Tuesdays Tips Tricks and Techniques - Setting up the shot

Today's post will be a little different, being that I will not be talking specifically about portrait photography. These tips, while talking about a still life setup, are equally important in lighting a portrait and can be used, and should be used just the same.

So where do you even start when setting up a scene and using multiple light sources? For this shot, I had an idea of what the finished product would look like as well as the style of lighting i wanted to use so I setup the lights and powered up the two main lights as well as introduced a single aspect of the scene. When lighting glass you generally do not want to light it from the front, you would get some very unflattering glare and reflections. Knowing I wanted a darker background I chose to light this scene from both sides with gridded soft boxes. If I was going to use a lighter background, I would have lit the main scene from the back.

Now I had my main lights setup and I adjusted the power to get the look I wanted. Since I was using two main lights, I had them both on to start with, but if I was going to use a main light, a fill light and a background light, I would introduce one at a time, this lets you better see what each light is doing. When you are starting out, it is a good exercise to add one light at a time and to power off the light you already setup; this gives you an even better understanding of what the light is doing. This is one of the amazing perks of shooting digital, you get to see what each light does and to build the scene little by little.

Here I added another element to the scene as well as the addition of a background light. You can do an isolated, solid black background but it makes the scene feel dead. Adding a little gradient of light helps to bring everything to life. Now it is time to add in the rest of the elements and to dial in the lighting.

Adding the rest of the elements showed where I had issues with the lights. Before the bottle and glass were well lit but now the book and skull blocked a good bit of the light on the left side of the bottle and the front of the book was much too dark.

To keep some shadows I powered down the light on the camera right and brought it forward to spill over on the front of the book, I also increased the power on the camera left light and moved it back and aimed it at more of an angle toward the camera. This kept everything well lit while providing some interesting shadows.

Time to add the wine to the glass and make final adjustments. This is nice but I felt like it needed just a little bit of fill from the front.

It is very subtle but I thought it needed just that little extra light. I shot much wider than I needed to, but that makes the cropping easier later, and with the sensor size of these digital cameras, you can get away with it, especially if you are not printing huge. The lighting and setup is all done, now it is time to do your edits. Sorry, but I may keep a few secrets today :)

If you don't have many lights but can use photo editing well you could do this all with one light. To do that, you need a solid tripod with remote (you don't want to touch the camera at all). All you do is setup your one light in each spot and combine all of the exposures in editing. It is a great way to start if you only have one light. This setup ended up using two gridded soft boxes, one gridded spotlight on the background and a large reflector for fill. The setup is kind of like a little dance which you can see in the animated gif below.

                                                     

Was this helpful to you? You can use these same techniques when lighting a portrait. Start with one light and fine tune it, adding in more elements as you are ready. Start small and work your way up.

Thinking Thursdays - The Black in "Black Friday"

The term Black Friday is very fitting for that consumer holiday. I know the origins but I want to take a more inspired view on the word.

Black, blackness, darkness all have been used by edgy groups to show their disdain for the light and to make it a point that they are of a darker mindset. Personally I am quite drawn to darker art, gothic artists and melancholy images but they do bring a feeling of loneliness and despair. Loneliness and despair are hardly words I would think businesses would want to associate themselves with, especially during the Christmas season. I know it has little to do with the color and more to do with turning a profit, but still.

And the darkness is coming earlier and earlier each year. I recently heard about a big box store announcing that their Black Friday deals were going to start around dinner time on Thanksgiving, I find so much wrong with that. We are already dealing with Christmas decorations and end caps making their appearance while the ghosts and goblins of halloween are just being moved to the clearance bins. There is little talk of Thanksgiving and it seems there is little talk of people being thankful. And it isn't as though stores and people are rushing in to celebrate the birth of Christ; no, they just want to start buying stuff.

We aren't thankful for having the money to buy stuff or even thankful for the gifts we get and those we give. We are just a very unthankful people. And now we are skipping over a time when we should be celebrating with our families around a dinner table and are instead out looking for a good deal on something we don't need and won't really even want soon after we get it.

What if we all chose to boycott all these Black Friday deals and the commercialization of November and December? What if instead of being out buying stuff for our friends and families we instead took that time and energy and invested it in each other? How many of you would be happier to spend some quality time with a loved one instead of opening some gift that you don't really need? If memory serves me correctly, I believe that some new video game systems are hitting the stores very soon. We will leave our children at home with someone else to go out and buy them a present that will let them zone out away from you. That is all time you will never get back and conversations you will never have.

I have never done the shopping binge that is Black Friday but i have spent time away from my family, struggling to find stuff to fill in the space under the tree. But a couple of years ago I had this realization that maybe, just maybe, i was doing it all wrong. Being a single dad makes you watch your money but it also makes you see how much the kids really value your time. It would be easier to do my own thing and throw presents at them often to try to "show" my love and that may work for awhile. But kids are not stupid and they will one day realize your true intentions. Love is not in a present or in a tangible box that you unwrap. Love is in you and it is shown by time and energy invested. It's funny when you look at Christians and the Church. We often seem to revert to the Black Friday mentality and buy our love for God. We throw some money in a plate or donate to a cause but rarely do we invest our time and energy into God and into His people. God doesn't need our money or our things, he asks for us and for our time.

A couple of years ago my gift to the kids for Christmas was a vacation to Disney World. They didn't really have anything to unwrap from me under the tree but what they did get was a full week of me spending the time with them, making memories and having conversations. In five years, or ten or twenty do you think they will remember a video game they unwrapped so many years ago or do you think they will remember the time we spent together on vacation? And boy did we spend that time. We went from the time they were up until bedtime on the go. Hitting the parks and the pool and just being together. Maybe this year, instead of buying a bunch of stuff, you could take that money and go. Go spend time together and make some memories. After all, it is the memories we will remember the most.

Wednesdays Wedding Planning - No "I" in team.

Are you married, been married or getting married? Ever feel like you just want to skip it all and just get married now. I (Josh) have seriously given some thought to how we could expedite our wedding and just get married now. Patience isn't a virtue of mine but it is something I seem to always be working on. I don't think it is all that selfish to want to just start our married lives together and I think we could get married now and it wouldn't be a bad thing. But then I realize just how much is left to do. True there is the flowers and the cake and the tuxes and so on but there is also the housing situation and the packing and moving and honeymoon and budget and everything else that goes along with it.

There is also the guests. Someone once told me that Weddings and Funerals were not for those people the ceremony was being performed for but rather for those attending. A Father walking his only daughter down the aisle, two families joining together and in our situation, two children that I believe need to have this stake put in the ground to show that things are changing. Two children that have only known life with me for the past five plus years who are learning what it is like to have this wonderful woman join in our lives. I think the symbolism of the wedding ceremony will be very important for them as we join this family together.

I also heard a new way of understanding marriage at last weekends church service. I am committing my life to Katie but I am also making a covenant with God about how I will treat this woman. That's a pretty big deal. So while I do wish we could elope or at least move up the ceremony I think we have plenty to do to have it ready by June. The planning has been pretty stagnant for the last few weeks but our relationship has been far from that. We have had some important and encouraging talks with each other. We have had to come to some decisions together and have failed at that but learned what we did wrong and how to do it better the next time.

have you ever been on a team or watched one play? Have you ever seen them practice together the first time? A championship team does not start out that way, usually they start off awkward as they learn their strengths and weakness and those of their teammates and how to assist each other. It isn't that a championship team doesn't have any weaknesses, it is that they know and understand those weakness and how to support each other so that they can conquer everything. It is the same with marriage, it isn't that we don't each have weaknesses but it is that we understand them and we learn how to work together to become stronger. Once you find a teammate that will play alongside you the entire game, you can't let go of them. They may become injured but it is your duty to come alongside them and offer your strength as they heal. If you leave them behind you will fail. If you stop with them the opposition will get ahead but if you help them you may have set backs but you will still be in the game together. Be there for each other always but keep moving even when there are injuries. Lift each other up and carry each others burdens. That is what we are doing and it is what we will continue to do and because of that we will be a championship team.

Tuesday Tips Tricks and Techniques - Finding better light

Light, the crux of all photography. After all photography is simply capturing light but not all light is equal. Summer light is different then Winter light. Morning and evening light is different then afternoon light. And even at the same time of day, light reacts differently depending on how and where it falls. Light is also constantly changing. Clouds move across the sun, overcast days mute the light while trees and buildings block and shape the light. Capturing better photos of anything depends largely on the quality of light.

You will not likely see any spectacular landscapes captured during high noon. There is actually a term for professional and hardcore landscape photographers; wet bellies. This is because to get the best light for a landscape, they are out in the very early morning hours crawling around while the ground is yet saturated with dew.

The above shot was taken just before noon in late november. I was playing with my settings and getting shots of the kids feeding the birds. So while it is not a traditional landscape, it does give an idea of the light on the landscape. Being late Fall you can see the shadows are longer for that time of day since the sun is much lower in the sky. If you were to shoot this same shot in the Summer, the light would be almost directly overhead and much harsher. But lets see how the landscape looks at a better time of day.

This shot was taken at 6:22AM. It was cold and dark when I setup the shot. Very cold for being at the beach but it was well worth it. The light is soft and golden and it shapes the landscape beautifully. Composition and editing aside, if you want to take better landscape photos you have to be up early. Evening light is very beautiful as well, but in my opinion the morning light is just better and you have very few people out at that time of day. Most of them start arriving as soon as the sun peeks above the horizon but you want to shoot before that happens. Of course many of the truly great landscapes happen when a photographer finds a location and visits it often as they wait for the perfect light.

Photographing people is no different, you need to find or make the best light to capture them. Let's have a look back at one of the first "portraits" I took of my daughter.

This shot was taken with a Canon 7D dslr with a canon 70-200mm f 2.8 lens. For some of you that may not mean much, but lets just say that that is a $3,000+ gear setup capable of capturing incredible photos. The photo above is not an incredible photo by any means. It is a photo of my daughter and if that is all I had I am sure I would think it was adorable; I likely thought it was a pretty good photo when I took it. This was captured in direct sunlight in the middle of the day. Her eyes are dark with no light falling on them and the photo lacks contrast. With the gear I was using I should have been able to capture a stunning portrait, but I did not understand lighting at all at that time. I figured you put a subject in light and you could get a good shot with expensive gear. Luckily I was, and still am, part of an online photo community that was not afraid to point out my short comings and what all was wrong with this photo. I am glad they did because of that I have improved and now have some beautiful photos of my children.

The gear is essentially the same in these shots and had little to do with how they came out. True, the gear helps blur the background and will help with lower light photography but the light is the real hero. In the photo of my daughter the light is directly behind her and I exposed for her face. That makes the background lighter than her but with a vignette and some editing it all comes together. The important thing is that the light on her face is softer and there is contrast separating her from the background. And notice her eyes, they have a sparkle and life to them that the first photo I shared did not have. For my son, the light is off to his right side (camera left) and bring a little bit of shadow to his left side. If you don't like the light that is there, you can always bring your own.

So some tips to capture better photos of your kids, or spouse, or boyfriend/girlfriend etc...

Get out of the direct light.

Put the light behind them, or to the side and expose for the skin.

Make sure there is a light showing in their eyes.

Use a reflector to bounce some light back onto them. In the first photo I used a gold reflector for that, in the last photo it is just all natural.

If at all possible, shoot earlier in the morning or latter in the evening when the sun is not so high in the sky.

Find open shade.

Follow this blog :)

Seriously though, there is so much to learn about how light works and reacts with the surroundings that I couldn't cover everything in one blog post. So check back next Tuesday where we will continue our exploration of light. We will talk more about open shade, light modifiers, natural light modifiers and artificial lighting. Join me and I will help you to capture better photos that will last you a lifetime.  And soon you will learn how much you can do with light.

Come back next week where we will discuss using a reflector, both artificial and natural. See you soon. And if you have any specific questions leave them below in the comments. I love to hear from you.

Fisher Family

What is better than enjoying the Fall foliage at the Peaks of Otter? Enjoying it while photographing a sweet family. A loving couple with two sweet kids and a beautiful Fall day made for a wonderful outing. The young boy was very, lets say energetic but I think I still captured some great looks from him. The young girl was sweet as can be with a darling smile. I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed capturing them.

Fall Family Portraits

I got to photograph this sweet beautiful family for Halloween. I just loved that the kids were playing in the leaves and that the whole family got in on the action. Days like this are why I truly love this job. Such a sweet family, I am so glad they chose me to capture their memories.