Ender Nygen's Photography Blog

New Blog Up

2011-06-23T22:10:00.001-07:00

Yay, I finally got my new blog up with a new tutorial on how to shoot under bare sunlight.

Please visit my the new site at:

http://endernygen.com/blog/2011/06/shooting-portrait-under-bright-sun/

I will be working to migrate all this site to there so please bookmark the new URL.

Thanks!

Rebooting

2011-06-19T18:32:00.001-07:00

A lot of things have been happening lately. I quit my job as a photographer for a local university and decided to venture on my own. To make some extra money, I also freelance as a web designer and had to re-learn a plethora of old tricks from my previous life as a programmer. Which in a way, turned out to be a great thing since it forced me to update my professional website and that in turn forced me to re-evaluate my style. Long story short, all the vanilla, “typical headshots” portraits (including processing techniques) had to go. No more of that. I want something more dramatic or else I will not have any future.

Anyway, here’s what in store…

- Migrate this blog to be a part of my professional website at http://endernygen.com

- Focus the blog entirely and exclusively on artsy, high-end portraiture

- Make it awesome.

In a way, that will be like a start. It will detail my progress as a newbie photographer entering the field and my subsequent hire by Vogue to shoot a spread in 10 years. Or not… but I learned that if you want $10, ask your mom for $100.

Oh and if you have Twitter, follow me at:
http://www.twitter.com/endernygen

And on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/endernygen

Any suggestions would be welcome!

See you on the other side!

Bokeh / Depth-of-Field Preview

2011-04-12T13:52:00.001-07:00

Did you ever had trouble mentally visualizing what a bokeh / DOF background would look like? Try this: select a low-aperture number, point at the background, focus on your finger and take the shot. Voila!

“Pull my finger!”

Ok so this may be stupidly obvious to those who already do it and not so much for others (took me awhile to figure it out).

A few caveats though: this won’t be 100% accurate because bokeh / DOF (technically not the same but for the purpose of this discussion, we’ll pretend they are) is relative to the distant the camera is from the subject (finger/model) and also relative to the distance of the subject from the background. In short, it won’t look the same unless your subject is standing at arm’s-length. Lastly, it only works if your lens allows you to focus at arm’s-length. Duh!

Summer Fun

2011-03-16T21:07:00.001-07:00

“Watch Me Burn”

The other day, Mari and I went to Malibu beach, here in California. Surprisingly, this was my first time shooting at the beach even though I spent a better part of a decade in California. It was a sunny and beautiful day but not without a huge scare: I almost dropped my camera into the sea and gashed my shin on a sharp rock while trying to keep the 60D out of water. I daresay I impressed the lady with my emergency camera-saving jiu-jitsu.

The shot above was shot on a sandbar (see reflection in Mari’s eyes) with a 85mm f1.8 at f4.5. The sun was right above. I’m also experimenting with the square format.

If I can get off my lazy arse, I will attempt to write a bit about what I learned while shooting at the beach.

Envy - Background Selection Part 2

2010-11-22T14:55:00.001-08:00

Envy - Canon Rebel T1i, 85mm f1.8 at f1.8, 1/320sec, ISo 200

As mentioned in the previous post, portrait lenses and telephotos in general have a very interesting way of simplifying the background behind the subject reducing an otherwise clutter-filled scene into a pleasing image.

There are four ways to increase that effect:

Open up the aperture (I usually shoot wide open at f1.8)
Move closer to the subject
Move subject further away from the background
Use a longer focal length

In this case...

For this particular shot, the subject is standing just in front of a background of bamboo reeds. I tried to shoot through the gate but the "beauty in a cage" look was a bit tacky. I used a 85mm (136mm on APS-C sensors) at f1.8 and still managed to get a really nice and soft background yet one that is distinct enough to the viewer. In fact, to keep that "Amazonian Beauty" look, it was important not to blur the background into oblivion. Had I moved closer to the subject, or moved her further away from the background, or used a longer lens, the background would have been green mush.

Lyons In the Grass - Background Selection Part 1

2010-11-16T13:02:00.001-08:00

How your background looks is perhaps one of the most important aspects of a good portrait. It's actually one of the easiest to master too.

First, since we're shooting portraits, we're going to need portrait lenses (e.i very fast prime lenses of focal length of 50mm or above). In this case, I'm using my trusty Canon 85mm on a Rebel T1i that I borrowed from a friend (Sold the 5Dmk2).

Second, you need to know how to see through your lens. Let me rephrase that one, you NEED to know what your lens see! Portrait lenses are good at isolating the subject, compressing the background and simplifying it into a blurry, uncomplicated, flat, pretty thing. It means you can shoot a decent portrait ANYWHERE.

Like here...

Model: Jaclyn Lyons.

85mm at f1.8, 1/250sec, ISO 100. Bare Sunpak 383 behind model's left, about 2m away.

New Direction

2010-11-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

Emeraldy - Canon 5Dmk2, 85mm f1.8 at f1.8. White reflector on camera left.

Holy molly, I've been away for a looooong time. I haven't been in the studio as often as before and I've found myself shooting a lot of outdoor, doing a lot of portrait work with mixed ambient/flash setups or sometime just ambient/reflector. As a results, my shoots have become much less technical and I found myself not knowing what to write about!

Anyway, that said I think I'm going to divide my upcoming posts between journal entries and technical entries . The former being accounts of my shoots, the models, locations, weather, Steve Nash and the Suns etc and the latter about techniques, gear and setups.

One-light to light them all

2010-07-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

"Heaven Can Wait"

I've been toying the idea of shooting fashion at night under street lights so I tried to replicate that look, sort of like a proof-of-concept. When we talk about street lights, we mean harsh, very defined, very directional (high above) light.

This setup is dead simple, no diagram required, just one bare light about two meters high mimicking street-light. The good thing with a harsh one-light setup like this is that it conceals much yet is able to define curves and shadows which is a pretty good excuse to have the model in minimal clothing.

"Never Say Never"

The model is my very good friend, Dina who rocks as a model. She's one of those models who can easily flow through poses without much direction from me. The camera is a Canon 5Dmk2 with a very basic 50mm f1.4.

One thing to consider is how you light the face. Harsh light can be somewhat unflattering so you must be careful where you position the face. Long nose shadows, eyes hidden under heavy brows may be unattractive under certain conditions. Yet also be mindful that in situations like these, the goal is not to light "properly" but to light dramatically. Lastly, work around your light, don't be static, change perspective, flow through your setup and the model will flow through her poses. The shoot becomes a dance, I love it!

* John, I got the hint!

Portable Music Station for Photoshoots

2010-06-14T23:48:00.001-07:00

Along with the booze and the girls, having good music at your photoshoot can help immensely. In the past I’ve used phones with speakers, portable radios, boomboxes and laptops but I’ve never found a dedicated setup that could fit in my camera bag until now.

The Mp3 Player

I wanted an mp3 player that was cheap, simple, didn’t have planned obsolescence and didn’t require iTunes to work (aka “not an iPod”) . I still have one of the early Creative Lab’s MUVO mp3 players that still works to this day on one simple AAA battery. On the other hand, my stylish iPod with its irreplaceable * battery is dead and does a quite commendable job as a paper-weight.

Comes the SanDisk Sansa m230. It works on a single AAA battery, functions as an USB external drive for music transfer, it’s light and it’s cheap (25$ on Amazon, 50$ for the 2 gb version). It only has 512mb but that’s more than enough for a photoshoot. Of course you could also substitute this for more modern mp3 player and that’s fine.

The Speaker

Altec Lansing iM-237 Speaker . Small enough, good enough and cheap enough ($28 on Amazon) . Any good home stereo system could beat its ass but that’s not the point. This thing runs on 3 AAA batteries and fits on a lens compartment in my camera bag. It has big sound for such a small package. It’s better than most laptop speakers.

The Music

You’re shooting young, beautiful, fashionable models. You don’t want to be blasting Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence no matter how much you love that song (I do). Pick something with upbeat! I suggest anything from Gorrilaz or Lady Gaga. Papa…paparazzi?

Rock on!

* Yes I know, I could buy a battery on Ebay and replace it myself. I did and it worked… for a year.

Canon 50mm f1.4 's Signature Dreamy Look

2010-06-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

Ashley and I crawled under a bush among the bugs and the spiders and took that picture (unretouched) with a Canon 50mm f1.4.

I am not quite sure what it is... I heard that it was a strong halation, some form of chromatic abberations, or according to dpreview it's due to a "high levels of blue channel 'colour blur' ". The classic Canon 50mm may not be the sharpest of primes (a grossly relative term compared to pedestrian zooms) but when shot at f1.4 - 1.6, it's got that going and I love it.

This one is a much more flattering angle but it doesn't show the dreamy effect as much as the first.

PS: I am almost positive that the 50mm 1.8 II does not exhibit that effect.

Bluesy, 3-light setup

2010-06-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

A number of people have informed me that they still have trouble "seeing" the light when they try to read my explanations so I decided to try a new way of explaining things. Comments and criticisms are welcome. Let me know if you "get" it!

This is a 3-light setup with 1 keylight and 2 accent lights. The model is once again Mari which I admit I've been smitten with lately.

Setup

Key: A strobe shot through a small white umbrella on camera right. It's positioned about a 1.5 meter away from the model, not too high and almost on axis (to model not camera). Notice the nose shadow on the right side of the model's face.

Accent1: both used as a hairlight and a side light. The light is a slaved Sunpak 383 shot through a small white umbrella, placed about 1 meter above the model on a cheap home-made boom. I especially like the highlight on the model's right shoulder.

Accent2: A true side light. Another slaved strobe placed on a chair and shot bare for the harsh, very direct side light on the model's left cheek. Also notice the highlight on the sheet.

Post-processing

I went for a cold colour temperature but I made sure to bring the skintone back to normal. Duplicated the layer, added Gaussian blur to and changed the blending mode to linear light (I think! try them all) for the soft-focus effect.

So what do you guys think? is this clear? Again suggestions and criticisms are welcome

Shooting Techniques With Fast Prime Lenses Part 1

2010-05-08T16:53:00.001-07:00

Now I’m not going to bore you by espousing at length the merit of prime lenses. I am just going to say this: they are good, they are fast, they are sharp, they are cheap(er), they are small. I have a Canon 50mm f1.4 and a Lumix 20mm (equiv. 40mm) f1.7.

“Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes!” - Minsc

First and foremost, regardless of what you are doing, ALWAYS focus on the eyes. In a portrait, the sharpness (or impression of sharpness) of an image depends mostly on how sharp the eyes look. Anything else can fall out of focus but as long as the eyes are sharp, you’re good. This phenomenon has been used by portrait photographers for years to soften skin, blemishes, hair, etc while still maintaining a feeling of sharpness.

Primes are often used for portraitures because they are so fast and allow the photographers to create that easily recognizable background blur that is so pleasing for the viewer. Below are two problems that one will likely encounter.

Narrow Depth-Of-Field

When shooting with a fast prime lens wide-open, one must remembers that at such wide aperture, the depth-of-field is tiny. http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html has a online depth-of-field generator that is particularly useful.

(click above for bigger version)

According to the chart, at 2 meter (head-shoulder portrait), the depth-of-field of a 50mm at 1.4 on a full-frame sensor is a mere 13cm! What that means in term of real-life shooting situation is if I were to lock focus on my model’s eye, anything farther than 6cm in front and 7cm behind the eye will be out of “acceptable sharpness”. 6cm is about the length of my pinky finger!

Putting it another way, if I were to lock focus on my model’s eyes and then inadvertently move more than 7cm back or 6cm forward, the eyes will be out of focus.

A common shooting technique and the easiest way to screw that up is the classic “center-point focus and recompose”. The more time you spend recomposing your shot after the focus-lock, the more chance you will have of moving beyond that “acceptable area of sharpness” threshold. One way I use to tackle this issue is to work my composition first then once happy with it, I choose a focusing point closest to the model’s eyes (which is usually not the center point) and focus. I will then do a tiny amount of recomposing and finally depress the shutter. This should not take more than second and will minimize any offending change in distance. It’s of course easier said than done especially on a camera like the 5Dmk2 where the focus points are weirdly arranged.

Focus Plane Issue

(click above for bigger version)

So, the length of a pinky finger is no big deal for snipers like us, right? But what if the focus plane is tilted? What if your model is standing at an angle and each eye is at a different distance from the optimum focus plane? One common mistake is not to be aware of that issue and focus on just one eye. This of course results in a portrait with one eye out of focus. The sharper the angle, the bigger the problem. On the first image above, Bianca, my lighting assistant, has her left eye out of focus. It is particularly distracting on a real person.

Two ways to solve this problem: you could close down the aperture, increasing your depth-of-field or average it out and focus on a point between the two eyes which is usually the bridge of the nose. Closing the aperture will of course increase the depth-of-field and bring the background in sharper focus. One could compensate by moving the subject farther from the background, increasing the ISO and/or lowering the shutter speed. If you do not have that luxury, the best way is to average it out and focus on the bridge of the nose.

To be Continued, Part Two will be about Background and Bokeh issues.

I should post more...

2010-05-02T23:44:00.000-07:00

Yeah I should post more often...

Thanks to David M. for sending me that nice email to let me know that there is at least one person on this planet who actually reads all the crap I write. Yay!

Well I've been busy with work lately. Busy with testing out new things which I should probably document for posterity.

Stuff I did this month:

- Created a Website
- Played with a Holga
- Tried a New Look
- Learning the Harmonica to Impress the Ladies....

A New Website

http://www.endernygen.com

I am really really happy about this. It's been on the backlog for so long. Being a DIY project, it's not completely done yet but it's a huge step forward for me.

Oh and the business card :)

Holga

Shown above fully decked out for studio photography.

It's basically a plastic camera, famous and very popular with "artists" all above the world for its low-fi aesthetic. It has one shutter speed ~1/100 (!!!) and small ~f13 (unmodified) aperture(!!!)

Note the tilda....

I got one a while ago but I couldn't get myself to like it much. Picking it up again changed all that.

My Street

Well all that prompted me to search for a "new look" - Not because I was tired of my "old look" but because it's always nice to have another look lest you become a one-trick pony.

Experimental Look

The shot above is a "reshoot" of a print, taken with an old EL-Nikkor enlarging lens. I held the lens in front of the Olympus EP-1 and focused it by moving it back and forth while making sure I left plenty of space in between for stray light to get in to create the interesting effect.

Not everyone's cup of tea but interesting nevertheless.

Closing Notes

I loved the Holga so much that I went and bought a Grakkenflex TLR 135 for 50$ from someone in Hong Kong. The Gakkenflex is a COUPLED Twin-Lens-Reflex camera that you can BUILD yourself just like you would build a scale model airplane. Total awesomeness! Speaking of Awesomeness, the Hohner Special 20 harmonica is awesome. Helllo, ladiesss!

Starving Artist's Guide to Studio Portraiture: Garage Beauty

2010-04-12T22:40:00.000-07:00

Say you want a super-duper soft look for your model...

Say you want to give her some huge, watery, sparkly, dreamy eyes...

Say you want to hide all her flaws...

Say you don't want to do any retouching...

Say you don't have any money or space for that huge octawhatever softbox..

Say you have a garage...

Say you have Mari who is half-Japanese, half-Irish... Oh did I ever tell you guys that I believe the key to World Peace is interracial sex?

So check this out, this trick is going to blow your mind... well ok maybe not but it's still very cool nevertheless.

* notice the basketball bruise on her right arm. baddassss

The basic concept is to use an open garage and make it act like a huge softbox. Easy, nothing to it. Just open the door during the day. I did cover the entrance with a few light panels for an even softer light but they also double as privacy screens. I didn't want the neighbors to think I was shooting a porno. Click on any of the pictures for a bigger version.

Two small umbrellas with Sunpak 383's were set on either sides to add some rim-light to the model. Notice the highlights on her shoulders. (For the faceshot, the right umbrella was moved forward to be a side-light) The sand was conveniently available because I was paving my patio and I thought it would add something to the mood. A silver reflector was placed in front of the model to simulate how the sand would bounce light back at her were she on a real beach. Silver was selected instead of white because I liked the more unusual (sharper, more sparkly) effect.

* the bucket is full of sand

The day was overcast, my shutter speed was hovering between 1/60 and 1/100 sec (manually selected). ISO was 200-400. Lens was 70-200mm f4L shot wide open.

The model (bruises and all) was NOT retouched. The light was THAT flattering. Booya!

I actually got inspired by watching this episode of Cleveland's Next Top Model... fierce!

Aria of the Sea

2010-03-24T21:55:00.000-07:00

One of our friends decided to put together a photoshoot and invited me to participate. It was a great experience, the model was gorgeous and I had a chance to show the lighting-on-the-cheap way of shooting.

For the shoot, I brought the barest minimum which consisted of two lightweight lightstands, one small umbrella, my medium-sized DIY lightpanel and two small strobes (Sunpak 383 and SB-27). The kit fitted in a small baseball bat bag.

Angie, our all-smiling model. Note the panel in the background.

Setup 1

This setup was not done by my cheapo stuff. The light comes from the modeling lamp of a single Profoto beauty dish. All the other lights were ambient. I shot this at ISO 1600 while my friends were using the strobes. The background was gray paper. I added some texture in post just 'cause...

Setup 2

Medium lightpanel on camera left about 1 meter away from the model. I had one voice-operated stand holding the SB-27 on camera right, slightly behind the model to provide the rim light on the model's face. I also had another voice-operated stand with a frosted silver bounce card (car sunscreen) on camera right to soften the shadow side.

Post

I cross-processed the final shots through NIK ColorEfex

Bus Ride to Nowhere

2010-03-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

Gears: Olympus E-p1, m. zuiko 14-42mm at f5.6, 1/5 sec, ISO 800

I always think of the song Don't Stop Believing by Journey when I look at this picture. I'm not sure why, maybe it's because we should took a bus and didn't know where we were headed. "She took the midnight training going anywhere..."

People often ask me how I am able to get decent pictures with "kit lenses". I usually answer them that Olympus kit lenses are among the best lenses, period. Beside, it's not really about the lens, it's about what you do with it and how well you edit (the last point being a important topic to be covered later.)

My First Photoshoot, 2006

2010-03-15T00:44:00.000-07:00

According to the EXIF data of the picure above, my first photoshoot was shot on March 27th, 2006 at around a 10 o'clock P.M.. The raw file was cross-processed but otherwise unretouched.

The picture has a lot of "flaws": there is a huge, harsh shadow behind the model. The bedpost isn't a great background, the model's hands are positioned awkwardly and draw too much attention. Her toes are slightly uncomfortable to look at. Yet, I still really like this picture for its simplicity and unpretentiousness. I am not sure I can consciously reproduce this today.

I remember being really really nervous and excited at the same time. Even today I still get nervous before a shoot. It's like you're ALMOST certain that you're good enough to pull it off... almost. I don't think it's a feeling that will ever go away.

Now looking back, the Canon Rebel XT became a 5D Mk2, the 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 became the 24-105 f4L. I got a few more lights and got a bit wiser but that's about it. Comparing my most recent works to the picture above, I don't see a huge difference. I am not quite sure if that's a good thing but I comfort myself by reasoning that my progress has been more subtle: refining compositions and lighting, communication with models, colour theory, technical know-how etc. Beside, I wasn't that bad to start with.... I hope I am not kidding myself.

Lighting-wise, it's a single flash on camera left shot against the wall and bounced back toward the model. It seems that a lot of the light from the flash hit the model instead of bouncing thus the hard shadow. I should have turned the head toward the wall further. I'm not sure I knew what I was doing back then.

Interestingly, I don't know how often I've shot in a bedroom. It's almost creepy thinking about it.

Thanks for reading!

-
PS: 2010, same model

PPS: For those wondering what kind of lens I've been shooting with lately, this is it: Nikon 50mm enlarging lens mounted on a bellow. DIY tilt-lens:

French Vibe

2010-03-09T21:54:00.001-08:00

This series was taken few months back while I was in Paris and I finally got around to processing them. I am not sure why I didn't do it earlier.

The setting was a big white room with a sky light, we were technically inside a huge softbox. I'm not usually a fan of such big, broad, soft light but the fashiony people are so whatyougonnado? The lighting is uncomplicated: it's soft and even, and it shows the details of the clothes really well without drawing attention to itself. In such case, it's really hard to mess up (lighting-wise) so all I had to do was direct the model to pose the way I want. Everything was shot with my friend Rachel's 5dMk2 with a 24-70mm because mine didn't work.

During the shoot, everything was shot vertically and dead center. I wanted some lee-way during post-processing for crops or texts. The photos were cross-processed slightly using NIK ColorEffex and cropped to fit my taste. A centered composition is O.K in fashion and being within the rule-of-third is generally desired but for this one, I wanted to do something else so my crop is a bit weird and to the side. The very top picture is a tighter crop and by far my favorite but the main purpose of the shoot was to show the clothing so that's what you gotta do.

Thanks for reading!

Night Photo Walk: Olympus E-p1 in low-light

2010-03-04T23:27:00.000-08:00

Olympus E-p1, Lumix 20mm f1.7, ISO 800, 1/160 sec

I finally got around to check DPreview's review of the Olympus PEN E-P1 today and was surprised at the rating the camera got. First, dpreview recently changed their rating system so the E-p1 which originally received a "Highly Recommended" score has been downgraded to a pitiful 66%. Now, I don't know about you but when I was a kid, a 66% on a test would've gotten me a huge trashing by my parents.

The review concluded that the E-p1 was not good for "Low light, indoor or action/sports/wildlife photography". I went out and tested it on a recent photo-walk one night to see how the camera would perform. I got something like this... (click for bigger version)

Olympus E-p1, Lumix 20mm f1.7, ISO 800, 1/5 sec

None of the samples dpreview presented was shot at night so I don't know how they came to that conclusion. They probably didn't get something like this either...

Olympus E-p1, Lumix 20mm f1.7, ISO 800, 1/16 sec

Or this...

Olympus E-p1, Lumix 20mm f1.7, ISO 800, 1/15 sec

So whatever, dpreview....

Olympus E-p1, Lumix 20mm f1.7, ISO 800, 1/6 sec

Ok so I am being a little defensive with my new weapon of choice but hey, she's been good to me.

Back to Panels: Lenore

2010-03-03T21:28:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite poems is The Raven by Poe and I often find myself subconsciously inspired by it in my photography. This piece is called Lenore, similar to my earlier piece, The Drowned, I'd wanted to mix the female work with an animalistic vibe. I really like how it turned out, it has a slightly fantasy, drawn feel to it. The picture was shot with the Lensbaby Muse.

Some people had asked me about shooting with a tilt-lens such as the Lensbaby. They said that they couldn't quite reproduce the effect. Of course the answer is that it's impossible to reproduce the exact effect, it's very very much random. I do have one tip though, don't go for sharp focus. The Lensbaby has a particular look that is quite prominent when it's in sharp focus (i.e. sharp focus point with a "burst effect"). For this project, I prefer a softer feel so I don't aim for sharpness instead relying on shapes and forms to dictate my composition. I find the resulting image to be more organic.

As for the setup, it's again quite simple.

An Alien Bee 800 shot through a DIY light panel that I made and placed on camera left on the white seamless background which also double as a reflector to further soften the light. If you still have trouble picturing the scene, here's a link. The model, did not want to be identified since she's a close friend of mine.

There you have it.

Match Maker: Olympus E-p1 + Panasonic 20mm f1.7

2010-02-25T16:38:00.000-08:00

Olympus E-p1, Lumix 20mm f1.7 ISO 200

I've recently acquired an Olympus PEN E-P1 which I unoriginality named Penny. I've since fallen in love with the camera for its ease of use and portability. I love it so much that I went all out and bought a Panasonic LUMIX G 20mm f/1.7 normal (40mm equivalent) prime lens.

Right off the bat, let me tell you this: they work awesomely good together. What you have here is essentially a compact camera with image stabilization and a blazing fast, super sharp (some think Leica has something to do with it) normal lens. I've only shot with the combination for a day but I already managed to get some decently good pictures.

As I said, the lens is fast and sharp wide open (f1.7) and I had no problem focusing at night.

The picture above was taken at f2.0 at ISO 800 with a shutter speed of 1/6! Thanks goodness for image stabilization which in my opinion makes the E-p1 better than the Panasonic GF1. Surprisingly, the image is relatively clean and free of noise - it looks very film-like. Bravo Olympus!

Olympus E-p1, Lumix 20mm f1.7 ISO 800

Things in My Backyard

2010-02-21T22:38:00.000-08:00

I really like my new backyard. It's currently really ugly and a totally mess but it's a haven for macro photography. Today while watering my new roses (bought bare-rooted), I noticed this little guy sticking through a little opening in the wooden gate that separates our backyard from the neighbor's. Being somewhat of an amateur botanist myself, I suspect it is in fact a purple flower thingy with petals and stuff.

It was taken with the Olympus E-p1 with a 14-42mm lens and I'm glad to see that the camera is more than up to the task for macro photography. The file was processed with NIK Color Efex's the Film Effect filter (Fuji 400H).

The Drowned

2010-02-16T23:58:00.000-08:00

First I would like to apologize to the three people who reads this blog for the lack of babes in my recent posts. You see, a lot of my pictures are results from work or class assignments. Last semester, I tried to prove to my peeps that my photographic eye doesn't revolve around women exclusively. I don't think it worked out as well as I thought because I got a B+ in the class. So now, lets bring babes back... but with a more Fine Artsy touch (whatever that means).

Two lights will be needed for the shot above. The main light is a softbox and the hair-light is a 20 degree grid spot. The main light was posited on the side to give it more mood and shadows. Notice the base of her nose and her shadowed eye sockets. The hair light was a must to give the shadow areas some imaginary depth by having the hair stand out.

The RAW file was converted to B&W in Photoshop and virtual grains were added for that elusive "film effect". I also rotated the picture around and have the model "fly" down. It is an unconventional way to crop a human body and I have to admit that it was a bit hard to look at, at first but I've grown to like it that way.

Surpringly, the weird focus shift isn't done in Photoshop. I actually created my own version of the lensbaby with a longer bellow and softer optics. I will detail the construction in latter posts.

Me and Penny: Incoming!

2010-01-20T11:29:00.000-08:00

Olympus E-p1, 14-42mm m. Zuiko, ISO 800

It's been raining cats and dogs here in Southern California and the streets are here definitely not built for such large amount of downpour. Result: big puddles everywhere making life a wet and damp hell for pedestrians.

Me and Penny: Mile High's Turf

2010-01-17T19:16:00.001-08:00

Olympus E-p1, 14-42mm m. zuiko.

My court name is Mile High because that's how far the basket looks from my perspective (I'm 5'5, 145lb on a good day.) The shot was taken in front of my house where Amazing sometime happens... to other people.

I'm planning to really "go pro" (as photographer that is) by the end of the year but I still want to do something personal so I am starting this new body of work called Me and Penny*:

This is a reportage of my daily life. Nothing fancy, nothing presumptuous, just life as I see it and as reported by the Olympus digital Pen.

I think the Olympus E-p1 is the Perfect Camera.

* Penny and I is the proper grammatical form but WTH.

Assignment: Dance Performance

2009-12-23T10:56:00.000-08:00

Nikkor 80-200mm at f2.8 1/125 ISo 800, Nikon D700

One of my recent assignments was to shoot a dance performance during the pre-show rehearsal and because it was a rehearsal, I was allowed to set my own lighting and go on stage apron.

The main problem facing the photographer during a stage performance is the lighting. The performers are already lit by beautiful stage lights but the latter are rarely bright enough for a fast shutter speed required to freeze dancing motions. The are few ways to attack this problem.

First, you could raise your ISO and use a fast lens (Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8) in order to achieve a correct exposure at shutter speed of 1/500 sec or less. From my experience, the ISO range for this situation is usually 1600 and above. Unfortunately, this is usually an issue for most cameras. You will get a lot of noise. If you can't go that high, I would suggest you time your shutter release carefully and shoot in burst mode. Time your shots when the dancers are still and not moving too much, like at the end of a motion with their arms gracefully extended out. If they are jumping, make sure you time your shutter release at the apex of the jump where the dancer is motionless in the air (the hang-time).

Nikkor 80-200mm at f2.8 1/80 ISo 800, Nikon D700

Second, you could bring your own lights. For this performance I used a small Sunpak 383 clamped on a railing on the side and triggered wirelessly. The secret with using a flash here is to NOT destroy and overpower the beautiful stage lights. Instead, you will need to balance it with the stage lights and that means using a warming gel (stage lights are often tungsten) and a low enough shutter speed to let the ambient lights in. What you will get is a motion trail where the dancer move and a clear defined image right on top where the flash shoots.

Belated Halloween Post

2009-11-09T14:02:00.000-08:00

I'll keep this short because I have to go soon but thought I would post something up because I've been lazy lately. This shot was for actress/model Marie Lynn (http://www.actressmarielynn.com).
We wanted to channel the Halloween spirit and do a promotional shot for her website.

It's a 2-light setup with two on the side and a bounce in the front. I wanted a dramatic directional light instead of a soft beauty light to achieve the mood I needed. The model was to be wrapped in barbed wires and her face being slightly in shadow with piercing eyes staring out.

Light A: AlienBee 800 with medium photoflex softbox a little bit on the side.

Light B: I didn't have a second softbox so I used one of my smaller DIY lightpanels with a Sunpak 383.

Bounce: To open up the shadow on the face, I used a silver-backed foamcore that was lying around and put it in front of the model.

The background was a black paper background. All the spill light made it gray.

Update: The 7D was an awesome camera. Very responsive. The ISO performance wasn't as good as the full-framers though so I went back to the 5Dmk2.

Canon 7D: Informal ISO Test (Part 1)

2009-10-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

Having shots extensively with the Canon 5Dmk2 and Nikon D700 where I work, I have to say that the 7D does NOT measure up to its full-frame counterparts. I've concluded that the 7D is little bit better than the consumer-level Rebel XSi (an excellent performer) but is a couple of notches down from the almost noise-free images of the 5D and the D700. Well, it does cost $1000US less...

That being said and as a point of reference, I WOULD shoot an outdoor beauty portrait at ISO 800 (1600 if I really have to) with the Canon 7D and not feel bad about it. I am no expert pixel-peeper nor do I want to be but I think the 7D still manages to retain quite a bit of details (notice the veins on the leafs) up to ISO 3200.

But all this is relative and very much subjective. This hardly a scientific test but for my defense, I did shoot all cameras on assignments.

You do have to click on the images below to really see the differences.

Canon 7D, 17-40mm f4L at 40mm, f5.6, shots in RAW, converted to JPEG with Lightroom on the default setting.

ISO 100

ISO 200

ISO 400

ISO 800

ISO 1600

ISO 3200

ISO 6400

One Picture a Day Maybe?

2009-10-18T01:30:00.000-07:00

Nikon FM2, NIkkor 28mm f2.8 at f2.8, Fuji Superia 400 Colour Negative film, scanned from a print made on Fuji Crystal paper.

In an effort to make myself shoot more often, I decided to force myself to shoot/upload at least one picture per day and put it on my blog. I won't be rambling much about it. It's going to be just a simple picture with a few words maybe. It doesn't have to be mindblowingly creative, it'll just have to be something. Anything. Now I've tried doing this before but never found enough discipline to see it through. Hopefully this time...

The picture above was taken for a class assignment on depth-of-field.

And this one was a test for the Canon 7D taken in my backyard with a Lensbaby.

Quick Peek at The Canon 7D

2009-10-15T18:23:00.001-07:00

Testing the new Canon 7D while eating. Mom is annoyed. ISO 2000, processed for tones and colours. not bad!

Is that a 70-200mm zoom lens in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Well could it be? Why yes it could. The Canon 7D arrived at my door a day late (raining hard in Los Angeles) but here it is and looking very stupid with my very unsexy and leaky Lensbaby.

I bought it mainly for its video capability. For those out there who can't understandably why anyone would want to put video into a dSLR, I have one thing to say: think bigger. Just because YOU won't be using its video capability doesn't mean others won't either!

The fact is, the 7D (along with the 5DMk2) is a relatively inexpensive way for normal people to make film-quality (shallow depth of field, 24p frame rate) videos without breaking the bank (relatively speaking).

Beside, commercial photographers need to know about videos and stay competitive because clients will demand it. It's nice to have a tool that can do both.

And here showing some backside and what a nice backside too!

Stay tuned for more.

Outdoor Portraits: Summer Is Ending Soon

2009-10-13T23:40:00.000-07:00

Updated: The Canon 7D will arrive at my door tomorrow! more about it soon

Every year when Fall arrives, I step outside the studio and shoot outdoor. I just love the colours, the mood and the melancholy of the season. I find it so very soothing.

The light is also perfect when rain clouds roll through the sky and it is on such a day that I grabbed the Canon Rebel XSi, my 70-200mm f4L IS (my favorite portrait lens) and asked my friend Mari to help me create some nice pictures. I've always thought that the 70-200mm f4L would be suited for such occasions but by the end of the day, I changed my mind.

One thing about a long telephoto is that you can shoot through objects like leafs and branches and they will fall out of focus without blocking the subject. In this picture, Mari seems like she's inside a dense forest.

(click on the pictures for a bigger version)

This one is a misframed shot that I didn't plan for but rather like. The point of view seems to be from some predator stalking our model in the forest.

And lastly, a regular "show the clothes" shot that you would expect from a magazine spread

All in all, it was a great day. The only downside was throughout the shoot, the 70-200mm f4L struggled big time. All of the shots were taken at ISO 400 at the maximum f4 aperture and my shutter speed hovered between 1/60 - 1/125 in wooded areas. Ok, that's not too bad, the 70-200mm has image stabilization and at 70mm, it should be able to resolve images sharply, right?

Wrong. To get the blurred background at f4, the lens must be racked out around the 150mm range or preferably more. It's also a very long and heavy lens and even with IS on, most of my shots were slightly out of focus due to camera shakes. As a compromise, I shot most of my pictures at slightly less than 100m and blurred the background in Photoshop.

So next time, I think I'll bring my 50mm 1.4 instead and on a cropped-sensor like on the 7D, it should prove to be a good portrait lens. And if I win the lottery, I can buy the 70-200mm f2.8L IS. For now, the 70-200m f4 remains my favorite lens for studio sessions where most the shots are taken at f5.6-f8.0.

Starving Artist's Guide to Studio Portraitures: Double Side Light

2009-09-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

The American

There are two things in commercial photography that I consider to be of primal importance: Coolness and Sexyness (C&S).

What you see above is actually yours truly and thus we face our first problem. I ain't cool nor sexy. So how do to make me C&S? put a gun in my hand, slick back the hair, wear some cowboy's shirt, put some sunglasses and voila (ok that did sound terribly cliché but whatever). Actually the most important part of C&S is lighting and nothing scream sexy-killer-badassness as some hot (bright) side lights.

Here's the setup.

Light A and B: in this setup, I consider these our main lights as they are used to define and shape the picture. They are small Sunpak 383 shots against two small reflective white umbrellas that gives us a wide but focused beam of light. They are placed high enough to light the sides of the face but also the hair. Below you can see how they look while the model (Me!) is looking straight at the camera. I also have to mention that I was in a white room with a lot of the spills bouncing around. Were I in a black room, the front of my face would have been much darker.

There's a quite a bit of smoke in the air as I was burning a cigar to get some smoke for later uses.

Light C: this is an Alienbee 800 with a 20 degree gridspot. Now don't get too excited if you don't have a gridspot. This light is only there as a fill and powered very low. In a pinch you could substitute it with a white bounce card or a DIY light panel.

This is the final picture pre-photoshop.

Incidentally, C&S is enhanced by adding some political or social messages. Actually it's not but as this was for a class and teachers don't usually appreciate C&S for C&S' sake.

Starving Artist's Guide To Studio Portraiture: Red Hot With Hairlight

2009-09-07T00:48:00.000-07:00

Update: I finally got my computer screen properly calibrated and saw how badly over-processed the pictures are. Sorry. I'll update them when someone buys me a Flickr Pro account ;)

Check this out, it's a tiny Olympus FL-36R (R for Radio) flash with built-in optical slave sitting on a cheap Canon monopod which is then attached to a stand with a boom clamp.

Lately, I've been experimenting with hairlights and putting them up high above the model with the use of the improvised boom arm. The FL-36R was the perfect flash for such purposes as it is lightweight (using only 2 AA batteries) and most importantly, it's able to be wirelessly triggered by its built-in optical slave.

I've also been reading and looking at George Hurrel's body of work. He's quite famous for using very bright, very harsh and very directed hairlight with little regards to spillages or blown highlights. Niiice.

Photo By George Hurrell, Copyrighted

Ok so here's the setup diagram.

Light A (key): AlienBee AB800 with Photoflex medium softbox (both of which I will review soon). You could, in a pinch, substitute the softbox for a small white DIY panel. This is my main light, the first light to be put down. It's placed high enough to throw a downward nose shadow, this is also known as a loop-light pattern.

Light B (fill): Sunpak 383 shooting against a small white reflective umbrella. This is my fill light, I wanted to brighten up the shadow side just a tad.

Light C (hairlight): Olympus FL-36R on a makeshift boom. It was placed high enough so it would throw a highlight on the model's hair and spill over to shape the model's right shoulder and upper chest.

Light D (background light): Another Sunpak with a red gel to light the black background.

Schweeet!

Here we have the same lighting setup but with a bit less clothing (and it started so innocently).

If you have any questions, please fill free to ask them on the comment session below.

Assignment: Girl Reading Book

2009-08-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

(Nikon D700, 35mm 2.0, 1/2000 at f2.0)

I am currently working on an tutorial (maybe video) on outdoor portraiture. In the meantime, I will put this one up and try to analyze what went through my thought process when I shot it. It may be of interest to people who for some strange reasons, are reading this blog and are interested in outdoor portraiture (although, this is not a typical portrait).

This shot was for California State University of Northridge and for a time, it was on their homepage. You can find the article with the picture here.

The assignment was as follow: Take a picture of a student reading the book and the book must be the main focus.

Our location: Starfleet Academy (I'm not kidding)

More specifically here on top of the stairs (click of the image below for a bigger version)...

It was under broad daylight so a likely location to shoot such assignment was under a shade somewhere and that's where we started to shoot (marked first location above).

1st Attempt

Not a bad . It's a good starting point. I like the warm colour from the book and the cool colour on the girl. Blue and orange are complimentary colours and together they create a very nice contrast. Compositionally, the image is slightly off. There's too much empty space on the right and even more on the left. I also wanted the book to stand out by blurring out the girl.

2nd Attempt

Much better, we eliminated the dead space on the right by moving in and filling the frame with the subject. You can either zoom in or physically move in. Either way will reduce the depth-of-field resulting in the background falling out of focus. Also, the book is positioned on one of the 4 points that make up the Rule of Third. The image was exposed for the background. Were we to expose the image for the girl, the background would have been blown out. And because it was exposed for the background, the subject is too dark.

3rd Attempt

I could have solved the exposure problem by bouncing light onto the model's face. Instead, I decided to move the model to a more suitable location. That is, one where the background was darker both in tone(colour) and in luminance (brightness). The second location proved to be more suitable due to the vegetation in the back versus the white, bright concrete and sky. The exposure was made for the model and everything turned out to be well-balanced except the composition.

4th Attempt

The camera was tilted further creating more dynamic lines, a slight vignette was added during post-processing, the cleavages were burned in to make them less conspicuous (blasphemy!) and that's it.

I hope you guys enjoyed it.

French Bananas

2009-07-31T11:42:00.000-07:00

Tech Info: Nikon FM2 with 28mm f2.8 lens at 4.0 or 5.6 (can't remember), Kodak Ektar 100 colour negative film

Shorter after arriving to Paris, I was booked into a small room at a 3-star hotel. It was a nice enough room (no-AC). That is, it's got a bed, it was clean and has a view (a wall) and that's all it's got. This is the "view" from the window. It's not a bad view at all. That is, if your eyes saw things in 28mm. So to "document" my stay, I went and took a few pictures. This is one of them.

I rather like this picture though. As one of my friends put it: "it's busy but balanced" and I totally agree. It's very busy, both in colours and shapes.

The photograph has a strong main point of focus though: the bananas. They are positioned in the foreground at the one of the four points that make the "rule of thirds".

Then we have the background, slightly out of focus but still very distinct. It's got rectangles, triangle, circles but what keeps your eyes from losing themselves in the chaos are the strong lines. They serve to draw the eyes upward into the sky.

Lastly, we have the two main colours in the picture; blue and orange and if you look at them in the colour wheel, you'll find that they are complimentary colours. (they are on opposite sides of the wheel). They also serve to cut the frame almost in half.

Did I think about that when I took the picture? Not at all. But I can pretend that I did.

Back From Paris

2009-07-26T20:04:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates but I really needed to take a break from photography. After taking pictures for a few years now, I noticed that I came to a standstill. I didn't feel like I was improving and upon talking to one of my teachers, it was suggested that I should take a break from it and and do something else. Which I did.

I bought a house and went to Paris with my trusty Nikon FM2 and a few rolls of Ektar. Oh and I did some fashion-style photography in the streets of Paris. That was interesting.

Everything was done under natural light which is really out of my comfort zone and which is not as easy as I thought. I shall write more about that subject in latter posts. Suffice to say, it's not as simple just finding some shades and snap away. I got ALOT of bad shots.

And also coming later, I'm in the process of converting half of my house into a photo studio and I shall write about it as I do it. I'll keep you guys posted!

Well, I guess I'm back.

A Little Bit of Over-Exposure.

2009-05-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

(Storm)

Over-exposure is not always a bad thing. When done right, over exposure can be used as an artistic statement. For our purpose, over-exposing did not mean raising the ISO or turning the power all the way up. It meant selectively lighting a part of our image really REALLY bright. In our case: the face and especially the eyes.

Frankly, I did not have a lot of experience with over-exposure so my friend Stephany (one of my classmates) and I decided to experiment.

We started with our basic two-lights setup:

- A medium softbox was used for the keylight
- An AB800 with a 10 degree gridspot was used for the hair light

Notice that the light doesn't come from the front of the model but more from the back. We knew we wanted the final picture to be somewhat from a profile perspective and so the softbox was placed accordingly. Had it been placed at the front, the light would have cascaded onto her left shoulder and ruined that shadow there. Remember, shadow is your friend, it creates mood. A flag was also positioned between the softbox and the black background to keep the latter black.

An AlienBee 800 (thanks Steph!) with a 10 degree gridspot was used for the hairlight. Take note that without it, her hair would have "melted" into the black background. We didn't want that.

I also took the shot below with the same setup but at a slightly different angle and with a reflector (notice the reflections in the eyes).

Been Busy

2009-05-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy month. We bought a house, I'm building a new studio and getting ready for the Paris trip at the end of June. I've also been shooting a lot of Fine Art stuff.

I'll be shooting fashion stuff in Paris for a month and I'll have a lot of things to write about when I come back. Also look forward for video lighting tutorials!

TTYL!

Commercial Beauty Headshot

2009-04-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

I've been in a funk lately. My recent pictures were good but they weren't better than the one that came before. I didn't put them up. Instead, I sat down and made a list of what I'm good at and what needs to be improved.

It basically boiled down to this:

Strengths:

I am very good with lighting
My compositions are relatively good especially for faceshots
I am able to pose and direct my models
I am relatively personable on the set
I have a studio space and a decent set of equipments

Weaknesses:

I dabble in too many things, my portfolio is not focused enough, it doesn't have a single unifying style or theme
I do not have the resources to do more location shootings
My full-body shots need to be more dynamic
I look too panicky (even when I'm totally prepared) when I am on the set, often frowning and cussing and that sometime worries the models.
I need better models. No offense to all my previous models but almost all of them don't quite make the cut as super models. I can say that freely because all of them are close friends of mine and don't do it for a living * :P
The production value of my work isn't pro-standard yet.

Ok... erm what do? For this shoot I decided to focus the last two weaknesses: high production value and professional models.

My solution was simple enough: pick a theme, find a professional model on www.modelmayhem.com and pay for make-up and hair. For the theme, I went for commercial beauty photography. For the model, I found Viviana (MM#1101626) and to increase the apparent production value, I hired a MUA/Hairstylist.

But first, a little brainstorming was in order. I started writing down adjectives that I thought would convey what I wanted. The few that stood out were: beautiful, soft, warm, radiant and smooth.

Fair enough, for beauty and soft, I used a medium softbox. For the warmth I used a small accent amber background light with a black background and we picked a brown top for the model. For radiant, I added a hairlight with a gridspot. Finally I asked the makeup artist to create a smooth, natural style for the model

Here's the setup, it's pretty self-explanatory. You can click on the image for a bigger version.

The fan was used to add a little dynamic to the hair. The flag is there to keep the light from the hairlight to cause flares on the lens. For the background "accent" light, I used a small Olympus Fl-36R with an amber gel and set to trigger optically. I've come to depend on small, optically-slaved "speedlight" often lately even when I have professional equipments at my disposal. They are easier to move and tinker around with than a Profoto head.

The proof sheet above is 20 of the best unretouched shots we got that day (out of about 400).

Not bad, eh? Well, until next time for another high production (hopefully) shoot.

* They'd also tell you that children scream and women chase me with pitchforks at the sight of my mug

Starving Artist's Guide to Studio Portraiture: Glamour With a Bit of Flare

2009-01-30T18:43:00.000-08:00

Glamour With a Bit of Flare....get it... get it?

So for this assignment, I was asked to shoot a couple of glamour shots for model Denise Manila (mm#834507) for her portfolio. No problem, we did just that. The fun only started after we knew we had everything we wanted and decided to go wild. The model was relaxed, I was relaxed and the light, well let's just shoot one right into the lens and see what happen.

Full Disclosure: I did not plan this out, it was totally random... I didn't know what I was doing until the shot was taken.

Light A: The key-light. A Sunpak 383, set behind a panel with diffusion fabric stretched across. The light was triggered by a Cybersync.

Light B: This one is a side-light. An Olympus FL-36R was placed on a chair and set to through the same amount of power as the key effectively sandwhiching the model between two bars of light. It was trigggered optically from its built-in slaves.

Light C: I don't know how to call this light, it's only there because it shouldn't be. Having a light in the viewfinder is a sure recipe for lens flares but in this case, it's what we wanted. The light was a Sunpak 383 trigged optically by a Wein peanut slave.

A few things worth considering. You should only try something like that when you know you're done with your assignment and know you've got what you came for. This is a very random process and that's what makes it fun. There's also a chance that you'll end up with worthless crap. I'm just saying.

Now thinking the other way around, when you're done with your assignment always try something like this. You already have the shots you wanted so there's no pressure.

Don't get bogged down by details or flaws, just feel the flow, get off your tripod, move around, if there's a stand in the shot, who cares? Her hair is a mess? well that's OK too! she looks like she just had *COUGH* *COUGH*....

The Photographer's Tools: Pocket Knives

2009-01-25T20:55:00.000-08:00

I love knives! they are one of the oldest tools ever made and remain one of the most important tools for humanity. I collect them. I also love MacGyver, he's my hero, he doesn't believe in violence, he loves and respect nature, he's a genius and he's got a knife! (usually a Victorinox Tinker).

You may not share my passion for knives but as a photographer, you may find your life much easier with one of them. You're going to need a knife to cut tapes, cut wires, cut background papers, cut gels, do emergency field repair, loosen bolts on stands, opening beer bottles, look cool while doing it, and most importantly, opening wine bottles for your models when you shoot nudes. You need lots of wine bottles when you shoot nudes.

And if you're attacked by zombies while on location, you can gaffer tape your knife to the end of your monopod and you have a spear.

There are near endless uses for them and for the photographer, I recommend ones with pliers and screwdrivers and of course, corkscrew. Below are my favorites.

Leatherman Skeletool CX

This is my favorite pocket tool, it's got everything you need when you go out shooting. It's got a screwdriver with bits for phillips and flatheads. It's got a wicked sharp but small (so it doesn't scare the paranoids) main blade, it's got an extremely useful needlenose plier, it's got a carabiner that doubles as a bottle opener, and finally it's got some serious sex appeal. I mean that thing is just extra cool-looking. The non-CX version has a plain blade and no black tungsten coating. This one lives in my camera bag. Price: 70$

Victorinox One-Handed Trekker

I love Victorinox Swiss Army Knives (SAK), they are built like tanks and are very inexpensive. I used to carry the Skeletool wherever I went but after nearly losing it, I decided I needed something cheaper and more disposable. This one has a seratted blade when bought but I didn't like it and ground it down to a plain blade. The very amaterish "sea serpent" blade motifs were done with a dremel tool. Because of the large blade, this knife is also my favorite hiking/camping knife. This knife is permanently attached to the belt-loop on my jeans with a carabiner. Price: 20$

Update: There is a plain blade version (NS) of this knife.

Victorinox SwissTool

If pocket tools were WWII tanks, this one would be the German Tiger. The SwissTool has almost all the tools that you could possible need. It's also very heavy so I keep it in my car for emergency situations. Leatherman also makes a similar tool and I believe they are the pioneer of this design but I prefer Victorinox because MacGyver used them... Price: 70$

Update: There's also a lighter, more curvy version called the Spirit.

Victorinox Camper and Wenger Soldier

THE posters children of Swiss Army Knives, these are probably what most people think when think of SAK. They have all the basic tools that you need and would probably last you a lifetime. Until recently the Soldier (all metal) was the official pocket knife for the Swedish army. It has since been replaced by a military version of the Trekker (above). Please note that the red plastic scales on all SAK are primarily there for decorative purposes. The knife itself is all-metal and perfectly functional if the scales break off. Many aficionados have replaced their plastic scales with wooden ones (which I plan to do). The Camper also have the all-important corkscrew for when you shoot nudes. Price: 15$

Victorinox Classic Alox and LED light

These permanently lives on my keychain. You'll never know when you might need a knife or a light. What else is there to say? Price: 10$

Well I hope I convinced some of you to go out and buy one of theses and I shall end this with the Boy Scout motto:

Be Prepared!

Assignment: Girl On A Computer

2009-01-15T12:23:00.000-08:00

When working in Public Relations, no assignment is in more danger of becoming extremely boring than the dreaded "guy in front of the computer" shot. So what can you do to add some sex-appeal to a computer screen? One answer is to light selectively. This is what I did

(click on pictures for bigger versions)

Computer: the Art people wanted the computer screen to be readable (sharp and bright) so I used a 50mm f1.8 set at f8 for enough depth-of-field and placed the camera on a tripod. The camera was properly exposed for the lit screen. We could have just Photoshopped in a fake screen but we still wanted to have something to work from.

Light 1: As the computer itself was the centerpiece of the photograph, I started setting up the scene by placing an optically-slaved Nikon SB-80 with a blue gel behind the screen. I wanted a blue glow under the screen and also on the black background so the flash was pointed somewhat away from the table. This is the kicker light that would separate the computer screen from the black background. The blue gel was used to create a mood and to keep with the colour scheme of the website.

Light 2: the next light to be placed was the keylight for the model's face, a Nikon SB-28 synced with a Cybersync. It was placed on a stand, high behind the computer screen and was fitted with a snoot in order to illuminate the model's face and nothing else.

Light 3: At this point we have the computer screen exposed properly and the model's face lit. The last piece of the puzzle was the keyboard so an SB-800 also with blue gel and at the lowest power was placed on the left of the screen.

Light 4: After taking a test shot, I noticed that the back of the model was too dark and "melted" with the background so yet another light was used. An SB-24 with an SU-4 optical slave and a black card board snoot was placed on a stand and pointed at the model's back on. A black flag was placed in between the light and the monitor to keep the spilt from striking the latter. Finally a silver reflector placed on the left was used to raise up the shadow on the model's face.

That's it, I hope that makes sense!

-TN

Lighting Tutorials from Digital Photo Pro Magazine

2009-01-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

I got this quarter's Digital Photo Pro magazine through the mail today and it had a few very interesting articles but one in particular caught my attention. It's a series of lighting "recipes" by photographer Urs Recher and it shows how he created his photographs from portraits and fashions to products and interiors.

The lighting lessons are available online at the Digital Photo Pro's website.

Note that Recher uses a set of lighting equipments that cost more than a luxury car but that's kind of like a magician using a busty and leggy assistant. It's just for show! The true magic is in his ability to shape the light and incorporate it in the mood of his photographs.

Now if you still think you can't do what he did because you only have a bunch of flashes and a bit of gaffer tape (my gear bag), I suggest you stop reading this, sell your camera and find another hobby 'cause the fact is with that kind of mindset you'll never be a good photographer. Booya!

-TN

Things to Watch On a Rainy Day

2009-01-06T14:09:00.000-08:00

I've been sitting in front of the computer for ten minutes now and I just don't know what to write about so I'll just put a picture I recently took for your viewing pleasure. Yup that's my New Year resolution, get out of the studio more often!

Beside that I've been watching the Nikon School's Guide to Creative Lighting DVD by Bob Krist and Joe McNally, two of my favorite photographers. I love Bob Krist's monthly articles in Outdoor Photographer magazine and Joe McNally is a master of lighting on location. The DVD is quite good at showcasing the ability of the NIKON CLS system and as a Canon shooter (mainly) I am a little bit jealous. But regardless of what brand of camera you are using, there are still a lot of knowledge on how to light on location in those videos.

I've also been catching up on David Hobby's Strobist DVD set of instructional videos on how to use off-camera flashes. Getting through the first or second disc was a pain as I already knew most of that stuff. I was really tempted to discard the rest of the set but I'm glad I didn't. I thought I knew a lot already but David Hobby taught me more. Good stuff.

Finally, I've been studying Chris Orwig's videos on Photoshop Retouching Techniques at Lynda.com. Chris is an excellent teacher (hailing from the Brooks' Institute of Photography) and if you want to learn more about retouching in Photoshop, he's the man.

That's it, learn on!

-TN

First Post of The Year

2009-01-03T01:26:00.000-08:00

(14-40mm at 26mm, f4, Canon 40D)

So here comes 2009! Let's hope it's a good one...

And for my photographic resolution for the new year: get out of the studio and take more environmental, conceptual portraits.

So with that in mind, I went out with Prin who's like my go-to person when I feel like shooting someone, anyone.

.... turns out it was a miserable day - windy, cold, gloomy and foggy and Prin lost her glasses. Beh!

Alright lets get right down to the diagram...

It's basically a one light setup, pretty simple stuff... y'all should be able to do it.

Light A: This is our key light, it's placed roughly 150 million km away from our model and has a diameter of 1391980 km but keep in mind that because it's so far away, the effective size is rather small making it a very harsh light.

Diffuser: To soften Light A, I called upon (by chanting) the service of a humongous diffuser made of water vapor which did a pretty good job of spreading the light out and almost eliminating all shadows.

With a setup like this one, the photograph pretty much takes itself. Reflectors are generally useless as the light is already quite soft and there are no shadows to fill. All that's left to do is to find the right composition and the right pose.

One thing to be aware of: the sky. It's gray, it's ugly and it's going to mess up your in-camera meter. Try to expose for the sky and you will end up with the model being too dark. Try to expose for the model and you'll end up with an overblown sky. You can either add a flash with the ability to do high speed syncing or you can just not include it in your composition. I opted for the latter as I did not get the former in my stocking this Christmas :(

-TN

Update: Please note that this kind of light usually results in negatives that are flat and lack contrast but that's O.K because contrast is something that's very easy to add in Photoshop! Which is what I did. I also added some warmth to the photograph and slightly desaturated all cool colours.

Tip of the Day: DIY Bungee Camera Strap Mod

2008-12-30T20:29:00.000-08:00

Note: CSUN squirrels, they are vicious natural born killers that roam around the campus and if you were their size, they would eat you faster than you could say, "nuts". The picture has nothing to do with the post.

Well, I got myself a new Canon 40D for Christmas. I initially bought a 5Dmk2 but returned it because the shutter release was jammed and the camera would try to focus by itself. So instead I decided to sell my Rebel, buy the 40D for 750$ and wait a few months for the 5Dmk2 to go down exactly 750$ and only then buy it killing three birds with one stone!

Anyway, turns out the 40D ( and 5Dmk2) is much heavier than the decidedly petite Rebel and its weight was very apparent during a hiking trip. Not since the Olympus E-3 have I carried such a heavy camera.

So the solution is: add shock cords to the strap. This concept is pretty common in high-end backpacks and climbing gears. Here's how it works, you basically add a bungee cord (the shock cord) in between your strap and the camera. Another piece of webbing is then attached to the strap and the camera to keep the cord from over-extending and breaking. The webbing attachment must be longer than the shock cord as to allow most of the weight to be absorbed by the latter creating a cushioning effect. Makes sense? here's the diagram..

I call the piece of webbing between the metal ring and the camera the "pre-strap". I really can't think of a better term. Camera straps with quick-release systems usually have them. For clarity, the diagram shows the bungee cord being longer than the pre-strap but you must in fact make it shorter or it won't work.

Materials:

- A camera strap with quick-release attachments (or the "pre-straps" as I call them), I use Domke Grippers
- 3/8" bungee cord (from camping/climbing department of your sporting goods store)

Step 1:

Attach the "pre-strap" to your camera. Attach the strap to the "pre-strap".

Step 2:

Loop a length of bungee cord through the eyelet

Step 3:

Run the other end of the bungee through the camera strap. Make a double loop. Make sure the final length of the cord is SHORTER than the length of the "pre-strap". It won't work if it's longer or equal in length! The specific length needed for a good "cushioning effect" depends on the elasticity of the particular bungee cord. I suggest you experiment.

Cut off the extra bits and quickly burn the nylon to keep it from fraying. Try not to burn the rubber elastics inside, they become gooey and don't harden back!

Voila!

This makes the camera much much easier to carry around for extended period of times. If you're too self-concious to walk around with something like that around your neck, you can get neoprene sleeves and wrap it around the cords.

Happy New Year Everyone!

- TN

Update: fellow blogger Matt Dewitt made some diffusion panels too and wrote a post about it. I think he explains it better than I do! He also made some modifications that I think are awesome. Check out his blog!

Update 2: the reason I bought the 40D and not the newer 50D is because I believe APS-C sized sensors have reached their sweet spot at 10-12 megapixels. From what I can see from the sample pictures on the internet, the 15mp 50D is only marginally (undetectable in prints) better resolution-wise yet doesn't perform as well as its older brother in low-light. In simple term, they are pretty much equal when it comes to image quality. Lastly, the 40D is about 400$ cheaper than the 50D.

Tip of the Day: Improving Focus and Brightening Eyes

2008-12-28T12:34:00.000-08:00

If you've shot in a studio before, you'll know that it's pretty dark in there. Even thought ambient light from the room does not really affect the picture (f5.6, 1/250, ISO 100) photographers still like to turn off the lights because the modeling lights from the strobes are easier to see.

There are two problems to that:

First, your camera may have problems focusing under low light. That problem is especially evident when you're shooting with longer lenses and not using the center focus point. (please click here to learn why it's bad to use the center point exclusively while shooting with a telephotos)

The second problem is your model's eyes having LARGE, drug-junky'ish, dilated pupils. Remember the time you went to the eye doctor and he put the liquid thingy to dilate your eyes and make you look like a freak? This problem usually does not bother me when I'm shooting brown-eyed people but for lightly-coloured eyes, it's just unsightly (pun intended). You want those blue and green (or gray, as below) eyes to show their colours!

So to solve these two problems, I've come up with this little cool solution that I'm sure someone has thought of before. It's as simple as putting 1 and 1 together. I call it Shooting Commando Style.

A LED flashlight attached to the lens with bungee cords. (note: yes that's a macbook plug adapter)

Cool uh? now focusing is easy, eyes are bright and colourful, and as a bonus (if you're a guy), you can pretend you're a space marine hunting aliens in a derelict spaceship. That's another reason why I like turning off the lights.

At my usual shooting distance (around 8 feet), the light coming from the flashlight does not affect the exposure. If you like to shoot closer, you may want to use a flash light with a lower light output.

Also, the extra light may throw a tiny catchlight in the model's eyes and you may or may not want to retouch that out depending on your own aesthetic.

- TN

My Workflow

2008-12-26T23:37:00.000-08:00

(disclaimer: the "picture" above was taken a long time ago with a camera-phone, no creative process was involved!)

A reader asked me what my workflow was and I promised him I would do a write-up on it (and 'cause he donated money to my "feed me" fund, thanks Jeff!) Keep in mind that this is my style, my way.... it works for me, it was adapted to my needs. It may not work for you.

Shooting Stage:

I currently shoot with the consumer-grade Canon Rebel XSi (you can only laugh at me if you think your pictures are better than mine). My favorite lens is the 70-200mm f4L but I also like to use the 50mm f1.4 when I need a very soft, dreamy look. The f1.4 has very high level of almost-neutral-coloured halation, a form of chromatic aberration. Another lens that I have is the 17-40mm f4L that I use for environmental portraits. When I'm on the go, I shoot with the Olympus E-410 and a 14-42mm f3.5-5.6.

I shoot mostly wide-open and only rarely go above f5.6 when details such as clothes and accessories need to be in focus. I also shoot in RAW exclusively.

My lighting equipments consist of Sunpak 383's, Nikon SB-26's, Nikon SB-80's and Olympus FL-36R's flashes. All of them except the 383's have built-in optical slaves. I also have an Alien Bee B800 when portability is not needed. All of them are synced wirelessly with Cybersyncs and built-in slaves. To complement the lights, I also have various stands, umbrellas, a Photoflex LiteDome Q39 medium softbox and my home-made panels.

For memory cards, I use 4 GB Sandisk Ultra II SD cards. I have around 4 of them. I've tried other cheaper brands before but few of them were able to keep up with the Rebel's speed. I like the 4 GB capacity (which gives me around 200 exposures on the Rebel) because it allows me to stop often to back up and transfer my photos. You would NEVER find me shooting with a 32 GB card! I would rather lose 1/4 of my pictures when a card goes down than the whole of them. Don't put all your eggs in the same basket.

Immediately after filling up a card, I take a break and transfer my pictures to two portable firewire hard-drive enclosures. The daisy-chaining ability of firewire allows me to have the two hard-drives connected to one another and then both of them routed to my computer through a single cord.

To transfer the images while in a studio-setting, I either use my Macbook or my tiny Asus Eee PC runing XP. While on-the-go, I use the Wolverine Flashpack backup hard-drive to transfer my pictures directly from my cards without using a computer.

Post-Processing Stage:

After a shoot is over, I transfer all the files from my backup hard-drives into my custom-built PC runing Windows XP / Ubuntu. I wouldn't mind having a Mac as a desktop computer but they are too expensive. I've tried Vista and totally hated it. Vista takes an innordinarily amount of time to transfer files. Emptying my recycle bin (which usually contains around 1000 images) takes half-an-hour! Backup up in and syncyng with Vista is a pain in the butt. It's probably a bug that Microsoft is just too lazy to fix.

They rather spend their times making ass-sucking commercials. "I'm a PC and I eat cheese".. yeah how uncool is that uh? that's like the Joe The Plumber of IT*

All the RAW images from the shoot are converted to Adobe DNG format (you should do that!) using Lightroom 2 and are burned into DVD's for archival. I processs my images as 16 bits TIFF files with Photoshop CS4. My only plug'ins for Photoshop are Nik Color Efex 3.0 for skin softening, Nik Silver Efex for black and white conversion and PictureCode Noise Ninja for noise removal. I use a 4x6 Wacom Intuos3 graphic tablet to do my retouching. When it comes to tablets, I've found that the smaller the size the better - your drawing hand does not have to move over a big surface. My images are viewed and editted through a Dell LCD monitor calibrated with ColorVision Spyder2Express calibrator.

Backing Up Stage

All my files are backed up on my desktop computer (named Skynet), two external hard drives (Vault1 and Vault2) enclosures and one portable hard drive (Nomad). And as if that's not paranoid enough, I have yet another one at work just in case my house burns down. Note that I do not buy external hard drives such as the MyBook or MyPassport. I rather buy enclosures such as the Macally's and use regular 3.5" hard drives. That way after one fills up, I can copy all the files to another drive and move the maxed out drive to a safe location as a backup.

All my drives also have an exact copy of my Lightroom library so if I wanted to edit my photos from the Nomad with my Macbook when I'm away from my desktop, I could. I would then go home and sync all drives at the end of the day.

To sync everything, I use the awesome and free Allway Sync installed on my Sandisk Ultra USB Titanium Plus Cruzer drive using PortableApps. Having the syncing software on a USB drive allows me to run it even when I'm not at my computer.

- TN

* Although I have to admit, I do hate Justin Long. If I could only bitch-slap that smug look out of his face.

Starving Artist's Guide to Studio Portraiture: Butterfly Lighting

2008-12-21T23:19:00.000-08:00

This one is a nifty little tool that you can have in your lighting arsenal and it's called Butterfly Light, also known as Beauty Light. It's an especially good light to use on women (hence butterfly) if you want to make them look pruuuuty (hence beauty).

In its simplest form, a butterfly light is a light that is placed above and in front of the model. Lets look at the setup diagram:

(click on images for larger versions)

For the picture above, title Ravenclaw, I wanted the light to be soft yet directional and dramatic. One of the good things about butterfly lighting is the catchlight it throws in the model's eyes. It's amazingly good at enhancing already gorgeous eyes and my model, Denise Manila(MM#834507) certainly has the goodies.

Light A: For the main light, I used a Sunpak 383 strobe mounted on a stand. I placed it high in front of the model and a bit to the left. The light was pointed down toward the model's face until a shadow is visible right under the model's nose.

Modifier A: Using two stands, I placed a 3x4" panels with white rip-stop nylon fabric stretched over in between the model and the light. This soften the raw light coming from the strobe considerably. I made sure to light illuminated the fabric evenly for maximum softness. I also made sure the strobe was pointed directly toward the center of the frame.

Yup it's that simple! All you need to do is get the model to give you THE look. (hint: a beer or ten helps*)

A few things to keep in mind...

First make sure the nose shadow (when the model is directly facing the camera) is not too long and not too short. When it's too long (when it drops down to the model's lips) you may get the Adolf Hitler look, and that's definitely not flattering. When it's too short, you may get a very flat, deer-in-headlight, bloated, kind of look. The length of the shadow is determined by how far in front of the model the light is. It is also important to take note of how high the light is especially on models with deep set eyes. The shadows created by prominent brows may not be too pleasing.

Second, I originally wanted about half of the light to strike pass the panel and into a reflector below it to lighten the shadow but the resulting image lacked drama. That light setup is sometimes called "clam shell" light. It gives really nice, watery catchlights in the model's eyes.

Third, you can do butterfly lighting with many different lighting modifier. The picture below of Aragorn (who, to the best of my knowledge, is not a girl) was probably lit by a grid spot judging by how hard and tight the nose shadow is. Take note of the very small catchlight in his eyes.

(Copyrighted New Line Cinema)

You can also use umbrellas which may be hard to position if you don't have a boom stand or softboxes which are definitely hard to procure (and position) if you don't have the dough. Me, I like my DIY panels because I get so much control from them at a fraction of a price.

* It gets messy after the eleventh one

Starving Artist's Guide to Studio Portraiture: Working with Panels

2008-12-13T18:48:00.000-08:00

So I hope y'all went out to Home Depot and made some PVC light panels of your own? Shame on you if you haven't, go here and come back and I'll show you how they are used to shoot a glamour shot of a gorgeous model with plumbing implements (*giggle* stop it! lets be mature about this!! Geee)

I'm going to try explaining the setup in a different way this time. I'll go through the setup one light at a time explaining exactly what's the purpose of each one. I'll also go by the order they were placed on the set.

Lets start by looking at our diagram. Yeah that's right, Picasso's got nothing on me.

(click on the picture for a bigger version)

It's a bit crowded but it's technically a two-lights setup, with an Alienbee 800 (Light A) on the right and a portable Sunpak 383 (Light B) on the left. The background is a dark gray seemless paper and the model is Dina Zaki (aka Blondie).

Note: I won't tell you how far the lights are from the model because distance is a very relative thing - it depends on how powerful your light is, how soft you want it, how much of is lost from the diffusion fabrics etc.

Light A: This is our key light, our main source of light. It was placed high enough as to allow it to cast a downward nose shadow on Blondie's face. You don't want upward shadows unless it's a scary, zombie scene.

Diffusion Panel: Light A was very harsh so I decided to place the freshly-made light panel with white rip stop nylon fabric stretched over. I made sure it was placed a bit toward the camera to get that "wrap-around" effect. (I'll write more on this later as it is a confusing concept for a lot of people).

Black Flag: The problem with Light A is that it spilled over the Diffusion Panel and lit the background. I wanted the gray seemless background to be dark so I had to put another light panel this time with black rip stop nylon to block the unwanted spill.

Reflector: The right side of Blondie was too dark so I added a white reflector (white foamcore) to brighten the shadow. That helped somewhat but it still wasn't enough. I had two solutions: first is to move the reflector closer which I couldn't have done because it would have shown in the camera. The second solution was to move Light A bit forward (toward the camera) so around 3/4 of it would shine pass the diffusion fabric and into the reflector. Yup that worked.

Update: Well another solution is to add yet another light but that's for losers and people who don't know how to use what they have efficiently :P Not to mention another light would complicate our setup a whole lot more and reduce our already depleted bank account.

Light B: The picture looked pretty good but the gray background was a bit meh. We needed more glam so I used a Sunpak 383 with orange gel to sex things up!

With the lighting all spiced up and ready, we started shooting while "nasty girls" was playing on the stereo.

In retrospect, that was a rather bad choice of music....

That's Blondie giving me the one-fingered salute. She's such a MEANY!

DIY Step-by-Step Light Panels Tutorial

2008-12-11T20:17:00.000-08:00

Dean Collins was DA Man and his Bogen Lightform Panels were awesome. Their concept (pdf) is surprisingly simple. The only thing the booklet didn’t tell you is that the original Lightform’s has bungee cord running through them to make transport and assembly easier.

This is an almost exact replica of the original P22 panel.

(Click on any of the images for a bigger version)

Material Needed

- Schedule 40 ½” PVC pipes
- Couplers (90 degree elbow joints and straight joints)
- length of 3/8” shock cord (bungee)
- Hacksaw
- PVC cement and primer
- Rip Stop nylon fabrics (white and black)

PVC pipes can be found in the plumbing section of almost every hardware stores. I went for 1/2" schedule 40 PVC because I thought it has a nice balance between weight and robustness. I've found the 3/4" schedule 40 pipes to be too heavy. You're also going to need couplers - a 1x2m panel needs four 90 degree elbows and two straight joints.

For the fabric, I went to Joann's and bought white (or black if you need a flag) Rip Stop nylon, it's durable, won't rip, is easily washed and diffuse the light just right. They cost around $7 a yard. Use their "40% off" weekly coupon! (Thanks Carsten for the money-saving tip!)

I bought the bungee cord (aka shock cord) from a sporting goods store(REI). Look for them in the camping / mountain climbing department. They are sold by the yard and are relatively cheap.

Note: 'cause I'm Canadian and I live in the US, I'm mixing metric and imperial measurement. Yeah it annoys me too!

Step One: Cutting

First you need to cut your PVC pipes down to the desired length. I have two set of frames, one is a 1x2m for full body portraits and the other is a 1x1m for faceshots. We’re going to focus on doing the 1x2 here as it’s a tiny bit more elaborate.

For our 1x2m frame, we're going to cut down our PVC pipes into six 1-meter long sections.

Note that all pipes must be of the same length if you want them to fold down properly. It’s physically impossible to fold a 1 by ¾ m frame without dividing at least one of the longer sections into smaller pieces. (I found that out the hard way)

Step Two: Dry Fitting and Cementing

Now dry fit all the pieces together. Make sure everything is straight and level then glue the joints to the pipe with PVC cement. I’ve found that the disassembly of the frame to be easier when the 90 degree elbows are glued to the 1-meter bases (two per bases). The two straight joints are then cemented to one of the long-side sections on each side. All the rest are left unglued.

Step Three: Bungee Cord Installation

For this step you’ll need to run the length of bungee cord through the inside of the frame. You’ll likely need about 6 meter worth of cord. Once you have it through the whole frame, pull it taut and make a double knot. Note that the tighter the tension, the easier it will be to assemble (it just snaps right out!) but the harder it will be to take down and vice-versa.

Step Four: Installing the fabric

Stretch the Rip Stop nylon fabric over the frame and cut it to size with about an inch bigger. Sew the seems down and affix elastic bands to all four corners (my mom is awesome!) .

If you don’t having any sewing skills (I don’t) and don’t know anyone who does, you can tape the sides with gaffer tapes. I did that on my prototype and it worked fine but for the elastic you’re going to need to do some sewing.

Tada! now you have a poor man's (or woman's) Lightform P22 panel!

SAGTSP: DIY General Purpose Super Clamp

2008-12-02T21:27:00.000-08:00

So I guess the Starving Artist's Guide to Studio Photography won't come in parts anymore. I'll just write whatever I feel like writing as they come to me in whatever order I want. I hope nobody minds.

With that said, I needed a way to clamp my diffusion panel to my stand. I needed it to be stable yet maneuverable. I went online and looked for various DIY guides and came up with a few ideas. The following is amalgam of all that I've learned...

(note that you can click on the pictures for a bigger version)

Materials Needed

1x micro ball head
1x Spring clamp
1x 1/4" washer
2x 1/4" external locking washer
1x 1/4" wing nut

The ball head that I used is a Giottos MH-1004 (B&H), it was around $10 when I got it a year ago. I'm sure there are more alternatives out there. For this, I needed one that was small enough and cheap enough. The Giottos performed acceptably. I also higly recommend the use of locking washers. Without them the clamp sometimes unscrew itself when the weight makes it turn counter-clockwise. Lastly, I used a wing nut instead of a regular nut because of the way my metal clamp was built - it has a recess in the handle that makes it hard to fit a regular nut inside. An even better reason is that I MAY need the ball head for other purposes during a shoot and I didn't want to carry around a wrench (I prefer the Leatherman Skeletool which is awesome!).

Step 1

First, I needed to drill a 1/4" hole into one side of the clamp. For that, I borrowed a drill from work and bought a 1/4" drill bit specially made to drill into hard metals. They are not expensive.

Step 2

I then removed the plate from the ball head and assembled the whole thing in this order: first the regular washer followed by a locking washer and the clamp itself, then followed by yet another locking washer for good measure and finally toppled with a wing nut.

Step 3

Tighten everything and voila!

-TN

PS: I'm working on a tutorial for building Bogen lightform-style light panels, not just pvc pipes connected together but real, quickly deployed and awesomely sweet panels! Keep checking back!

Starving Artist's Guide to Studio Portraiture: Body Shot (Part 2)

2008-11-29T18:48:00.000-08:00

So I wasn't really planning to write this. I actually wrote a short article about all the basic lighting schemes but my dog ate it (the computer crashed).

So how about a preview of what can be done with very minimal equipments and a bit of McGyverism.

What you'll need:

- Couple of very inexpensive PVC pipes and couplers (I get mines from OSH)
- White fabric (I get mines from Joann's )
- A couple of light stands
- two portable strobes (I use Sunpak 383's)
- A hot model (arguably the hardest one to procure)

Put the PVC pipes together to form a 3' by 4' frame, stretch the white fabric over it and this is what you get...

Update: To hold the panel to the stand, I used one of the heavy-duty clamps onto which I drilled a hole into the handle and attached a mini ball head. I got this idea from Matt Devitt's blog at http://photo.mattdewitt.com/blog/

My friend Prin needed to put together a new comp card which is what models use as business cards. We needed some strong body shots, something that showcases the model's body. I didn't want something bright, I wanted lights and shadows to define the curves of my model's body.

The picture above was created by putting the key-light (the panel) on the left, about a meter away from the model. The Sunpak 383 was used to shoot light through the translucent fabric. Some of the light was allowed to shoot pass the panel to strike a reflector on the right to lighten the shadow areas. Another Sunpak 383 with an orange gel was used to light the background and separate the model from it. When used that way, the light is called a kicker light and it is especially useful when shooting a black-haired model wearing black clothes in front of a black background.

The second picture has a very similar setup. The only difference is that that she's wearing bright clothes (if you can call that clothes). The gelled Sunpak was moved to the right to create the edge light and provide the kicker.

Update: Here's the cheesy setup diagram!

So there you go, aside from the strobes and the stands, the cost of the main lighting modifier (our PVC panel) was around 4 bucks! Not bad, eh?

Starving Artist's Guide to Studio Portraiture: Equipments (Part 1)

2008-11-05T22:17:00.000-08:00

A lot of people think you need a lot of equipments and space to produce good quality studio-style photographs. Truth is no amount of equipment is going to replace hard-earned knowledge! So for this one I’ll keep the blabbering short, jump right ahead and show you what you really need in order to produce quality, professional picture: a few important gears, some MacGyverism and a lot of practice. You will then subsequently be more popular with members of the opposite sex (or same) and feel a lot sexier.

1. First, you need a source of light. I saw some DIY people use Home Depot style construction lights. I suggest you don’t unless you want to burn down your house. Instead, go and buy a portable, no-frill, manual-capable flash such as the Sunpak 383 (shown) or the Vivitar 285HV. Lots of amateur photographers think you need a lot of lights for studio photography. My not-so-humble opinion is that those people are compensating for an obvious lack of understanding of lighting. But fear not gentle readers, you’re way smarter (and soon to be sexier) than they are.
For my setup, I also attached a regular household lamp to the stand. Due to the nature of strobes, you really can’t see where the light is going to fall on your subject until after you take the picture. With the addition of a small “modeling lamp”, you should be able to judge the final effect of your lighting setup with better accuracy.

2. To hold the light, you need a light stand. You can get a decent one for around $20. The one I use is a Manfrotto 001B, compact, light and very durable. It costs around $60. If you have the money, go for it.

3. You need an umbrella. It’s one of the most versatile lighting modifiers out there. It’s used to soften the light coming from the bare flash. The one I use is a small 24” Photoflex reversible umbrella which costs around $20. You can get bigger ones for much less. All things being equal, the bigger the umbrella the softer the light. But that’s not always a good thing. The smaller ones allow for much better control.

4. To hold the flash and the umbrella to the stand, you need an umbrella stand adapter.

5. You also need a way to trigger you flash. There are various ways to do that but the best way is to invest in a radio triggering system. I’ve used the so-called Ebay trigger before (go on Ebay and search for it) and that worked fine. They cost around $30 for a set. I’ve since upgraded to Paul C. Buff Cybersync system which cost a bit more but are much better made. You will need a trigger that goes on top of your camera hotshoe and a receiver that goes into the flash sync port. If you really can't afford that, just buy a PC cord to connect your camera to the flash. You may need an adapter if you camera does not have a PC port.

6. (not shown) to further maximize your single flash kit, you will need a lot of reflectors. You can go and buy some expensive ones but even professionals use simple white foamcore boards. I also use collapsible silver automobile windshield sun blockers.

Well how’s that for sexy? Alright! Internet high-five! Next time I’ll show you how all this come together. We’re going to talk about short light, broad light, butterfly light, Rembrandt light and all that good stuff! Until then I suggest you put to use your newly acquired sexiness to good use and go ask a few pretty people to model for you. Here’s a pick-up line that NEVER fails: hey cutie, wanna be a model?? *

* Your mileage may vary.

Life Through My Lens

2008-11-01T16:19:00.000-07:00

This picture was taken on the spur of the moment. I was sitting on the grass when I saw this young lady "strike a pose". You can't help but notice a figure like that, a classic S-curve... beautiful. I quickly grabbed my camera with a Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8 and shot a few frames. The late noon sun lit her from an angle. The edge light on her right was just perfect.

I was so happy with the picture that I started a new series on my Flickr:

Life Through My Lens.

This is going to be interesting as street photography is by large my biggest weakness. I'm just really self-conscious with a camera when I'm not in the studio.

-TN

Perspective: Zooms vs Primes

2008-10-08T21:49:00.000-07:00

"Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view." - Obi-Wan Kenobi

I remember one of my teachers way way way back in the days (2 years ago) telling me why I should only use prime lenses instead of zooms. He explained to me that prime lenses were generally sharper, faster and cheaper than zoom lenses. I countered by telling him that I like how zoom lenses allowed me to get closer to my subject without having to physically be closer, to which he replied that I was being lazy and I should instead "zoom with my feet".

Well it's not exactly that simple..

Yes, prime lenses are generally sharper and faster. Both Canon and Nikon have 50mm primes from f1.4 to f1.8, Canon has one that goes down to f1.2 and Olympus has a 50mm f2.0 macro lens. All of them are supremely sharp and all of them except the Canon 50mm f1.2 won't break your bank. For that, I too love prime lenses. They perform superbly in low-light condition and have very pleasing bokeh (out-of-focus background) that is especially suitable for portraiture.

But, and this is a BIG but, "zooming with your feet" is simply not the same as zooming with a zoom lens. It's even less so in a portrait situation.

Picture this (pun intended): you're in a studio and you're shooting a beautiful model. You have with you your trusty 50mm lens. It's a good lens and you know it. You're shooting your model from say 10m away, doing half-body portrait with a full-frame camera. All is good but now you want to do faceshots of your model. What do you do? well you just walk closer, right?

Wrong.

Observe...

Half-Body Portrait

For the purpose of this demonstration, I used a 17-40mm and in order to simulate a prime lens, I shot with the zoom set at 17mm and walked toward my model to fill the frame. The 17mm makes it easier for the reader to discern the effect as it is much more pronounced. For the shot above I stood at about 2m away from the "model". Of course, there's absolutely no different between the two. It's actually the same shot!

Face and Shoulder Portrait

For the picture on the left, I "zoomed in with my feet" by walking closer to the mannequin with the lens at 17mm. For the picture on the right, I zoomed to 28mm while remaining at the same distance (2m) from the subject. Here you can begin to see a difference: the nose on the left got bigger and the chin started to protrude. Not flattering at all! Notice also that the lens has a wider field of view at 17mm allowing the hairlight flash to stay within the frame. It's something to keep in mind.

Update: I just noticed that I may have walked in a bit too close. The picture on the left is physically bigger. Nevertheless the proportion between the eyes, nose, forehead etc has changed and that's the important part.

Faceshot

Continuing the pattern, I walked closer while staying at 17mm for the picture on the left and zoomed in to 40mm for the one on the right. Now you can certainly see a difference! The picture on the left would definitely get you murdered by any prima donnas who have the misfortune of posing in front of your camera. Notice how the forehead is much much more pronounced and the nose is shooting out straight at you. The shot on the right remain pleasing and flattering.

So what's the moral of the story? With all things being equal, the physically changing distance between the camera and the subject will also change the perspective while "zooming in" with the lens will not. I suggest you go wiki it if you want to understand the exact physics behind this. Now I'm not saying that a change of perspective is a bad thing, I'm just saying that you must be aware of it next time you try "zooming in with your feet".

Cheers!
-TN

Outdoor Portraiture: When September Ends...

2008-09-22T00:50:00.000-07:00

It's been one hot summer here in Los Angeles. Too hot to shoot comfortably outside without both the photographer and the model sweating like pigs. Too sunny for midday shooting without harsh, squint-inducing lighting. Too much clear sky without a single cloud to soften the light or provide an interesting background.

That said, Autumn is coming and I can finally leave the cold, dark and creepy vampire hideout that I call a studio and go outside for exciting and often unpredictable natural light photography.

Lets start by going through the two most basic tenets of natural light portraiture.

Don't shoot under harsh midday light, wait for the golden hours (early morning of before sunset)
If you are like me and you just can't wait, find some shades under a tree or something and shoot there

Well, with that over with, let see how the picture above was done. First, armed with my trusty 70-200mm f4L (fav. portrait lens) I ventured forth and found some shades which was conveniently provided by a tree and some bushes. Second, I asked the model (Dina "Eyeshine" Zaki) to sit down and look pretty which she had absolutely no problem in doing. Third, having taken some test shots, I chimped (oooOOo OOoO) and declared to Eyeshine that something was missing, to which she promptly announced that I needed another light to "separate her from the background." To that purpose, a Cybersynced Sunpak 383 with a white shoot-through umbrella set to the lowest power was recruited to do the said separation (notice the white band of light on the model's left side.) Also note that the telephoto lens blurred the background (1m behind) quite nicely (but not nice enough, I increased the blur in Photoshop.)

Update: the 5pm sun was coming from the left and partially blocked by the tree. The model was asked to stare directly at it. Yeah I'm mean but the purpose was to shrink her pupils and reveal her beautiful gray eyes.

And because, in Southern California, our autumns kinda sucks colourwise, I launched Lightroom and changed the greenish stupid summer leafs and turned them into warm, romantic, complementary (to the blue dress), orangy Legend-of-The-Fall'ish super leafs! Voila!

-Tuyen "Parentheses" Nguyen

Lighting Diagram: Fabulously Glamorous

2008-09-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

I got my first real chance to test my new Rebel XSi and the 17-40mm f4L in a controlled studio environment. I'm certainly not disapointed with either of them! One thing I didn't like is the Rebel's image ratio. With Olympus it was 4/3 which prints very nicely on 8x10 with minimal cropping. With Canon cameras, it's more of a 4/6 and I cropped a lot to fit my pictures on 8x10's. The higher megapixel count of the XSi was pretty much nullified. What I did appreciate is the far better dynamic range of the XSi. Olympus has always been weak in that area.

Anyway It all started as an advertising shot for a body lotion advertisement (that was the assignment) but quickly degenerated into a semi-glamourous Maxim'ish session. Yeah, typical of me.

Lighting is easy. Medium softbox on the right, silver bounce card on the left, black background, lots of baby oil on the model skin to make it sparks. The grid light did not shoot in all shots. I mainly placed it there on standby for when I needed a bit more light on the model's face. A silver bounce card was used to open up the shadows on the left but I made sure to keep half the face in darkness for a more dramatic feel.

I know one of the assignments is going to be a milk cereal commercial, lets hope that won't turn Maxim'sh too!

-TN

Portrait Lighting: Into the Wild

2008-08-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

Ok here's a lighting setup for the jungle themed shot that I did a while ago. I actually have a picture of the setup so this is going to be short and sweet.

The philosophy behind it was to go for something really cinematic, circa 1950, with real tight and harsh lights. A word of caution though when using such setups: harsh lighting can be really unflattering so you have to be careful how you position it. You also have to be careful who you are shooting. Less-than-perfect skin lit with harsh side-light is a recipe for you getting your arse beat to a pulp by your disgrunted model.

For the set, we went outside to look for fallen branches and hung them up with c-stands and fishing lines. To obtain a somewhat realistic impression of being in a forest, we positioned them in layers both on the foreground and on the background. The lens used was a Zuiko 50-200mm set to 100mm at f4.5 for the shallow depth-of-field effect. The background was black seemless paper.

There are three lights in the setup, Profoto's with gridspots on all of them for tight, controlled beams.

Keylight (main): Positioned high in front of the model in a buttlefly pattern (when the model faces the camera, the nose shadow is directly under the nose and looks somewhat like a butterfly, also called beauty light).

2 accent lights: they were positioned on both side - their purpose was to light the leaves and give them a bit of dimension. The spilts were kept from reaching the black background by the use of flags.

That's it!

-TN

True Colours

2008-07-31T17:26:00.000-07:00

Today I received the Spyder2 screen calibrator and subsequently used to calibrate all my monitors. This was long overdue! Even though I knew I needed one, I kept postponing my purchase (it's hard being a starving student).

Yeah, that proved to be a stupid decision. Turns out both of my monitors are cooler and brigher than normal and as a result most of my pictures (including the one above) are way warmer and darker than they should be.

Moral of the story: put the monitor calibrator on top of your shopping list!

Note: if you're looking at my pictures and think they look OK, chances are you haven't calibrated yours yet.

PS: I don't know if anyone noticed but I changed the black background to a dark gray one. Hopefully it'd be easier on the eyes.

Size Does Not Matter!

2008-07-30T12:59:00.000-07:00

"It's what you do with it!" Says the guy with the small camera...

If your camera is a Nikon D3 or a Canon 1Ds, your pictures better be awesome. Not because you have a more expensive camera than the rest of us but because you better have the bite to back all that barks. For many, buying a pro-body is more of a statement than anything else. I guess I’m a bit bitter that i don’t have the latest and coolest in gears *tears tears*..

There’s a well-known adage that says that it’s the photographer who takes the pictures, not the camera. Yet, there will always be people whose pockets are larger than their brains. Sadly for them, talents cannot be bought. (can you imagine a smart Paris Hilton?)

And fortunately for dummies such as myself, there’s something more valuable than either money or talent, it’s the willingness to learn.

Any any case, I've recently gone really minimalistic in my choice of gears, here's my latest setup that I affectionally call the Light Infantry Kit Version 2.0

Olympus E-410 (that I bought for $350 from Adorama, a bargain!)
Zuiko 14-54mm f2.8
Ipod Touch
FL-36R wireless flash

Adding Interest with Photoshop

2008-07-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

So I haven't been in the studio for almost 2 months now, I can't wait until school starts again so I can use it. In the meantime I've been going through my library of pictures to see if I could do something with any of them. Those pictures didn't make the cut the first time around but with a little Photoshopping, anything is possible.

Using Photoshop, is I think, an art in itself. It's an amazingly complex program that I've been using since the fourth iteration... that's like maybe 10 years ago. Yet, I still discover new ways of using it all the time.

The Viper

The lighting setup for the picture above is a simple Sunpak 383 fitted with a small white reflector umbrella and positioned high on camera right. Pretty basic stuff. The background is a piece of black fabrics and the model is holding a black silk scarf.

The picture by itself did not make the cut; too much negative space (black space) devoid of interest so I used Photoshop in an attempt to add a bit of mood and atmosphere.

I wanted something Asian and mix it with a little Arabic/Indian "Thousand and One Nights" flair. The vines were drawn using a custom brush. I found a picture of parchment paper and used that to add texture. The Japanese kanji symbol of the snake was drawn using the calligraphy brush in Photoshop.

Well that's about it, I was wondering if I should write a full tutorial on how to draw the vines and add the texture. What do you guys think?

Digital Painting: A New Horizon

2008-06-01T18:42:00.000-07:00

The Lone Ranger

I haven’t touched a camera in almost two weeks now. My shooting location (the university's Studio) is closed during the summer. My partner and make-up artist is somewhere in Mexico, probably partying and drinking Corona's. So yeah, I got side-tracked.

I spent a lot of times at Border’s bookstore and freeloaded off their magazines and this is what caught my attention:

ImagineFX Magazine

I was always fascinated by these kind of illustrations. I knew that a lot of digital artists use graphic tablets and Corel Painter to draw them but I NEVER thought they also used Photoshop! I mean Adobe put the word Photo in Photoshop for a reason right? I mean those fancy brushes (charcoal, spackled, airbrush ...) are just gimmicks and don't have any real uses right? Well I was wrong. People do use Photoshop (or Gimp or Paintshop Pro or even a Nintendo DS) to draw amazing arts. So I tried my hands on doing it using many of the free workshops on ImagineFX's website to guide me. This is the results of two weeks of obsessively (no sleep + lipton green tee) learning the craft and it's quick overview of the process involved.

Note: Drawing on a computer is almost the same as drawing on paper. If you have rudimentary drawing skills, you'll be fine. I actually find it easier to draw on a computer thanks to the handy Undo command.

Step 1: Sketching

Yeah that looks like a child's drawing but it serves its purpose. I know how the overall image will look, I know where I want the shadows to be. This is where a knowledge of photography and lighting comes in handy. This is a typical butterfly-lighting pattern with a small shadow directly under the nose.

Step 2: Detailing

I converted the image to grayscale, created a new layer and painted over the sketch using mainly the Airbrush with the opacity controlled by the pressure-sensitive Wacom pen. While working on the image, I changed my mind and went for a different lighting scenario; I "moved" the light from being high in front of the subject (butterfly) to a bit more to on the side (loop, Rembrandt). This added considerable drama to the scene.

Step 3: Finalizing

Added the background in along with environmental details such as foggy breath and snow. Colored the whole thing using a layer set to Overlay. Added a Photofilter adjustment layer with a blue filter to cool down the image. And that's it!

Looking back at the image, I can spot a lot of things I would like to improve but at my current level, it's good enough I think.

One thing I love about drawing (as opposed to photography) is that the only limiting factor to what you can achieve is your imagination. There are no expensive lighting equipments, no cumbersome props, no elaborate sets, no unpleasant models, no nervous assistants, NADA. Just you, the computer, the graphic tablet and your imagination. I love it! Why don't you give it a try?

But fear not gentle readers, I'm not abandoning photography. Far from it. I'm almost thinking about mixing the two together - it'd be interesting. But for now and until I get the studio back, I'll be painting in Photoshop and this is my next project:

(Sketched using Sketchbook Pro 2)

Telephoto Lenses Shooting Techniques

2008-05-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

Shooting With Telephoto Lenses The Right Way (or at least my way)

One thing caught my attention as I read through a very interesting review of the Zuiko 70-300mm by Andrzej Wrotniak at http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/

“Long lenses are not for everyone […] Still, many users, especially those not very experienced in photography, list one of those lenses among their first investments after acquiring a digital SLR system, only to suffer a bitter disappointment with the results..."

You got that right! Unfortunately Andrezj never went into details on how to get rid of that disappointment. So I thought I would.

First an intro to my big gun, the Zuiko 50-200mm which is one hell of a lens. Like most Olympus lenses, it’s relatively light for its class. It’ relatively fast with a variable aperture of 2.8-3.5 and it’s extremely sharp.

To demonstrate how sharp it is, here’s a picture I recently took of Dina Zaki, my make-up artist. The photo is unretouched, straight out of Camera Raw and with no sharpening applied.

ISO 100, f4.5 100mm 1/250 sec

Zoomed Out

100% Crop

* The crop is not sharp by itself, it's merely there to suggest how good the lens is at full resolution. See comment at the end :)

That my friends, is what I call pin sharp. Do I get that result all the time? No I don’t. The picture was taken in a studio, with proper lighting and with a tripod. In these conditions and at the given aperture, it’s the best that my lens can give me. In the field without a tripod, things are a bit different.

Characteristics of a Telephoto

So first lets talk about what makes a lens a telephoto lens. Beside being able to reach out to your subject by virtue of longer focal lengths, telephotos are also well known for having a very small depth of field. Whereas a wide-angle lens expands the scene, a telephoto has the opposite effect of compressing it. All these characteristics make them especially well suited as portrait lenses especially if they have large apertures.

With longer focal length, the photographer can fill the frame with the subjects without being too close and in their faces. Reduced depth-of-field allows for the background to be blurred in order to focus the viewer’s attention on the subject. The compression ability is also flattering for most people.

What Can Go Wrong

Focal Length

Longer focal lengths magnify camera shakes. The ancient rule of thumb is to shoot with a shutter speed twice higher than the focal length. So if you’re at 100mm, the minimum shutter speed that would allow for blur-free pictures is 1/200 sec. Shooting with a telephoto is very akin to shooting a rifle. Proper stance and breathing is essential. I’ve seen photographers using the rifle/sniper stance where the camera body is held against the shoulder and the lens body cradled in the elbow crease (Joe McNally uses a variation of this stance.) Make sure the shutter is depressed gently but firmly and shoot only when exhaling. You’d be surprised how slow a shutter speed you can go with proper stance.

Depth-of-Field

Many photographers go out on a sunny day, shoot with high shutter speeds, come home with blurry pictures and either blame the lens, the camera or both. But they never blame themselves. When using smaller depth-of-field, knowing where and how to focus is critical. I’m not talking about manual focusing here; I’m talking about knowing how to properly use the AF in your camera. Telephotos are not point-and-shoot lenses.

First and most obvious, when shooting people, always focus on their eyes. The eyes are the most contrasty part of a person’s face and both the human brain and the camera AF will likely have no problem locking on them. Images with misfocused eyes are painfully obvious to spot so it’s important you get this right.

To get it right, you must first turn off all the focus points on your camera except one and use that single point to aim at the person’s eye. You don’t want the camera to circle through all the points and guess which one it should use. You don’t always have to select the middle one: think in advance on how you want to compose the image, where the eyes are in the final composition and choose a point that’s nearest as to minimize extraneous movements.

Second and not as obvious but probably the single biggest culprit to misfocused images when using telephotos: *drumrolls* backward and forward camera movements.

Remember, your telephoto has a very limited depth-of-field (especially at larger f-stop.) Anything outside that range will be blurred. In other words, after you lock your focus on a person’s eye, any forward or backward movements will bring the target out of the optimum focusing distance. To see this effect in action, try focusing on something on your desk as you’re reading this. Say this pencil. Now lock focus on it, recompose and then try moving back and forth. See how the pencil falls in and out of focus?

A way to correct this problem is to raise the aperture number to say f5.6 or higher but then you’d be short-changing yourself. You paid a premium for that fast f2.8. Another way is to minimize the time it takes between locking focus and depressing the shutter. A lot of photographers would lock focus then think on how they'd want to compose the scene. And while they are thinking, they (and their subjects) are moving ever so slightly out of position, out of the optimal focusing distance. Don’t do that, compose first: once you’re happy with your composition, return your AF point to the eye, lock focus, quickly move to where you want it to be in the final image then take the shot. If the subject moves, refocus. Do it right, do it often and do it quick.

Conclusion

I hope that helped. It was a rather long article. Remember, no lens is perfect. It all boils down to knowing how to use what’s given to you. It also boils down to how much confident you have in your lens. If you know you have a good lens and if you were able to obtain good results with it before, any pictures that come out less than perfect was likely your fault. I don't know about you but to me that is a great comfort! I rather try to improve myself than go out and spend even more money on another lens.

- TN

Reader's Comment: Your writeup is quite valid, but the crop you post as being "pin sharp" is not in focus. The eyelashes blend together, and the iris is muddy.

I do realize that you're not going to get "pin sharpness" when you crop after the fact. It's equivalent to printing out on paper and use a loup to see all the little dots of ink on the print. Had I wanted an image of the eye tack sharp, I would have filled the frame with it when I shot the picture. That's why it's not a good idea to crop after the fact.

That crop is probably only 1 megapixel. It will never pass muster even when printed on a 4x6. It's merely there to suggest how good the lens is at full resolution

Studio Portrait: Soft Feathering Effect

2008-04-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

This is going to be the last artsy/nudy shot I'm going to post up (at least for a long long while). I frankly have too many of them, certainly enough for a portfolio. From now on I'm going to dedicate my time to build up a commercial portfolio. Like my teacher said: "you are not an artist anymore, you are a saleman." That may be a little exaggerated but you get the point. Welcome to the wonderful world of commercial photography.

But before we do that, let's look at the setup for the last of the artsy/nudy shots. One thing that you may notice is how soft the lighting is. It's not only soft but it also has "pop". All the curves are well-defined, the shadows are detailed and the highlights are glowing. And it's pretty easy to achieve when the right equipments (or failing that, the right motivation).

The setup is very simple. One-light, loop-light pattern. 3x4' softbox with Profoto head on camera right. Notice how it's not pointed at the model but more at the camera. The effect is two-fold: first we want to keep the background black. Second and most important, we want the feathering effect and that's how it's done. We want the light that's hitting the model to be the light that's coming from the edge of the softbox, a very soft, sensual light. That's really all there is to it.

Now notice that I used thousand dollars worth of studio equipments. If you're one of the Strobists and you're wondering how this could be done with small strobes, here's what I would do: build your own softbox! It doesn't have to be a box, just a rectangular frame (wood, PVC tubes etc) with some diffusion material (thin paper, shower curtain, silk fabric etc) stretched inside. Put that frame in front of your strobe, block undesired spill light with black cardboards and voila!

Note: I don't like umbrellas for feathering, the light is not contained enough. It's just a personal preference.

Dancing in The Rain

2008-02-05T00:22:00.000-08:00

I was recently hired to shoot an advertising campaign for a night club in Seattle. Their theme was wet dancers and the first thing that came to my mind was the movie Flashdance.

This is one of the shots.

The lighting was rather simplistic. I wanted the model's body to be lighted with relatively soft lighting. For that, a shoot-through umbrella was put directly on top of the camera about 3 meters away from the subject. But that alone would have been boring so I added another light, this one equipped with a gridspot. It was placed under the camera, pointed directly at the model's torso and powered a little bit higher than the first light.

So in a nutshell, umbrella to light the overall scene, gridspot to selectively light a particular area.

I had the model completely wet her hair and dance around. The rain was added later through Photoshop with a custom brush that I made. Tutorials on how to make fake rain abound so I'm not going to go through that. To create the smoky/foggy look, I burned the edges and added grain to the final image.

Well that's it! I'm pretty happy with the way it came out, and now I finally have enough money to buy an Olympus E-3! (to be reviewed at a later time)

I'm on Strobist!!

2008-01-23T16:34:00.000-08:00

One of my pictures was selected to be among this week's favorites on Strobist! Yay team me! I think it's a great encouragement for me to keep shooting.

On a similar note, I've been reading through another strobist blog's and find it very interesting. You may find some good stuff in it especially if you're a Canon shooter.

Brad Calkins' Lessons in EOS

Studio Portrait: Creating Mood

2008-01-20T11:57:00.000-08:00

Click on the photo for a bigger version.

The idea behind this picture is to have Prin be in the dark and only have her eyes showing, like a cat in the shadow.

For picture above I used two lights. The first strobe was placed on the left, it's left bare and it's pointing toward Prin's back. Its main purpose is to separate her back from the dark background and to gives contour to her body. A gobo was positioned between the background and the left light to keep it from spilling out toward the left side. The second strobe, on camera right is outfitted with a DIY gridspot and pointed at Prin's left shoulder. That's the key light. I didn't point it directly at her face because I wanted the light to gradually fall toward the shadow as it reachs her right eye. This is the hardest part: the gridspot creates a beam of light that is very narrow compared to a bare flash. I did not use studio strobes and did not have the luxury of a modeling lamp. Every time Prin would move, I had to go back and reposition the strobe and guesstimate her new position. So chimp frequently!

A word of caution, when using a light that is positioned behind the model and shooting toward the camera, it pays to be mindful of lens flares. In this picture, I used a lens hood on my lens but still had flares in the final capture. Another gobos between the left strobe and the camera would have helped.

Well that's it "y'all", happy shooting!

Outdoor Portrait: When to Shoot

2008-01-15T20:19:00.000-08:00

Go out and shoot when it's cloudy or overcast. What you get is a very soft light that surrounds your model nicely and evenly, and with relatively low contrast which is a GOOD thing in portrait work. Contrast is easy to add during post-processing but very hard to remove without introducing noise and artifacts. I especially enjoy shooting in the rain, I like the slightly subdued colours which result in a very dramatic scene.

If you can't wait for good weather conditions and would rather shoot under harsh sunlight then I would suggest that you bring some kind of handheld diffuser. You can also look for shady areas and shoot there. A reflector would also come in handy when you need to selectively direct the light ( e.i toward a model's face. ) or open up shadows.

For the picture below, I used nothing but available light.

Outdoor Portrait: Blur it Out!

2008-01-13T23:03:00.000-08:00

In outdoor portrait photography, it's common to blur the background in order to focus the viewer's attention on the subject. The ways to blur a background are as follow:

1. Use a big aperture. (f1.4, f2.8, f5.6)
2. Use a telephoto lens
3. Get closer to the subject and/or move the subject farther away from the background
4. Use Photoshop

The picture above was taken with a zuiko 50-200mm at f2.8

That's fairly straightforward, the hard thing is to be able to judge which background is good when out of focus. What I do is switch my camera to manual focus, unfocus the scene, take a picture and see what I get on the lcd screen. It beats crossing your eyes and looking rather demented... Below are the pictures I took previous to making the shot above.