras to a group of kids and edit the take down to beautiful work that is free of convention and restriction. If you could talk to yourself as a photographer 20 years ago, what advice would you give?
Can we say naiveté in place of childlike? I once had an art history professor refer to the naiveté of Julia Margaret Cameron's work and I thought it to be so poignant. I don’t believe I’ve even thought of that moment until now, but it’s interesting because she played with focus and blur and time exposures and was largely ridiculed for it. But try and purchase one of her photos now!
I suppose I’ve always wanted to believe that some photos are real, and leaving in a few mistakes and not being technically obsessed helps me with this. It’s almost as if I’m documenting my own photo shoots if that makes any sense at all? Method acting and letting people be who they are. (You can actually see one of my black cloths and stands in the blurry shot of the girl...)
If I had to give advice to anyone at all, it might be to know your tools inside and out, but not let them get in the way. I can go from a 125th to a 30th and from f2.8 to 5.6 while walking backwards and holding conversation without missing a beat. Add too much more to that equation and I’m paying more attention to my gear than to my subject -- not a good thing.
That, and take lots and lots of pictures.
__________
See more of Bil's work at Zelman Studios.
(All photos © Bil Zelman.)
Thursday, February 5, 2009
MVI: Q 'n A
UPDATE: Not meaning to confuse, and judging from the comments, I certainly did: Not really talking about the absolute number of comments, but rather the relative number on different types of posts.
__________
Without any true metric to understand how posts on Strobist are received, I sometimes revert to judging by the number of comments received on a particular entry.
Going by the (relative) numbers on different types of posts, this can be a little disconcerting.
Example:
Full, On-Assignment-style Monteverde Institute post: 24 comments.
Flippant, snarky Annie / Sean Connery video repost: 107 comments.
If I went straight by the numbers, it would be no better than those city mags that track rack sales to the point where every issue eventually morphs into some variation of, "50 Top Doctors!"
But against those raw comment numbers you have to consider relative quality of the comments, and those from the MVI post included some pretty good questions. So that helps to balance things out.
Hit the jump for some selected Q's (and, to the best of my ability, the A's) from the MVI post comments...
__________
Q and A
Leading off, from Anonymous:
How do you make the flash fill so balanced? This picture is so natural that I have hard time to reverse engineer the light.
Anon-
That's mostly because I am going so tight on the flash/ambient ratios. If you think about it, I am not so much lighting as compressing the contrast range of the photo.
If I had brought the ambient light way down, the lit area would be more obvious. But if you expose the photo in such a way that the exposure is built on making the ambient look just a little more saturated, you can build the subject back up with strobe without making the photo look obviously lit.
In an ambient-light-only photo, I would have to choose between a properly exposed Dan and properly exposed surroundings. If I exposed for Dan, the backlit surroundings would be too bright. So all the light is really doing is allowing me to compress both Dan and environment together into one lush exposure.
It looks natural because it takes a scene with a little too much tonal range in it and compresses it down to the way your eye normally sees it. In that way, it probably looks more "available light" than it would have if I only shot it with available light.
__________
Joe asks...
I'm starting Lighting 102 but am up to speed with all your new posts. I haven't bought any light modifiers yet, but my question is--should I skip the umbrella and just get the Lumiquest Softbox III? It seems to be a better choice in terms of portability and ease of use.
Joe-
Apples and oranges. They give off very different kinds of light. I would recommend a shoot-through umbrella as your first light modifier. It is very versatile.
Honestly, I used an SB-III here because of the wind as much as anything else.
__________
JeK68 asks...
I was also tempted to get the Justin clamps for similar situations, but ended up with the Manfrotto (Bogen) 171 and a mini-ball head attached on a short stud. The 171 is more secure and can be more packable imho.
JeK68-
True, but the 175F Justin clamp will secure a flash to far more mounting surfaces, including larger and/or irregular things.
__________
Rob asks...
You like those Justin clamps more then the Bogen Super Clamps?
Rob-
Increasingly, yes. But they are very different animals. Super Clamps are bigger, stronger and work better for things like camera remotes, to be sure. You can also turn a pair of light stands into a background support with a pair of Super Clamps.
But the 175F "Justin" clamp is nice and light and mates a flash -- and any angle -- to a variety of surfaces better than anything I have seen. It is not as compact as a Super Clamp, but it is lighter.
__________
Dave Kee asks...
Did you consider using on-axis fill?
Dave-
Yeah, but (a) I thought it would look a little unnatural in that environment and (b) I was fresh out of lights (except for the pop up, I guess, but I would have wanted a ring there). So I would have had to kill the camera right rim for any O-A fill.
I had Dan crosslit pretty well, so there were really no deep, dark areas that I would need on-axis fill to fix. And again, I wasn't too far above the ambient. So nothing was gonna be really dark on Dan even if the flash did not hit it.
__________
Alfred asks...
This is the second time you have confused me by saying, "By cranking my shutter speed down I can drop the environment and make Dan the star."
I do know what you want to say, but is it not true that if you crank your shutter speed down you are effectively slowing the time and the exposure for the environment would be raised? To me turnng speed down means slowing down.
Alfred-
If you are thinking of shutter as a whole number on a dial, sure. But I think of shutter and aperture not as absolute numbers but rather as control valves for light.
Which valve I use depends on which kind of light (ambient or flash) I am trying to kill. So to me, "cranking down" (or closing down) shutter or aperture means closing off the light that is getting through.
Conversely, opening up allows more of a particular kind of light to get in. Unless I am in some kind of trouble (subject motion because of too slow a shutter, for instance) I really do not pay attention to the actual numbers very much.
So, when someone asks me what shutter and aperture I used for some photo, I usually have no idea exactly where I was. It is just that I don't really pay that much attention to the absolute numbers.
__________
Kevin asks...
I see you are getting away from the umbrellas for the softboxs. Could you expand that a little and I don't see any pocket wizards, are you using CLS?
Kevin-
I still use umbrellas, it is just that I do not normally default to them.
As for synch, I PW'd the camera right rim light because it was firing right at my key light, which was slaved on SU-4 mode. And the key light easily set off my "tree" back light, which was also slaved on SU-4 mode. All strobes were on manual, as was the camera.
That's why I only took a pair of PWs. I shoot like that a lot.
__________
KatieMac asks...
My favorite is how you clamped and hung your gear all over the "No Trespassing" sign. I hope that meant for others, not from the Institute! Beautiful lighting, wonderful that Dan doesn't look to be "artificially" lit.
Question: did you gel the flashes to even the color temperature with the ambient light, or correct them in post? and BTW, what color is the daylight in the tropics under the trees?
Katie-
We were on MVI property -- that sign was at the edge of the property and meant to deter others.
As for your color temperature question, there is a lot of green bouncing around in there -- filtered by the leaves, bouncing off of the ground -- it all greens up.
But when I underexpose the ambient just a little, it minimizes the green bounce/fill. So when I build light back up on Dan with strobes, it all looks fine.
I was on Daylight balance for all of this, with a 1/4 CTO on the key. So flash was just fine, and ambient-lit areas were coolish green and lush. That sets the tone of the photo without turning Dan into a martian.
__________
Mario asks...
Any chance we could get one of those setup drawings for this shot? It piques my interest that I don´t see any wizards on the strobes. It'd be interesting to see where they were and if you found any serious obstacles for the strobe controls, as you often do in these forest settings.
Mario-
See above on the PWs. And here you go for the diagram, in special edition Costa Rica green:
__________
Without any true metric to understand how posts on Strobist are received, I sometimes revert to judging by the number of comments received on a particular entry. Going by the (relative) numbers on different types of posts, this can be a little disconcerting.
Example:
Full, On-Assignment-style Monteverde Institute post: 24 comments.
Flippant, snarky Annie / Sean Connery video repost: 107 comments.
If I went straight by the numbers, it would be no better than those city mags that track rack sales to the point where every issue eventually morphs into some variation of, "50 Top Doctors!"
But against those raw comment numbers you have to consider relative quality of the comments, and those from the MVI post included some pretty good questions. So that helps to balance things out.
Hit the jump for some selected Q's (and, to the best of my ability, the A's) from the MVI post comments...
__________
Q and A
Leading off, from Anonymous:
How do you make the flash fill so balanced? This picture is so natural that I have hard time to reverse engineer the light.
Anon-
That's mostly because I am going so tight on the flash/ambient ratios. If you think about it, I am not so much lighting as compressing the contrast range of the photo.
If I had brought the ambient light way down, the lit area would be more obvious. But if you expose the photo in such a way that the exposure is built on making the ambient look just a little more saturated, you can build the subject back up with strobe without making the photo look obviously lit.
In an ambient-light-only photo, I would have to choose between a properly exposed Dan and properly exposed surroundings. If I exposed for Dan, the backlit surroundings would be too bright. So all the light is really doing is allowing me to compress both Dan and environment together into one lush exposure.
It looks natural because it takes a scene with a little too much tonal range in it and compresses it down to the way your eye normally sees it. In that way, it probably looks more "available light" than it would have if I only shot it with available light.__________
Joe asks...
I'm starting Lighting 102 but am up to speed with all your new posts. I haven't bought any light modifiers yet, but my question is--should I skip the umbrella and just get the Lumiquest Softbox III? It seems to be a better choice in terms of portability and ease of use.
Joe-
Apples and oranges. They give off very different kinds of light. I would recommend a shoot-through umbrella as your first light modifier. It is very versatile.
Honestly, I used an SB-III here because of the wind as much as anything else.
__________
JeK68 asks...
I was also tempted to get the Justin clamps for similar situations, but ended up with the Manfrotto (Bogen) 171 and a mini-ball head attached on a short stud. The 171 is more secure and can be more packable imho.
JeK68-
True, but the 175F Justin clamp will secure a flash to far more mounting surfaces, including larger and/or irregular things.
__________
Rob asks...
You like those Justin clamps more then the Bogen Super Clamps?
Rob-
Increasingly, yes. But they are very different animals. Super Clamps are bigger, stronger and work better for things like camera remotes, to be sure. You can also turn a pair of light stands into a background support with a pair of Super Clamps.
But the 175F "Justin" clamp is nice and light and mates a flash -- and any angle -- to a variety of surfaces better than anything I have seen. It is not as compact as a Super Clamp, but it is lighter.
__________
Dave Kee asks...
Did you consider using on-axis fill?
Dave-
Yeah, but (a) I thought it would look a little unnatural in that environment and (b) I was fresh out of lights (except for the pop up, I guess, but I would have wanted a ring there). So I would have had to kill the camera right rim for any O-A fill.
I had Dan crosslit pretty well, so there were really no deep, dark areas that I would need on-axis fill to fix. And again, I wasn't too far above the ambient. So nothing was gonna be really dark on Dan even if the flash did not hit it.
__________
Alfred asks...
This is the second time you have confused me by saying, "By cranking my shutter speed down I can drop the environment and make Dan the star."
I do know what you want to say, but is it not true that if you crank your shutter speed down you are effectively slowing the time and the exposure for the environment would be raised? To me turnng speed down means slowing down.
Alfred-
If you are thinking of shutter as a whole number on a dial, sure. But I think of shutter and aperture not as absolute numbers but rather as control valves for light.
Which valve I use depends on which kind of light (ambient or flash) I am trying to kill. So to me, "cranking down" (or closing down) shutter or aperture means closing off the light that is getting through.
Conversely, opening up allows more of a particular kind of light to get in. Unless I am in some kind of trouble (subject motion because of too slow a shutter, for instance) I really do not pay attention to the actual numbers very much.
So, when someone asks me what shutter and aperture I used for some photo, I usually have no idea exactly where I was. It is just that I don't really pay that much attention to the absolute numbers.
__________
Kevin asks...
I see you are getting away from the umbrellas for the softboxs. Could you expand that a little and I don't see any pocket wizards, are you using CLS?
Kevin-
I still use umbrellas, it is just that I do not normally default to them.
As for synch, I PW'd the camera right rim light because it was firing right at my key light, which was slaved on SU-4 mode. And the key light easily set off my "tree" back light, which was also slaved on SU-4 mode. All strobes were on manual, as was the camera.
That's why I only took a pair of PWs. I shoot like that a lot.
__________
KatieMac asks...
My favorite is how you clamped and hung your gear all over the "No Trespassing" sign. I hope that meant for others, not from the Institute! Beautiful lighting, wonderful that Dan doesn't look to be "artificially" lit.
Question: did you gel the flashes to even the color temperature with the ambient light, or correct them in post? and BTW, what color is the daylight in the tropics under the trees?
Katie-
We were on MVI property -- that sign was at the edge of the property and meant to deter others.
As for your color temperature question, there is a lot of green bouncing around in there -- filtered by the leaves, bouncing off of the ground -- it all greens up.
But when I underexpose the ambient just a little, it minimizes the green bounce/fill. So when I build light back up on Dan with strobes, it all looks fine.
I was on Daylight balance for all of this, with a 1/4 CTO on the key. So flash was just fine, and ambient-lit areas were coolish green and lush. That sets the tone of the photo without turning Dan into a martian.
__________
Mario asks...
Any chance we could get one of those setup drawings for this shot? It piques my interest that I don´t see any wizards on the strobes. It'd be interesting to see where they were and if you found any serious obstacles for the strobe controls, as you often do in these forest settings.
Mario-
See above on the PWs. And here you go for the diagram, in special edition Costa Rica green:
Controlling Reflections: How They Roll in China
From the comments of the glasses tutorial video, reader Rob Mulligan shares a quick tip from the Orient...
__________
Says Rob:
Indeed. And to think I have been doing it the hard way for 20 years...
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Says Rob:
"When I was in China getting married in 2000 we had a full day (you Chinese readers know what I'm talking about) studio wedding shoot. My father in law had those awful big square "old guy" glasses.
The hip young woman photographer rolled out a batch of cool looking frames with no lenses for his family to pick out the best looking ones for him to wear.
He looked excellent, and NO reflections!
Indeed. And to think I have been doing it the hard way for 20 years...
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Saddled With Extra Work
Sometimes you don't have to go looking for a shoot. Sometimes you get volunteered to do it by your wife. While on vacation.
Which is what happened to me while we were in the cloud forest community of Santa Elena a couple of weeks ago.
More on this after the jump. But if your name is John Harrington, do not click on the "more" tag. (Click here instead...)
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In Santa Elena, we stayed at the Arco Iris Lodge, a wonderful little enclave that is just a block from the center of town, but feels like you are miles from nowhere. Arco Iris is Spanish for rainbow, and sure enough, they get one like you see above on every sunny afternoon.
That's because there is this crazy, ultra-fine mist that hangs in the air in the cloud forest community of Santa Elena. Just like walking through one of those cooling misters at the county fair on a sunny day. It's very refreshing, actually.
Susan and Em immediately hit it off with Susanna, the proprietor of the hotel. Among other things, they are all horse people. Susanna keeps horses on the property but does not rent them out. (They are pretty high-octane models.) Susan and Em had wanted to ride while we were on the trip, so Susanna hooked them up with Sabine's Smiling Horses, where the horses are
Em and Susan rode all afternoon and hung out before and after with Sabine and her young daugher, Tara. It didn't hurt that the day was perfectly clear. They could even see the Pacific Ocean from the mountain ridges on the ride. We could not wipe the grin off of Em's face all day.As it happens, Susan was so happy with the recommendation she volunteered me to shoot a couple of much-needed interiors of the rooms for Susanna. (John, if you are still here, I warned you.)
And you know what? I am totally cool with that. Sure, I may grumble a little at first at the idea of having my (nonexistent) schedule twisted around a little bit. But it really is nothing for me to spend a few minutes doing a couple of interiors that will make a big difference to the folks at Arco Iris. The place is not exactly dripping with photographers and Susanna does not even own a camera.
The place is beautiful in a cool, eco way. And we were patting ourselves on the back the entire time for choosing to stay there. BTW, we got a great two-room, two-bath cabin for $140/night there.
(Just like London! Not really!)
It's very laid back, with exotic plants everywhere, monkeys hanging out in the trees and the occasional scorpion to keep you on your toes (or give you an awesome story to bring home to your soccer team.)But with the bag I packed, I did not include a very wide lens. The 24-70 gets me about a 36mm equivalent on the small-chip D300. So for the rainbow shot above, I just shot a series of photos and stitched them together in Photoshop CS3's automatic panorama feature. (I love that little trick.)
For interiors, it's much harder to do panoramas because of having to keep the lines straight. So I decided to do a couple of interior detail shots that I could handle with my modest wideangle lens.
Second problem: I only have one light stand, and no white ceiling to use for bounce. The rooms are beautifully paneled in rich, dark wood -- including the ceilings. It's very nice, but a little nightmarish with just a couple of hard speedlights. I had one stand and one umbrella, but that would not get me very far. And in the end, I wound up not even using either.
The bathrooms (God love 'em for including a kids' bathroom) were clean and bright, and very easy to light with just one SB-800. Any bathroom that has a shower with a neutral curtain has a built-in soft box, so that's exactly what I did here.Sounding like a broken record here after the MVI shoot, but I used a Bogen 175F "Justin" clamp to mount an SB-800 to the soap holder in the shower. The doors were frosted plexi, so I just closed them and used them as a diffuser.
You can see how simple this is, although I did open the door a little here for clarity. I set the flash on 1/4 power for a little oomph, set the camera on 1/250th, and just adjusted my aperture until the bathroom looked good.Then, I opened up the shutter speed (which controls the ambient) until the light coming through the window in the mirror looked right. Piece of cake.
Total elapsed time? Maybe 5 minutes. Woulda been faster, but I had been in Pura Vida mode (Costa Rica's national slogan) for a full week now. Just cruising at a relaxing pace.
But the room wasn't gonna be so easy. Given my gear and the dark tones, it would be a series of compromises. No ceiling bounce -- my go-to technique for fill, normally. Just underexpose the room by two to three stops with that soft, mushy ceiling fill and accent light the interesting stuff. Not this time.
No large modifiers -- and no tripod, either.
So, I decided to use the two windows as diffusers. They had white curtains, and one had a porch railing outside. I could fire flashes though them and get reasonably big sources to paint the room and get the speculars to be as small as possible in the wood panels. (They were still pretty bright.)
How to mount them? You guessed it -- Justin clamps again. They are named after some guy McNally knows, but to me it means "Justin case you ain't got nothin' else" to mount a flash with.That window is right by the front door (camera right) so it gave me frontal soft light which I like -- and a specular that I would have to live with. It's not so bad, really, as it also shows the texture and finish of the wood. C'mon, rationalize along with me.
I thought about sculpting it with snooted strobes, but that room ate up so much ambient that I had to flood it with as soft a light as possible.
Light two was the side window, on camera right out of the frame. I opened the curtains, JC'd another SB-800 in there and closed the curtains. Not as soft, but clean -- and fine for side fill.It is only as I sit here writing this that I get a Homer Simpson moment:
D'Oh! Sheets!
It's a hotel, you idiot. They have extra sheets out the wazoo.
I could have taped them to every non-visible wall in the photo and bounced flashes off of them. Oh, well. I'm just gonna have to go back to Arco Iris and fix that next winter. And I am pretty sure Susanna will hook me up with a room, too.
So, here is the way it looked with my Architectural-Digest-On-The-Cheap setup. I am no Scott Hargis, but I am happy with it, all things considered. Shutter was dragged to bring in the three lamps, so the whole thing glows warm and woody.For ten minutes of head scratching and minimal gear, I am cool with it.
That is Now, This was Then
Okay, at 43 years old and traveling with kids, you want the wood ceilings, tiled bathrooms, monkeys and other niceties if you can swing it. And I am not making every decision based on price now, so the $140/night is doable. But twenty years ago if I were traveling through I would have stayed a block away at the way cool Pension Santa Elena, where the rooms start at **$6.00** a night and max out under $50 for doubles with private baths.
The pension was the place to be come nightfall, with beverages and conversation flowing well into the evening. The wifi from across the street is free and open, and backpackers meet, make friends and share experiences. I have seen a lot of hostels and pensions in my day, and this place is maybe the coolest one I have visited -- and cheap to boot.Great people (thanks for the wifi, Ran) and totally recommended if you are shoe-stringing it through Costa Rica. And the taco stand next door rocks, too. Depending on your price point, you cannot go wrong with either hotel when visiting Santa Elena / Monteverde in Costa Rica.
If you end up at either place, tell Ran or Susanna that David from Strobist says hi.
How Far do I Have to Go to Get Away From You People?
We were walking back to our cabin one night at Arco Iris, when I see what appears to be a real photographer walking past us. He has a 1D-Mark-Something, pro glass and a carbon tripod. I generally introduce myself as another shooter and at that point I recognize the guy as Paul Souders, a friend from way back in the '80's.
Paul bypassed the whole newspaper thing altogether (smart guy in retrospect) and has spent the last 20 years on an amazing path as a travel/adventure photographer. Better yet, he is blogging from the road and is very much worth a slot in your RSS reader, if only to see where he will turn up next.
He's as good a writer as he is a shooter, which is saying something. Main site is here, and his blog is here.
Check him out if you are into, you know, the whole world and stuff.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Follow the Bouncing Ball for Advice on Lighting Glasses
Quick video today from The Flash Centre on how little movements in your subject can get rid of lighting reflections in glasses. And I totally agree with Chris for "Plan A" as being, "Do you always wear your glasses?"
(Hey, it never hurts to ask...)
Of course, you can get totally around most reflections by just using broad lighting. But Chris shows very clearly how just having the subject move her head around a little can make a big difference no matter what your lighting direction.
Once you start to visualize how the light hits the glasses and how it bounces off, you'll know exactly where your reflections will be visible. And you'll quickly start to automatically avoid those camera positions when shooting.
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(If you are getting this post via RSS or via e-mail subscription, you'll probably have to click through on the title to view the video.)
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