Tag Archive for ‘lighting’ at Poo-Poo Platter

Tag Archive for 'lighting'

portrait of jackson

Published

on November 21, 2008

. 0 Comments

Photographing cats is hard. They don’t take direction well (if at all), and they do whatever they want whenever they please. All you can do it sit and watch and hope that you can get the right shot at the right moment. Most of time, you miss the shot (well, at least, I do), but sometimes you get lucky and capture a winner.

Earlier this week, I got lucky. I had just finished working on a self-portrait with off-camera lighting and decided that I would try to photograph Jackson as well. I already had my lighting ready to go (D300 shooting at 1/800th sec at f/7.1 and ISO 200 in commander mode, SB-600 with a Lumiquest Softbox III attached), so all I needed to do was get in position and get the shot.

Here’s the progression of events:

1. Sit near Jackson and wait for him finish scratching his neck.

2. Hold out flash with left hand and wave it around to get Jackson’s attention. Make sure camera is pointed at him.

3. While he is distracted, take a few shots (I got 3).

4. Watch Jackson get bored and run away.

5. Pray that one of the shots is in focus and properly framed.

All of this happened in the space of about 2 minutes. Of the 3 shots I took, this was the only one in focus *and* framed well. I wasn’t even looking through the camera – I was too busy watching Jackson and making sure I was holding the light in the correct position. I got incredibly lucky.

The only post I did was cropping the image tighter and brightening up the exposure just a bit, so we could see more detail in his body. The rest is as-is. I am incredibly happy with how this image turned out and will definitely be attempting more off-camera lighting with Jackson.

simple two-light portrait

Published

Danny

on August 27, 2008

in Photography and Technique

. Closed

When I’m shooting portraits, I like to keep my lighting setup simple. It’s not that I don’t like fancy lighting setups with modifiers and gels and all that jazz. I’m just too lazy to set everything up. Also, I don’t own a lot of lighting gear, so I try to make do with what I have.

This portrait of Margaret that I shot the other night is a good example of keeping things simple. All I used here was two speedlights. The main light is a Nikon SB-600 at 1/4 power in a shoot-through umbrella just above head level and to camera left. I also had a bare Nikon SB-600 at 1/2 power directly behind her blasting at the wall. I set the zoom on the backlight to 14mm so that I could get pretty wide coverage. Exposure on the camera was 1/125th second at f/8 at ISO 200.

Here’s a look at how everything was set up:

The camera on the tripod is approximately where I was standing (Margaret used the same lighting setup for a self-portrait). The SB-600 that I used for the backlight is on the pile of books on the coffee table behind Margaret. I angled the flash head up towards the wall, so I could get a nice gradual falloff towards the ceiling. Nothing fancy here.

Looking at the final image, you’d never know that it was shot in the middle of a living room using a blank wall as a backdrop. I love that I can use two relatively cheap speedlights and an umbrella and get a nice-looking studio-like portrait just about anywhere I want.

lighting test becomes the keeper

Published

Danny

on August 22, 2008

in Photography and Technique

. 1 Comment

Here’s a fun head-shot of Margaret that I took during an introductory off-camera lighting lesson. Margaret’s going to be doing head-shots at work soon, and she asked me to show her some basic portrait lighting techniques. I was more than happy to oblige.

The lighting setup for this is pretty straightforward. The main light is a Nikon SB-600 at 1/4 power in a shoot-through umbrella up high and at camera right. The fill light is a second Nikon SB-600 at 1/16 power in a shoot-through umbrella down low and at camera left. If you look at the catchlights in her left eye, you can figure out exactly where the lights were positioned. The background is an empty wall in Margaret’s apartment.

I shot the image on my Nikon D300 with a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens. The exposure was 1/125th second at f/8. Only minor post-processing was done in Lightroom (drop the exposure a tiny bit, add a bit of fill, boost contrast a little). For the most part, the final image is only slightly changed from the in-camera version.

I’m really happy with how this photo turned out. I was actually doing some lighting and exposure tests, and Margaret made faces the entire time. I just happened to snap this one at the right moment. It’s fun, spontaneous, and a fairly accurate representation of Margaret’s goofy and quirky side. What was originally a test shot is now the keeper of the session. I love it when that happens.

going airborne on white

Published

Danny

on June 20, 2008

in Photography and Technique

. 1 Comment

The master bedroom in my apartment is empty at the moment, so I decided to take advantage of the extra space to do more white background lighting practice. My goal for the session was to get a clean white background and capture a full-body shot in the air without using an actual seamless background and large studio space (neither of which I have at the moment).

Here’s the setup I used:

To illuminate the wall, I used 2 Nikon SB-600s cranked up to 1/2 power. I attached a couple of Honl Speed Gobos to prevent the strobes from flaring into the lens (a Sigma 10-20mm ultra wide-angle lens that can pick up *anything*). The main light is a Vivitar 285HV at 1/4 power in a shoot-through umbrella. The big red laundry bin in the middle is where I was standing for the shots.

The exposure on the two jumps featured in this post was 1/250th sec at f/8 at ISO 400. Why ISO 400 when I have so much light and white walls that bounce that light? I forgot that I had shifted the custom studio lighting preset on my D300 from ISO 200 to 400 during a previous session. Oops!

Overall, I’m happy with how the images turned out. I feel like I got a bit too much spill from the background lights, but that’s mostly because I don’t have a whole lot of space to work with. I’m also seriously considering getting a softbox (possibly the Westcott Apollo 50″) for my main light, so I can restrict light even more in such a tight shooting area. Still, I like the final results from my 30 minutes of playing around.

I’ve gotta send out props to Zach Arias and David Hobby for always being so awesome about sharing their photography and lighting knowledge with the world. I’ve learned so much about lighting from reading their blogs and seeing their work. I’ve already attended a Strobist workshop and hung out with David a few times. One of these days I’ll get to a OneLight Workshop with Zack.

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