Mr-F.org

Well yesterday I finally managed to sit down and have a play with the flash triggers I brought a while ago (see here). They are such a simple design that it was a simple case of attaching them to the respective flash and camera and I was ready to go. Whilst they are pretty simple to use, which personally I think is a major plus point, the only issue I have is the placement with the power switch. Once I had mounted both my Canon 430EX and 430 EXII, the power switch became in-accessible. I guess you could argue that this stops it from accidently becoming switched off, but personally I’d prefer to be able to quickly walk over and flick the switch rather than having to take the flash off. However, to be completely honest this is the only fault I have with them, and it is really a minor issue.

The only other thing that I realised whilst playing with these triggers and my flash guns, is that I don’t have any real way to control the light from them, due to the lack of light modifiers that can be attached to them. So I guess I’m going to have to spend the next couple of days looking into materials to make snoots, grid spots, and gobos for my flash guns.

When I left my last job I lost access to the space I used to use as a studio. Since then I haven’t taken many pictures, but this is all about to change now that my new triggers have arrived.

These should allow me to remotely fire all my flash guns off camera and thus be able to use any space outside as a studio, rather than being limited to where there is a power socket. Originally I was looking at getting some pocket wizards, but they are just too expensive at the moment. So in the end I opted for these little triggers. So now I just need some time to play with them, working from home is so great

Well after spending the last couple of weeks working on some nightmare PHP code, I spent a couple of hours looking into camera lighting techniques. Up till now I thought I had a great understanding of the relationship between shutter speeds and apertures, and how by varying these increase one and decreasing the other you can maintain the correct exposure of an image, whilst creating different effects such as decreased depth of field or motion blur. However, after watching a video on lighting I realised that whilst my understanding was correct and I was using it correctly. There was another relationship between these components and the final image which I wasn’t fully aware of. This being the relationship of aperture to flash lighting and shutter speed to ambient lighting. Depending on the situation this actually means you can completely separate these two controls allowing you to create some rather funky images.

So now what I need to do is put this into practice and create some exciting images.

High key Emily

This is another edit for the photoshoot on Sunday with Emily. I’ve actually recropped this image from it’s 8×10 format, where Emily appears in the middle of the frame, so that she now appears off centre. I feel this gives the whole image more impact, added with the fact that Emily is positioned so that her body is facing out of the frame. Now some might complain that you should have positioned the subject in that position to start off with, but a trick I picked up from another website (who’s name I can’t remember at the moment) that suggested instead of worrying about composition you could opt for an alternative approach. This alternative approach is not to waste pixels on empty space such as the area to the left of Emily and instead fill the frame with the subject and then reposition afterwards in photoshop. Again the argument could be made about manipulation isn’t photography, but if you think about it you could do exactly the same in a dark room. Obviously this will only work under certain conditions, such as plain background like the one shown above.

PS. This thumbnail and the reduce image doesn’t do the image justice, at least thats my view.

On Sunday I had shoot lined up with Emily. Nothing seemed to go to plan on Sunday. I first arrived in plenty of time to setup as I hate running around in front of people trying to sort things out, but alas things took a lot longer than normal (guess I’m a little out of practice). Then as I was setting up and testing the lights one of the studio heads decided to do the unspeakable. First there was the fizzing sound followed by a series of pops and then suddenly the light went out and the unit emitted wisps of smoke from a series of vents. It was one of those moments when you’re ready to throw you hands into the air and cry. A short phone call to Nic who was also coming along and it was decided that we would still go ahead and see what could be done. I’m so glad that he suggested that, as I was ready to cancel but am so glad that I didn’t. Emily was great to work with, even with the slightly poor condition of my equipment (still cross at the studio head for doing that) she maintained a professional manner, following direction and moving into almost perfect poses on her own. I expect she will go far if she keeps that manner about her when working.

So despite one studio head doing the dirty on me, and some of the remote triggers I borrowed especially for the shoot not working correctly I managed to bag a number of images. Hopefully in the next couple of days before I head off to France I’ll be able to post the rest.

A couple of weeks back I was experimenting again with my photography.¬† I had originally planned on doing something along a gothic theme, however, when the model arrived it became clear that my original ideas weren’t going to work.¬† So instead I just let the session flow and tried out different things.

The first thing I decided to attempt, was something that was primal and had a dark feeling to it.  So adjusting the lighting to a minium I asked Misty to jump up on the table and try to look as primal and aggressive as possible.

To try and help with the aggressiveness of the shoot I even tried drop down to give the viewer a sense of being overpowered/under Misty, but this doesn’t seem to have come through in the images as well as I had hoped.¬† Obviously I need to drop down a little more to actually make it come through in the pictures.¬† All that being said, I’m still happy with the results, especially the second one.

After this set of images, we carried continued exploring other ideas that both Misty and I had.¬† I’ll talk about these some more when I upload these images.¬† However, one image that I would like to share with you know is a rather menacing image, well at least I think it is.

Misty had kindly brought along a surgical mask that you see Doctors wearing when they are operating (well at least on TV they wear them), and a pair of latex gloves.  Instantly I knew exactly the type of shot I wanted, and after a couple of test shots to make sure the lighting was right I bagged the one I was after.

I was interested in seeing what people’s reactions would be to the image, so as a little experiment I set the image as the background picture on my office computer.¬† Now when people came to see me they saw the above image looking right back at them from the two 20″ screens on my desk.¬† It created some very interesting results, most people seem to be captivated by the image, unable to stop staring at it whilst they try to make their mind up about it.

I’ll put some more images from this shoot up soon, but for now back to work.¬† As always simply click the image to get a larger view of the picture.