Just for fun, I put together a video-fied version of 100 on 100. Kinda neat seeing the progression of shots over time.
See the original photo here.
Tag Archive for '365days'
For Day 100 of 365 Days, I decided to do a mosaic of 100 self-portraits. All of these were taken over the course of about 20 minutes, during which time I got a lot of funny looks from people nearby. It was fun though, and I’m glad I did it. 200 should be interesting…
Click the image to view the larger version on my Flickr photostream.
I’ve been on a one-light kick lately and really loving working with low-key, limited light shots, especially on black backgrounds. The challenge for me, of course, is that I don’t actually have a black background at my displosal. I typically shoot in front of either the red wall in the studio (a.k.a. second bedroom) or the white wall in the dining room or in open spaces at parks, so my only option is to kill the ambient light with proper exposure and then introduce light sources as needed.
Getting a pure black background is pretty easy to do and really more of a logistical exercise than anything else. I need to make sure I have enough separation between the subject and the wall so that my main light source does not contaminate the background. Open spaces are easier, obviously, since there isn’t a back wall at all. Working inside my apartment is a bit more challenging, but I can do it.
One of the best things about shooting for a black background is that it is very easy to rearrange the composition of the image as needed. As long as I don’t get too much light spill on the background and I don’t have any major highlights overlapping onto the main subject (all of which can be removed in Photoshop), I can fill my source photo with my subject and then play with the negative space as needed.
Take the image at the top of this post for example. It’s pretty clear that I shot it with a single soft light source (Nikon SB-600 at 1/8 power in a 43″ white shoot-through umbrella) up high and to the right of the frame. Knocking out the background is also pretty straightforward by shooting at f/11 and 1/250 sec at ISO 200. What isn’t readily obvious is all that black space on the left half of the image was added in Photoshop.
Here’s what the original framing of the photo looks like:
On the left is the image straight out of camera. That’s the general look I was aiming for. There’s a bit of highlight on my hair to give it some form (at least, it’s visible on my calibrated display) and really no visible light contamination on the background.
On the right is the same image with some Lightroom tweaks (Exposure +2.0, Blacks 0, Brightness +100) to show the background. As you can see, I was shooting near my red wall and not even carefully composing for the background. I knew I was going to kill all ambient, so all I was concerned with was my distance from the wall. As long as I was far enough away from it, I would get no light spillage from my umbrella’d speedlight. Shooting at f/11 and 1/8 power in a shoot-through gave me really quick light fall-off.
For the final shot, I did some exposure and color adjustments in Lightroom, then I went into Photoshop to do a few more fine-tuned tweaks and then expanded the canvas to create more black space. The main reason for redoing the composition in Photoshop is I don’t have a gigantic studio to shoot at the composition I want. Plus, it’s easier to just focus on the main subject (my mug) and then deal with the rest of the image later (I used this same process with my “in a dark place” shot from last week).
Turns out that Zach Arias does the same thing, although he does explain more of the technical reasons for it, and his images are way cooler than mine. I’m not smart enough to think things through that much. I just felt my images could use more negative space, but I was too lazy to reshoot the good frames with the proper composition. Easier to fix it in post. :)
Here’s another self-portrait that was inspired by some of Zack Arias’s work (can you tell I’m a fan?). I’ve been wanting to explore low key photos more and create moodier images to balance out all the goofy, playful stuff I typically do for 365 Days. I also wanted to get more practice controlling and restricting light to just where I want it to go. After reading Zack’s latest blog posts, I finally found something that I wanted to emulate and learn from.
This photo is actually more the result of a hybrid of knowledge gained from reading both Zack’s blog and the Strobist blog. The basic principles of killing ambient light I learned from Strobist. Using a single light creatively I gleaned from Zack’s blog.
The image below shows what the lighting was like in my apartment for the shot. It was taken 2 hours after the original photo, but the lighting was pretty close. It was an overcast night in Bellevue. ;)
To kill the ambient light, I shot at 1/250th sec at f/11 and ISO 200. That was fast enough to give me a black frame even with the tracklights on. My speedlight was set at 1/16th power, which, combined with the distance from me and careful posing, was just enough light to illuminate my shoulder and fall off quickly down my back. Shooting at f/11 also helped in that regard, since such a small aperture really restricted how much light my camera picked up. I know that whole business about inverse square law also applies here, but that kind of math doesn’t work easily in my head.
Anyhow, as I’m learning more and more, finding the “right” exposure and controlling the lights properly is actually a really easy thing to do. For the most part, it’s all a technical exercise, and, as long as you know some basic numbers, you can get the lights setup fairly quickly. What’s more difficult is figuring out exactly what you want the final image to look like. I’ve always been really good with the “how” part. Now I’m zeroing in on the “what” and “why”.
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