Prom Strobist #2

Prom Strobist #2
Originally uploaded by MarkLandonPhotography

I've been taking a lot more portraits again recently... partly facilitated by being invited to shoot a friends daughter's pre-prom party.

It all started out with the teenagers being very shy and self conscious and not wanting to pose in the garden in view of all the others.

It started to rain so we had to move inside and as soon as they had a bit of privacy in the dining room, away from all of their friends they soon loosened up and we go some great shots.

It was nice to get the flash/umbrella/cactus trigger combo out again for some "strobist" action.

Processed in LR4 with the B&W Look 5 pre-set for a high key effect. I also added some more clarity, as unusually for teenagers, their complexions were flawless and their skin could handle having more mid tone contract (clarity slider)

Outdoor Autumn Portrait : Tutorial

Find a location that has some nice coloured foliage in the background.I used some stunning red acers in Windsor great park. The place where your subject is positioned should ideally be shaded from direct sun to give a more flattering/softer light. Use the aperture priority setting on your camera and set the Aperture as large as possible. The aperture is lens dependant. Remember a large f nmber = small aperture, so you want a small f number to have as large an aperture as possible. A large aperture lets in more light giving a faster shutter speed and creates a more limted depth of field. It's the limted depth of field which will give the bokeh/blurry background... and if you have chosen well you'll get some lovely colours blurring into each other.

Zoom in (the higher the level of zoom the more the background will blur) and compose your shot. Remember to position your main subject off centre rather than in the middle. Think of the rule of thirds and position key elements on or near intersecting points of the 1/3 lines.

Set your ISO as low as possible to maximise image quality but keep your eye on the shutter speed. In this case the shutter speed at ISO 100 was too low and would have resulted in camera shake ( I didn't have a tripod with me) so I ramped up the ISO to 400 to give a shutter speed of 1/80 allowing me to comfotably hand hold the shot.

Fire off a few shots and remember to keep the camera ready as you quite often get t he best shot when your subject thinks you've finished and relaxes. The most natural expressions, especially in kids can't be forced or requested, they just happen and you need to be ready.

A selection of Halloween portraits. These were all taken with a bare Canon 580EXII flash @1/4 power triggered by a cactus wireless trigger. All processed in Lightroom 3 with use of the local adjustment brush to paint in more shadows and colour the eyes.

Just Chillin

Just Chillin
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

More fun with a borrowed wide angle lens. It's a Tamron 10-24mm. I attached a circular polariser witht eh deliberate intent of getting a close up portrait to distort the legs, making them look even longer and having a super satureated blue sky and grass (courtesy of the polariser) I used some fill flash to lighten the harsh shadows from the direct sun.

Santas Little Helper

Santas Little Helper
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

I couldn't resist getting a shot of Santas Little Helper from our weekend away at Ribby Hall IN Lancashire.

The rest of the shots fromt he wekeend can be seen here on my flickr stream.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157622890714809/

Quad Toning In Photo Shop ...

...this time Quad Toned
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

I really like the richness of the B&W image you get with ha quad toning effect.... A trick I learned in Scott Kelbny's excellent book CS3 for digital photographers.

The shot is of a face paining in progress from my works Xmas party for the kids of staff. The face painter was excellent.

Little Man

Whilst doing the Photoshoot of the staff at school yesterday my wife came to pick me up, so whilst I had the lighting set up I couldn't resist getting a shot of "The Babsa", "The Little Man", "The Maestro" aka "My Boy"

Another Photo Shoot Tomorrow...

I've just been preparing all my gear, formatting memory cards, charging batteries etc ready for the second half of the school photoshoot tomorrow.

I'm looking forwards to it. Apparently the (part time) staff who couldn't make it last time are really excited as they saw the photos from the first session and loved them.

I'll post some shots afterwards. Things I'm going to do differently tomorrow based on what I leanred first time around...

• Turn the ambient (flourescent) lighting off.
• Seperate subject from the background with more distance and get the background light in a better position to blow the background white.
• Get them to lick their lips before taking the shot. (can't remember where I read this)
• Interact more and direct the posing . Get poeple to smile more naturally via interaction jokes.threats of photoshopping in warts and spots :-)
• May be set the short lighting up from the opposite and swap poses 180degrees so not all facing left.

And one thing I must remember is to ask people if it's OK to put their photos on my blog and add them to my long neglected 100 strangers project. http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157611320280959/

...and finally I must get some business cards printed out. I've been looking at some from "moo" via Flickr. Having some cards to give out to people at these shoots wouldn't do my word of mouth advertising any harm at all !!

Pro-Bono PhotoShoot for local School.

I had a great time this morning doing a "proper" photoshoot for a local school. The brief was to create some simple head and shoulders shots to update their website and school notice boards.

I spent a fun hour putting a lot of what I have learned into practice and look forwards to posting more of the resulting photos to my Flickr account soon.

This experience was invaluable and helped me to learn a lot including..... how difficult it can be to get some people smile.

• Knowing your gear, how it works, dialing in settings gives you confidence.


• Checking and readying gear (according to a checklist) the night before gives you peace of mind and lets you focus on the creative process vs technical issues.


• Turn off ambient lighting sources to avoid colour casts.


• Having a few poses in mind prior to shooting saves time and puts you in control.


• "Narrow" lighting is more flattering than broad.


• Interact with your models to make it less scary (for them) and a fun experience.


• Seperate the subject from the background more (difficult due to space limitation)


• Show people the shots you got on the camera LCD to get initial feedback.


• Some people just don't like being photographed OR the result... even if others love it.


• The strobist website has been invaluable in my learning experience.


• I am able to turn theory into practice and get a pretty good result.... judge for yourself when I post the images.


• A large school whiteboard makes a great background.


• I need more lighting gear !! (to blow out aforementioned white background)

Bubbles @ Bathtime

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/4101016649/
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

I've not shot any portraits for a while so I thought I'd give this some special treatment practicsing a few Photoshop tricks I'd not done for a while.

In low light conditions if you shoot with flash in Av mode the camera tries to expose for "ambient" conditions by having a really long shuuter speed with the flash for "fill". You can compensate by nicreasing ISO to get a daster sutter speed but that introduces noise. In certain situations you can shoot in manual mode in which case the flash exposes for the subject completely vs acting as fill. (read a more complete article here)

http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/index2.html

I bumped up the flash exposure compensation to +3EV to get a high key effect. The rest was done in Photoshop...

Converted to mono in using a gradient map with a layer mask to reveal the eyes which were further enhanced with a little saturation. A high pass filter used for sharpening with a vivid light blending mode, again with a layer mask to accentuate the eyes only. A few other features were slightly sharpened by painting away the mask with a lower opacity brush.

The image was reinported to Lightroom then exported to flickr using Jefrey Friedel's excellent plug in. I also used the "mogrify" plug in from Timothy Ames to add the graphical watermark. I really like the functionality of these two features.

Despite the amazing blue eyes I struggled for ages and failed to be able to print this out with the same effect... no matter what print setting I tried I was getting a sepia effect vs B&W and no blue in the eyes ?? I tried multiple different colour management profiles including "printer controls colour" and they all came out the same ?? not sure whats happening there. (didn't try to print any other phots to check though. May reboot and try again.

Coy Smile
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

This was taken at the weekend at my Son's first Holy Communion. He was busy playing with his friends and gave me this coy smile as he paused for a moment in between rushing around playing catch and chase.

James Cracknell OBE

James Cracknell OBE
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

Today I was "racking" my bike in preparation for my debut triathlon in Windsor, which takes place tomorrow. I'm a bit nervous to say the least. Just as I was preparing to register I saw James Cracknell, Olympic rower, adventurer and all round nice guy. I asked if he wouldn't mind me taking his photo and he kindly obliged. We chatter for 5 minutes or so about his adventures, skiing tot he South Pole, rowing accross the atlantic and obviously his Olympic rowing successes. He was interested in my triathlon debut, as he's a hardened campiagner and he put my mind at rest. He's starintg the race early tomorrow so he can be back in time to cover the event for Channel 4 TV where he is a "celebrity pundit". James is #14 in my 100 strangers project and my second famous person.... I don't think I'm going to be able to maintain that kind of ratio !!!

See more about James Cracknell here. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cracknell

Smile !!

Smile !!
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

I was looking through various folders in Lightroom last night looking for images that I had missed or that would offer an opportunity to try out the quadtoning technique on. I decided that this portrait would offer itself nicely. I'm very pleased wit the results and think it does the beautiful smile justice. This was a random and somewhat opportunistic "snapshot" taken in the car whilst stopped at a level crossing. You have to catch her unawares to avoid a terrible posed toothy smile/grimace.

Now I've got the quadtoning technique sorted I think I'll move on to another in Scott Kelby's book, CS3 for Photographers.