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Timothy Armes' blogPhotography as I experience it…
Archive for the ‘Lighting’ Category
Monday, April 11th, 2011
 This unusual shot idea popped into my head recently, and I thought it would make an interesting portfolio piece. It’s a conceptual shot and I can imagine such an image being used for things like:
- A bike company selling the idea of a frame that’s so light you won’t feel its weight
- A company specialising in sports health food and drink who wish to emphasize that it’s the athlete who succeeds, not the equipment.
Technically it wasn’t easy to produce so it’s a perfect subject for one of my anatomies.
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Posted in Anatomies, Gear, Lighting | 9 Comments »
Saturday, February 19th, 2011
You may have noticed that I’ve been a little quiet lately. There’s a reason for that – on the 17th of December our new son was born. Clovis Armes, 2.97 kilos, and in good health. Well, mostly – he got caught in the bronchitis epidemic that’s going around here this winter and had to spend a while in hospital, but that’s all behind us now.
How can a proud father put photos of his children on his blog while still servicing the thirst for knowledge that his readership demands? I figured that this dilemma was justification enough to buy Nikon’s gorgeous new 85mm f/1.4G lens and put it through its paces.
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Posted in Gear, Lighting | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
 This image of a gymnast, like that of the tennis player, is a composition. The technical issues, however, were totally different. A great subject for another anatomy….
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Tags: action photographer, action photography, active lifestyle photographer, active lifestyle photography, Alpes, Alps, behind the scenes, commercial photographer france, commercial photography france, cycling, gymnast, lifestyle, lifestyle photographer, lifestyle photographer france, lifestyle photography, lifestyle photography france, Photographe de lifestyle, Photographe de lifestyle en France, Photographe de sport et d’aventures d’aventures sportives, Photographe de style de vie en France, photographe d’action, Photographe d’aventures sportives, Photographe d’un style de vie actif, Photographe publicitaire en France, Photographie, Photographie consacrée au lifestyle, Photographie de sport et d’aventures, Photographie de style de vie, Photographie de style de vie actif, Photographie professionnelle en France, sport, Yann Cucherat
Posted in Anatomies, Lighting, Photo Technique, Photos | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed sharing my passion with you through this blog and I’ve had some great feedback. For 2010 I’ve decided to go even further and offer tailor made workshops.
Many photographic workshops are aimed at newcomers who seek basic guidance and support, covering entry-level subjects such as exposure, composition “rules” and simple post-processing techniques. My objective is different — to address the needs of intermediate and advanced shooters who wish to push themselves further and overcome any hurdles that are preventing their progression.
With this in mind I have chosen not to offer a rigid menu of predefined workshops. Instead, I will discuss your requirements with you in advance so that each workshop will be a unique experience designed to meet the specific needs of its participants. Nothing is fixed — the dates, course content, duration and even the location are all open to discussion (and guidance).
You can browse the list subject areas that I’m currently proposing on my workshops site. If you have other needs then please feel free to contact me.
To get the ball rolling I’ve decided to offer a 20% discount on the first five bookings for 2010.
Posted in Gear, Lighting, Photo Technique, Workshops | No Comments »
Monday, November 30th, 2009
I thought it might be interesting for some of you if I explain how this image of a tennis player diving for the ball was created, starting with the concept and working through to the the post-production.
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Tags: action photographer, action photography, active lifestyle photographer, active lifestyle photography, behind the scenes, commercial photographer france, commercial photography france, lifestyle photographer, lifestyle photographer france, lifestyle photography, lifestyle photography france, photographe d'action, pocketwizard, post-processing, Profoto, sport, tennis
Posted in Anatomies, Gear, Lighting, Photo Technique, Photos, Studio, Workshops | 17 Comments »
Monday, May 25th, 2009
I’m a heavy flash user, and typically I like to travel light (excuse the pun) with a set of hot shoe flashes – Strobist style. However I have a number of upcoming shoots planned that’ll be best served with a portable, battery powered, higher performance flash kit, one with enough oomph to overpower sunlight through a decent sized softbox.
To this end, over the course of the last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of research into the various options that are on the market. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any resources on-line that grouped all facts together to help make the decision easier, so I’m sharing the fruits of my labour in the hope that it’ll serve other photographers.
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Tags: 7b, Acute, B2, battery, bowens, comparison, Elinchrom, Explorer, flash, Hensel, Porty, Profoto, Ranger
Posted in Gear, Lighting, Studio | 16 Comments »
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
Update January 2010: I’ve revisited this topic following my switch to Nikon, and the newer posts gives a more “concrete” comparison.
Neil Van Niekerk has just written a very interesting comparison between Canon and Nikon flash systems. Neil’s a very experienced TTL flash user, and uses both Nikon and Canon extensively, so there’s really no better person to discuss the subject.
His conclusion is that for on camera TTL (including bounced flash) the systems are just different. That’s all.
We often hear that Nikon’s flash system is better than Canon’s and being the curious fellow that I am I’ve tried many times in the past to get to the bottom of this question by searching the net. Until now I’ve never seen a decent comparison – probably due to the fact that there are so few people who are intimately acquainted with both systems.
I personally use Canon’s ETTL-II flash extensively, and I’ve never had an issue with it. It’s always worked extremely well for me. Clearly understanding the system is key to getting good results in either case.
However, I was very interested to note Niel’s thoughts concerning the better ease of use of Nikon’s off-camera TTL, so I took a peek at the SB-900 manual…
Here’s my own feature comparison based purely on reading the Nikon manual, my own experience with Canon, and the things that are important to my own use of flash.
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Tags: canon, ETTL, flash, iTTL, nikon, off camera
Posted in Gear, Lighting | 8 Comments »
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
 A very strange thing happened this Christmas – we made too much Chocolate sauce for the profiteroles. I know, it doesn’t sound possible – how can there ever be too much chocolate sauce? I can only conclude that there must have been a hell of a lot of it to start off with.
So, I thought I’d take advantage of the unusual situation to create this image that I’ve had in my mind over the last few weeks. I started by taking the photos of the chocolate sauce. The consistency needed to be just right to get the look I was hoping for, and I was thrilled with the results. I’ve put a couple of the resulting shots here to show you the results.
  The photos were taken against a white wall which was lit just enough to overexpose it. There was a softbox to the left of the poured chocolate and a reflector to the right, and these are responsible for the lovely long highlights on each side. The twists were just the results of good luck.
I created an intial composition using three of the resulting images and then worked from there. We had a box of particularly tasty chocolates so I took images of some of those (note that unlike the chocolate sauce we didn’t have too many of these). I was careful to use the same lighting setup as above so that they would fit naturally into my composition.
The little round sweets were thrown by hand into the air and captured in mid-flight.
Finally I set forth upon the chocolate powder. This was a lot harder to get right. I tried all sorts of things to capture the powder in mid air but nothing worked well. Eventually I decided to take a close-up shot of the powder on white paper using a Canon 135mm and some extension tubes.
Once I had all the elements I put them together using Photoshop to create the composition above.
Tags: chocolate, composition
Posted in Lighting, Photos, Studio | 2 Comments »
Sunday, December 14th, 2008
Recently a friend of mine asked me how I took my family snapshots ‘to the next level’. He has a DSLR and a good eye for composition but he couldn’t get the look he was after. So we went through the images that he liked and there were two things in common – I thought I’d share them here (with help from a small person).
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Tags: aperture, bounce, depth of field, flash
Posted in Gear, Lighting, Photo Technique, Photos | 4 Comments »
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This unusual shot idea popped into my head recently, and I thought it would make an interesting portfolio piece. It’s a conceptual shot and I can imagine such an image being used for things like:
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