Here are some of my favourite images. Results like this require great teamwork – many thanks to my assistant Matt and of course Emilie without whom these images would be somewhat lacking!

Planning

A shoot like this requires access to a top athlete – both for the move itself¹ and the physique, so my first problem was to find one that was willing to participate. After searching the Internet for a while I discovered that one of France’s leading gymnasts – Yann Cucherat – trains just an hour away from me in Lyon, so I contacted him, pointed him to my work and asked if he’d be interested. He was kind enough to say yes.

Yann’s training schedule was very busy so my time with him was going to be short. My assistant and I made sure that we were well in advance for our photo session, and this allowed us to prepare and test the equipment before Yann’s arrival.

Lighting and troubles

With my flashes I wanted to achieve two things: to simulate sun light and to freeze the gymnast’s motion. This would normally be a simple task, nevertheless in practice lighting the shot proved to be problematic. The issues involved are certainly worth examining in detail. Let’s look at the constraints one by one…

Constraint 1 – flash was the only option

I needed control over the light – not only was the ambient light was flat and boring but I needed a hard light source to simulate the sun for the final composition. A flash was therefore essential.

Constraint 2 – overpower the ambient light

Despite its size the gymnasium was actually very well lit thanks to copious amounts of overhead lighting and a number of skylights that were allowing plenty of daylight into the room.

Since there were other gymnasts in training there was no possibility to turn off the center’s overhead lighting. To avoid the motion blur introduced by the ambient light falling onto the subject my flash would have to deliver enough light to completely overpower the ambient light.

Constraint 3 – shutter speed

In order to minimise the contribution of the ambient light (constraint 2) the use of a fast shutter speed is a move in the right direction, however I couldn’t go any faster than my camera’s sync speed – a measly 1/200th of a second for the Canon 5D Mk II. Fortunately I was using a PocketWizard MiniTT1 to fire my flashes, so this allowed me to fire slightly over the sync speed – 1/250th – using their incredible HyperSync feature.

Constraint 4 – lowest possible flash power to reduce flash duration

To freeze motion I would need a fast flash duration. The Profoto AcuteB flash packs that I use provide their fastest flash duration at lower power levels (by switching out the capacitors), therefore the lower the flash power the better my chances of freezing the gymnast.

Constraint 5 – the aperture

The choice of aperture was being pushed in all directions by a number of variables.

• To reduce the ambient light (constrain 2) I needed a small aperture.
• To reduce the flash power (constraint 4) I needed a big aperture.
• To produce a convincing composite image the aperture would need to be similar to that used in the background shot. For example it would be odd to have a very shallow depth of field on the gymnast and a pin sharp background.

I decided to compromise with f/5.6.

Constraint 6 – the ISO

The choice of ISO was being hustled by the same constraints as the aperture.

• To reduce the ambient (constraint 2) I needed to reduce the ISO.
• To reduce flash power (constraint 4) I needed to increase the ISO.

The ambient light was really very strong. Given my 1/250 sec at f/5.6 the ambient light at ISO 200 was still introducing motion blur. I decided to move to ISO 100.

The compromise

With the ISO, the aperture and the shutter speed all fixed, the only remaining variable in terms of exposure control was the flash power, and I needed to keep that at a minimum (constraint 4).

Prior to buying my portable studio flashes I spent a long time examining the options that were available to me, and I detailed the results on this blog. I stated the following:

“Another excellent starting point would be to buy 2 AcuteBs, one with the bi-tube (Twin) head. This set up offers a great deal of flexibility – the two heads are totally independant for complete control and less cable routing problems. When portability is paramount one pack is very light to carry about. When more power, quicker recycling times or shorter flash durations are needed then the two packs can be used to drive the Twin head.”

This is actually the route that I took. By using two AcuteB battery packs with one Twin head I was able to further reduce the flash duration for the amount of power that I would need.

The shot of Yann used for the composition.

Was it enough to freeze the gymnast? No!

Despite my best efforts there was still a touch of motion blur. It’s was mostly visible on the feet and legs which were having to move faster than the torso. The face was sharp though, and that was critical. All the variables had been exhausted. I had two choices – either to call it a day or to accept the motion blur as a creative effect in final image. I took the latter.

The right moment

The 5D’s frame rate is very limiting for this sort of work, so catching Yann at the right moment in time was a matter of good timing. Yann was great to work with – he managed to repeat the move enough times for me to get the shot I wanted.

Compositing

With the photo of the gymnast completed I entered into the final stage of the creation of this image – the post processing.

I had a photo from New York that lent itself perfectly to the concept that I had in my head, and so I used this for the background. I had positioned the flash so as to provide exactly the same angle of light as the sunlight in this photo – this is vitally important when creating compositions.

To extract Yann from the gymnasium I used Photoshop CS5′s new Refine Edge improvements. Adobe have really done a fantastic job with the refine edge tool now.

The effect of perspective on an object is governed uniquely by the distance of the object from the lens (focal length is irrelevant), so to create a convincing composition the gymnast was placed such that he appeared to be approximately the same distance from the viewer as he was from me when I actually took the photo. In a photo like this there’s a little leeway before the eye really starts to notice something strange going on, so I made him a touch large than he would probably have been in reality. Note that this is different from the tennis player composition in which the perspective effect was so strong that the positioning was critical.

Finally there was a fair amount of tonal work involved to make the two images feel like they were a single whole.

1. If anyone can tell me what this move is called I’d appreciate it!

Previously I’ve described shoots in which I was working towards a very specific end result – this is the most common scenario for a commercial photographer. In this case however the shoot was less restrictive – I was aiming to get 2 or 3 strong images for my portfolio and to gain more personal experience with underwater sports photography.

Planning and preshoot

Even though the shoot would have less structure than usual it still needed planning if it was to be successful. I needed to find a location, a model, and most importantly I needed to create a rough shot list.

For the location I used a private swimming pool that was in a particularly nice setting, and via a contact a I was able to find a swimmer from a local club who was both very good at her sport and enthusiastic about the photography. For the shot list it was just a case of sitting down, thinking, reading, browsing and generally trying to find inspiration. Even though I was prepared to experiment on set I knew that the shoot day would be a catastrophe if I didn’t at least have some starting points for shot ideas.

A image from the pre-shoot. The look of the the final images has evolved but this gave me a general direction.

I also planned a pre-shoot day with a stand-in model (also known as my lovely – and expecting – wife). The pre-shoot in this case was very important, allowing me to:

• Check my equipment and make sure that the waterproof housing (a Ewa-marine SLR bag) was, indeed, waterproof.
• Experiment with shooting techniques. For example I wanted to know if I was better of trying to hold my breath or go the whole hog and bring diving equipment into the pool.
• Understand how natural light was going to effect my shots so that I could choose the best time of day based on this.
• Make sure that I had everything that I needed.
• Get more inspiration for the shot list.
• Experiment with post processing. Knowing ahead of time how I wanted my final images to look would help me when shooting for real.

The shoot

Based on the pre-shoot I planned the shoot for the early afternoon. This is usually the worst time photographically since the Sun is high in the sky and produces unflattering shadows, however in this case the high Sun would produce lighting effects that had inspired me during the test. The pool was equipped with a jet that kept the surface moving, thus casting amazing patterns onto the walls and swimmer.

Yours truly. As you can see, holding my breath was a no-go. I needed to bring my diving gear to get the shots I was after...

I arrived an hour early to set up. As usual I brought along some home made food – a fed model is a happy model. Same goes for the photographer….

The model arrived with a selection of costumes and once again the pre-shoot had given me some useful insights that allowed me to choose the best option. While experimenting with my post-processing options I had decided that I was going to take the tonalities slightly green. The lime-green costume was therefore an obvious choice.

We shot for 3 hours (with breaks) and covered most of the ideas that I had noted.

Post processing

Before and after Post-Processing. The difference is dramatic.

As I’ve stated previously, post-processing is a vital part of my photographic skill set; it allows me to deliver images in a personal style that’s simply not possible directly from the camera.

With underwater photography, however, post-processing becomes absolutely imperative – images direct from the camera lack contrast and, for lack of a better word, oomph. Following the test shoot I has already experimented with toning options, and I spent more time refining this for the final set of images.

To my mind the result is more interesting than a colour correct image and is also more indicative of my personal style.

Concept

The concept was a simple one – the guy who’s so passionate about his sport that he even skates to his day job.

The shot that I really wanted in the bag was very straight forwards – the skateboarder would be skating very casually through the town, perhaps dealing with a client on his mobile phone.   The concept dictated that the control of the skate board had to be completely second nature – as if this is the character’s main form of transport.

Planning

Although this shoot is considerably simpler than the tennis player composition that I detailed previously, it still required planning and forethought.

The first problem was to find a model in the right age range who was willing and able to skate through the town wearing a suit.  This would obviously draw attention from onlookers so the talent would need to be at lease a little extravert.

I found a specialist skateboarding shop and explained my project to the owner; he immediately thought of an ideal candidate and offered to pass on my business card and explain my request. Within half an hour my model had called me back, willing and able!  The cherry on the cake is that the model was an ex-salesmen so he already had a suit that would fit.  If only it was always this easy…

Using competent sportsmen and women is essential for my work.  The fact that they are often not professional models doesn’t tend to be an issue since they’ll be concentrating so much on what they’ll be doing that they’ll look natural on camera.  This is very different from asking a non-professional to take a static pose.

We set a date for the shoot and I crossed my fingers that that weather would hold out.  Since this is my home town location scouting was a fairly painless process.  With the help of my assistant, Matt, we chose a couple of interesting locations.  I knew that I wanted to shoot with a wide angle lens to get the context of the town into the photo, so the major considerations were the position of the sun, the look of the backdrop and a smooth surface for the skateboard.

The “cool dude” shot

This is the shot that I wanted in the bag.  I shot with a fisheye from low down, pre-focussing at the point at which I wanted to take the shot.  The fisheye would allow me to have the skater take a predominate position in the frame – thanks to his close position – while still allowing me to capture the surrounding context.  I chose to use a fisheye for aesthetic reasons, I don’t like the way the edges of the frame look disproportionally large when shooting with a  rectilinear lens under these types of conditions.  In post I would remove just some of the fisheye look.

I then asked the model to pass in front of the camera lots of times, varying the poses – hands free, in pockets, using phone, etc.

The sun was back lighting the subject so Matt provided fill using a Sunbounce Pro.  The entire spectacle drew attention from the people in the café for a few minutes, but they soon got bored and started to ignore us.

The “jump” shot

Once I was happy that I had a keeper we moved onto the second location.  The model was keen to try something more dynamic and by this point I was more than happy to start expanding the limits that I had originally defined.

This time he would be skating into the sun – a compromise forced on us by the fact that he needed to put his right foot forwards.

The key technical difficulty was the focussing – even with a very wide angle lens with a small aperture the photos were totally unacceptable if the focus point wasn’t near enough to the model’s head at the moment that I took the shot.  Since the jump was never in exactly the same spot each time this reduced the number of keepers significantly.

During the whole shoot my model was just great.  He was incredibly enthusiastic and tirelessly devoted to getting the best image.  He would even offer his discerning eye over the results, explaining what was right and wrong about a shot from a skateboarder’s perspective.

Post processing

Back at the studio I made my selects using Lightroom and then processed the images using a combination of Lightroom and Photoshop.  The post-processing phase is really the point at which I get to express my personal style.  You can see the before and after shots for the jump here.

"Out of the camera"

The final version

I organised the shoot with a fairly local professional model; there were no hard and fast plans, we simply headed for the Alps with the intention of getting some mountain lifestyle shots.

Although there were no specific requirements I never undertake a shoot without having quite a few planned shots, so I’d spent the previous week sketching image ideas as they came to me.  For an easy-going shoot like this I’m not obsessional about actually getting all the shots that I’ve noted, but they do give me a starting point once on location, and from there I allow the shoot to evolve.

I worked with a great model.  Since she wanted to use the images for her portfolio she’d also taken the time to think of some ideas before hand, and this allowed us to brainstorm various possibilities and do some scouting to find interesting locations based on our plans.  The best images always come from a collaborative exchange of creative ideas such as this so I’m always thrilled to find myself working with like-minded people.

Organising a shoot like this is fun and rewarding.  Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Have some clear ideas of your objectives before you go.  Even if you don’t follow your original plans they’ll give you a good starting point from which to get your creative juices flowing.
• Allow yourself to deviate.  If your models have ideas then don’t brush them off – collaborate.  You’ll get more from them if you encourage their participatation.
• Think about your models’ comfort.  In this case I bought along some extra snacks and fruit to keep us both going.
• For lifestyle images create a “story” around each picture so that the model can more easily imagine the appropriate poses.
• Think hard about the gear you need to bring with you – both photographic or otherwise.
• Have fun.

A fun and unusual family portrait....
(click for larger size)

The snow we had here just after Christmas was impressive – It measured 60cm on the garden table. It’s the first time we’ve had that much here since we moved to France nearly 10 years ago.

Having the family blocked in the house was a good opportunity for a fun family portrait. I decided to play with interior paranoramics.

Interior panoramic images present the greatest degree of difficulty for the panoramic photographer. The close up nature of the subjects requires that there be absolutely no parallex error when rotating the camara, otherwise the image stitching will fail. To achieve this the camera must be rotated precisely around the entrance pupil – there’s no room for sloppiness.

The image that I wanted to create required that the subjects would be very close the lens. The tiled floor would add to the stitching demands, but to really compound the problems the subjects would also be moving! I wanted my 2-year-old daughter to appear once with each person (and the cat)…

The camera was mounted vertically (so as to have a taller image) with the Canon 14mm MkII lens attached (this lens is sharper than my Sigma 15mm fisheye). I rotated the camera for each shot and moved people in and out as required.

The resulting images proved tricky to stitch because in some cases the subject would take up a significant proportion of one frame, but wouldn’t appear in the images to each side. In the end, and to my surprise, it was Photoshop CS 4 that came to the rescue. Each image was added as a layer and then aligned automatically – PS did a near perfect job with the exception of its choice of central position (which I had to change manually) . Since I still had my layers it was easy to mask in and out the subjects as required. Once I was happy the layers were blended together to remove all trace of the seams.

A fun result for a family portrait…

Note that I’m offering panoramic tuition as part of my new workshops.

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.

Concept

Once the initial idea for the photo had been conceived (and having the idea is often the biggest challenge) the first step was to determine exactly how to achieve the result.  In this case I clearly couldn’t ask a model to dive onto a real tennis court (that’d hurt I would think…), so the only option left open to me was to produce a composite image.

As with all commercial-style shoots it’s important to pre-visualise the final image since this will guide the choice of location, the model, the clothing, etc. In the case of a composite image this pre-visualisation becomes absolutely critical; if the result is to be successful each of the individual images needs to be taken under similar conditions.  If the perspective of each subject isn’t consistent, the depth of field doesn’t match or the lighting is too different then the final result won’t be convincing.  It’s not feasible to undertake a project of this nature without having a good idea of what the final image will look like.

Planning

I knew that I wanted to use a wide angle lens with the tennis player close to the camera for a more dramatic perspective, and this implied a number of important considerations:

• I would need a very wide chroma key (“green screen”) backdrop.
• I would therefore need a fairly large studio.
• The perspective distortion would be strong, so it would be very important that the photo of the tennis court be taken at the same focal length as the photo of the player so that I could place the player at the correct distance into the image.

Unfortunately I didn’t have access to a green screen as wide as I needed, so I had to improvise.  I ordered a 1.2m x 15m roll of “Fadeless Art Paper”¹ so that I could stick it up on the wall using masking tape.  I didn’t expect this to be ideal (and I was right!) however I was prepared to spend a little more time in post-production to work around any problems.

Other than the backdrop issue there were many other things to think about – even a small scale shoot like this one needs careful planning.  Here’s an non-exhaustive list of the things that I needed to consider or remember to bring along:

• The date and time: the studio, the model and myself all needed to be available at the same time.
• The camera equipment: which lenses and strobes would I need to bring along? I have a very long equipment check list that I use when planning a shoot.
• The model’s comfort: food and drink (I made a quiche), access to toilets, a place to change, etc.  Also, in this case, a mattress to land on!
• Setting up: It’s the simple things that are easy to forget – masking tape, scissors and a step ladder for  putting up the backdrop for example.

The “Dive” Shoot

The "dive"

I planned to give myself an hour of set-up time before the talent arrived, however I was lucky enough to find a great model who wanted to be involved in the whole process.   She arrived early to help me unpack the car and prepare the equipment.  Without her help putting the backdrop in place would have been a horrendous experience – thanks Selma!

I’d bought 2 mattresses and a thick double duvet to use as a landing pad.  I positioned these at the angle that I wished to take the photo and moved them as far away from the “green screen” as I could.  The combination of a wide angle lens, a very wide subject (model horizontally out-stretched with a tennis racket) and close shooting distance meant that I couldn’t get as much separation as I’d have liked, so the green would inevitably “spill” onto the model and increase the post-processing time.  The main light also cast a shadow on the backdrop (although that isn’t too hard to handle later).

The lighting setup was fairly classic.  I used two monobloc flashes to light the backdrop as evenly as possible.  The main light was a Profoto AcuteB with the “New Zoom Reflector”, placed just left of camera and just high enough to put a catch light in the model’s eyes.  I planned to use another AcuteB as a fill light but it wasn’t necessary in the end (the white walls did that for me).  Rather than let it go unused I was able to use both power packs together for the main light (a dual tube Acute “Twin” head) allowing me to reduce the flash duration to better freeze the model in mid-air.  Finally, a Canon 580EX with a C.T.O. gel used as a kicker gave a slight separation.  All the flashes were set off simultaneously using PocketWizard radios.

After an hour’s set-up time we were ready to shoot.  Once again I was lucky to have been blessed with a great and enthusiastic model.  She took a 10 minute jog to get the sweat going a little, and then proceeded to take 70 (yes, seventy.) dives onto the landing pad.

My 5D MKII was tethered to my Macbook Pro, and the images were bought into Lightroom² so that she could see her body position and facial expressions.  This sort of direct feed back really helps to get the talent involved in the shoot, helping them to help you.

At the end of the shoot I took an image of a tennis ball under exactly the same lighting conditions.  This would facilitate the composition later on.

The “Tennis Court” Shoot

The tennis court

The choice of court would have an huge effect on the final image.  Since I wanted a slightly gritty/hard feel to the image I found a court that would suit that look.

The light falling onto the court was very flat – not at all like the hard light falling on the model – but that actually gave me more opportunity to control the image in post-production, and for the look I was after the flat light was more appropriate.  Had I wished for more lighting consistency it would have been crucial that the light was coming from the same direction as the light on the model (and that would have cast my shadow on the ground, complicating things a little).

The only major shooting considerations were therefore the focal length and aperture (which needed to be the same as that used in the studio), the focal point and the angle of view.

Post Production

I personally use Lightroom to catalogue and rate my images, so the very first step was to bring the images into my main catalogue. Once this was done I selected the images that would be used in the composite.

To choose my selects I use an iterative process.  On the first run through I give one star to all the images that have any possibility of being selected (in this case filtering out the ones where there model has already landed or where she wasn’t placed correctly in front of the green screen, etc).

I then filter for only these images and go through again to find the 2-star images – this is possible now that I have a familiarity with all the images in the collection.

In the third iteration I find the best images from the collection and I also check for critical focus.  If necessary a fourth iteration will leave me with just a few images to select from.  For this shoot the body position and facial expression were the two most important criteria.

Once I had my “dive” shot selected I bought it into Photoshop to remove the green screen (and the green spill).  This is a critical step, a badly cut out image will destroy the final effect.  Delivering a well-executed composite image requires a fair amount of post-processing experience and familiarity with your editing application (Photoshop in my case).

The tennis court also received some retouching to remove the fussy background. I wanted a clean image in which there weren’t lots of details fighting for the user’s attention.

The resulting composition is achieved using a fair number of layers in Photoshop.  Good use of layers ensures that the composition is created non-destructively so that it can be tweaked until it’s right.  The three principal images (court, talent and ball) are included as smart objects so that they can be transformed and retouched many times without compromising the image quality.

Here’s a look at the resulting layers palette to give you a feel for the work involved. Bear in mind that some of the work isn’t visible here since it’s inside the smart objects (the green-screen masking, for example).

Note that it’s best to read from the bottom up.

Attention to detail is essential if the composite is to look real to the casual observer. Things such as the subtle colouration of the ball and t-shirt from reflection of the ground help to ensure that the result is as seamless as possible.

Over to you…

I hope that this has been a useful insight into a shoot of this type.   There are many things to consider and to control, but this is what makes photography so interesting!

If you’re interested in learning more about photo realistic composition then you may be interested in the workshop that I’m going to to start offering for 2010.

If you have any questions then please feel free to leave a comment so that others may benefit.

1. This was harder than it should have been since I couldn’t find such a thing in France so I had to order from the UK.
2. Tethered shooting is possible using a combination of EOS Utility and Lightroom

Food photography presents many small problems that keep the grey matter on its toes. Experimenting with new techniques and keeping them fresh help keep the mind open and aware during all photos shoots.

Should a professional photographer limit his or her photography to just one or two specialist areas, or is it better to be a generalist?

I know a local photographer who has had a very successful career as a generalist. He’s been successful for two reasons: firstly, he’s a very good generalist photographer who is able to adapt himself easily and secondly, he runs his business through a shop that is easily accessible to the general public. He’s also an extremely likable and chatty character who inspires confidence and who has gained an excellent reputation in the local area.

The ability to work with confidence in interior environments is critical to my professional work. Although my images usually involve people, I still need to be able to light the environment appropriately.

Nevertheless, as a general rule I believe that most businesses are far more likely to shine when they do one thing exceedingly well rather than many things reasonably well. Restaurants are an excellent example of this principle; our expectations are far higher of restaurants that offers one type of food. A restaurant that offers everything from an Indian curry to a Sunday roast may be okay – but it’ll never be exceptional.

If your web site has portfolios for weddings, still life, studio, architecture and fashion then what sort of message are you giving to your potential clients? Unless your work is undeniably top-notch across the board¹  you’ll be sending a confusing one at best, and an amateurish one at worse. It’s important to ask yourself if you’ll be taken seriously.

Being confortable in the studio is also important to me. Maintaining the skill set required to tackle more challenging materials such as glassware opens up a world of possibilities for my work - especially when it comes to compositiing images...

Despite this I do actually believe that a great specialist photographer should also be a good generalist. It’s important to vary photographic experiences in order to maintain and attain skills and techniques. Having a good repertoire of skills to call upon is essential, and calling upon them with the confidence that only comes through regular practice will undoubtedly have a positive effect on ones specialist photography, allowing the photographer to constantly advance and avoid creative or technical stagnation. For this reason it’s very important for me, personally, to have personal projects that I undertake for no other reason that personal satisfaction and growth.

Can the need to maintain a specialised professional portfolio be reconciled with the more eclectic work that I’ve just mentioned? Should a photographer avoid showing his or her work outside of the specialist area?

The answers to these questions are “yes” and “probably not”.  Personal work often provides a view into the photographer’s soul that isn’t visible through the commercial work; it would be a shame to hide this, and very possibly counter productive.  However, the distinction should be very clear and the professional portfolio itself should be focussed and unambiguous so that it sends a clear message to clients. Other work should be presented separately – there are several ways of acheiving this:

• Separate commercial and personal work on your site.
• Place non-specialist work into a blog or other non-formal presentation that can’t be confused with the professional portfolio.
• Place personal work onto a totally separate site.

Macro photography isn't my speciality, but it has been useful to me in the past. Maintaing this skill is not only personally rewarding, it can be useful at the most unexpected times..

My own site has evolved through experience and with the benefit of advice kindly shared other professionals² – I hope that this post will do the same for some of you….

1. If you really excel at several forms of photography then it’s probably worth having a separate site for each one.
2. I attained a wealth of great advice from Chase Jarvis during a workshop for pro-photographers – thanks Chase!

We have a nautilus shell that I’ve been meaning to photograph for a while, so I thought I’d have a bit of fun. It’s a hard
subject to take because it’s been photographed so many times before, by so many good photographers, that it’s virtually impossible to find an original approach. I decided to go high key and see what that gave me, and this is the result:

The great thing about the 5D Mk II is that the high resolution allows me to crop afterwards. With a subject like this I can spend ages rotating, flipping and cropping to find an image that captures me, so having pixels to spare is a wonderful advantage.

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.

Cécile didn’t give me a remit, so I was free to do anything that I felt was appropriate. My main consideration was that her web site is a dark grey, so it was important that the images would marry well with this colour scheme.

I decided that I really wanted to capture her distinctive style rather than document the individual pieces themselves, that way she could continue to use the images to sell herself even once the particular pieces that she had passed on to me had been sold.

I started working with the clock, and after playing a little I thought that it would be best explored as a triptych.  This decision then lead me to on to create each of the final images as a composition of photos.  This sort of things often happens – I start out without any ideas in particular, and then once I actually take some photos the ideas come together.

The beautiful curves of this piece attracted me the most, so I made use of them in the final composition.  For the center photo of the whole clock I really wanted to give the image the dreamy magical feel that I get looking at Cécile’s work.  In the end I used  the Canon TSE-90 tilt-and-shift lens so that I could throw the object out of focus in a slightly unusual way – I just played with the tilt feature until I saw something I liked.

This was my first use of the Canon 5D Mk II in the studio.  I had it connected directly to the Mac with live view turned on so that I could see the large image on the screen as I was compositing the photo.

Here’s a photo that I took during the shoot.  I used a softbox overhead to provide a soft fill.  In the case of the clock I used a hard light to place a few specular highlights on the face.  I felt that these really gave a sense of both the relief in the glazing and it’s shiny aspect.

I used the bubble wrap that the objects came in as the backdrop.  It was thrown well out of focus but nevertheless added an interesting texture to the background.  The black curtain behind gave me the grey background that I wanted with respect to Cécile’s site, although I warmed up the white balance a little so that the image wouldn’t look cold.

You can see all four images in my gallery.

]]> http://www.timothyarmes.com/blog/2008/12/ceramics-in-the-studio/feed/ 0 http://www.timothyarmes.com/blog/2008/12/two-ways-to-improve-family-snapshots/ http://www.timothyarmes.com/blog/2008/12/two-ways-to-improve-family-snapshots/#comments Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:27:38 +0000 Timothy Armes http://www.timothyarmes.com/blog/?p=140 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).

1. Use a wide aperture

I love the look that shallow depth of field gives, and to that end I have a collection of wide primes. Most of the photos that my friend picked out were taken with a wide aperture to separate the subject from the background and to give that indescribable dreamy look that comes with it.

This image was taken with my 135mm at f/2.

My suggestion to him was to buy a 50mm f/1.8 prime lens and to use it lots. Both Canon and Nikon versions of this lens are great because:

Each region of France has its own specialities to offer, a tradition that brings water to this photographer’s mouth just thinking about it…

A village a few kilometers from here, Chabeuil, is known for its Caillette, a sort of ball of pork based paté (I daren’t ask more) that’s served warm with bread and salad. Believe me, it’s delicious…

Anyway, I digress. The point of this post is that Chabeuil holds an annual Caillette Fair where the different farms get to show off their Caillette making prowess, and each year the local camera club is asked to put on a small exhibition of pig photos (as you do). For a bit of fun I thought I’d offer my services.

I asked a friend of mine to assist and we drove to the local mountains to visit a free-range pig farm. The farmer thought we were bonkers, but he was nevertheless happy to let us “endulge our desires”, so we put our wellies on and set to work.

Also, I hadn’t appreciated just how big pigs could be. It turns out that up until this moment I’d only ever seen small pigs. Pigs can be much bigger than I’d ever imagined!

Even long range shots were hard; the pig that I was shooting may have been a fair distance away, but there would always be one of his friends wanting to say hello.

My “assistant” had her own problems to deal with. The ambiant light was flat so I wanted to add a little kick using off-camera flash. I’d given her a 580EX flash attached to an umbrella and a Pocket Wizard to set it off remotely, and her job was to get the umbrella as close to the subject as possible, from varying angles, as I was trying to take photos. Have you every tried to get a big white umbrella next to a pig without them noticing?

One of the best pieces of lighting advice I’ve ever heard is that to create an interesting image, one shouldn’t light all of it.

During the exhibition I constantly overheard amused parents explaining to their children that this is what they meant when they chastise them for eating like pigs!

Here’s a couple more, to see you out the door. (I’m a poet!).

I keep hearing this phrase at the moment, and it drives me nuts. There are many times when natural light is just great, but refusing to use flash at all is senseless on many counts.

Firstly, natural light is very often either flat and uninspiring or too contrasty and uncontrollable; this limits the times that a photographer can take beautifully lit photographs. There’s a reason that landscape photographers return to the same spot night after night for that perfect photo; they’re waiting for the perfect light. Beach-based fashion shoots are done underneath a giant diffuser to reduce the contrast to a manageable level.

Secondly, there’s often no natural light to use. When we’re inside the light comes from man-made light sources; should one not take photos under these extreme conditions? In fact, the above utterance that started this article often comes from someone who really means to say ambient light, rather than natural light, which is scary because those overhead fluorescent tubes are going to completely flood the room with overhead light, resulting in terrible flat photos of green people with dark eye sockets. “But hey, didn’t need flash!”

Finally, not liking flash is senseless because light from a flash is light like any other. A flash photographer can choose to recreate the type of lighting that most people think of when they say “natural light”, which is soft directional light with a warm colour tinge. Alternatively a flash photographer can decide not to use a flash because the natural light is just perfect, or do both by using the ambient light alongside flash to get the best of both worlds. A flash photographer can have beautiful light just about anywhere (landscapes apart!).

I can’t think of any valid reason to treat flash with distain.

Before I go on, here are four images to ponder over:

One is taken under natural light only
One is taken using flash alone
One is principally lit with natural light with flash used to lift the shadows
One is principally lit with flash with natural light playing it’s own role

Can you determine which is which? You can click to see bigger images.

l’ll give you the answers in a minute, but first let’s talk a little about light.

Light

Beautiful lighting is achieved through beautiful light, wherever it comes from. There are four important things to bear in mind:

1. The direction of the light.
2. The quality of the light.
3. The contrast of the light.
4. The colour temperature of the light.

The direction of the light

The direction of the light will determine where the shadows lie, and it’s the shadows that’ll model the subject, telling the viewer about the object’s form and three dimensionality.

The quality of the light

When we talk about the quality of the light we’re really talking about the size of the light source relative to the subject.

If the light source is much bigger than the subject then the light will wrap around them and soften the shadows – ideal for a child’s face, for example. This is known as soft light.

If the light source is small the shadows will be strongly defined and will emphasise the texture in subject – perfect for that sumptuous chocolate pudding. This is known as hard light.

In the home the most beautiful natural light images are often taken when the subject is asked to move next to a window. Why? Because it’ll result in soft, directional lighting.

The contrast of the light

The contrast in the image is very important as it will set the mood. However, too much constrast can also be hard to work with – We’ve all seen photos of a silhoutted person in front of a stunning sunset…

Hmm, maybe a flash could help there?

The colour temperature of the light

Light isn’t all white. Candle light is orange, sunsets are a more yellow, a fluorescent tube gives off green light, and tungsten is blue. This colouration is known as the colour temperature of the light. Flashes have a colour temperature that’s very close to daylight.

The colour of the light can also set the mood of the photo. Evening light often has that indiscernible tinge that can even make the most ugly of mankind’s monstrosities look beautiful. David X Tejada masters this fact, as witnessed by his industrial photography.

Putting it all together

Each of these aspects of light is of utmost importance, and it’s surprisingly rare that the natural light conditions are ideal. The reason that the evening light is the most appealing is because it is often directional and warm in colour. On the other hand taking well lit photos under the midday sun or on a grey overcast day is often much more challenging.

With flash the photographer has control over all of these aspects. The direction of the light can be chosen by moving the flash. The quality of the light is controlled using softboxes, umbrellas, or simply by bouncing the flash off a nearby wall or ceiling. The contrast is controlled by adjusting the power of the flash, and the colour temperature can be controlled with filters.

Mastering flash gives you creating lighting possibility when natural light can’t. Why deny yourself?

Answers

OK, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer.

The 100% flash image is that of the iron artist, taken with an off-camera flash camera left (shot through an umbrella) with on-camera fill to reduce the shadows.

The 100% natural light image is that of the restaurant. Are you surprised that there’s not more contrast between the back of the room and the window lit table? It’s actually a blend of several photos each with a different exposure; a subject for another blog article…

The back light in the photo of my baby daughter Annouk is a veiled window, Annouk herself is lit by flash bounced off my living room wall so as to create a soft directional light. This was probably the easiest image to get right since the window was a big clue.

Finally, the image of the ceramist is mainly natural window light with flash used to fill the shadow areas.

Conclusion

If you didn’t get the above answers right and you’re one of those people who “don’t like the look of flash” then you need to take another look at your stance. When used correctly flash can create beautiful images.

If you’re not using flash then you should seriously consider it – it’ll open up your photographic world. Reading the Strobist website is a good place to start.

For this first image I attached my camera and flash to the frame of the bicycle and then drove along side at slow speed. The camera was fired remotely using a Pocket Wizard. I waited for the evening light so we had to work fast to get a shot I was happy with.

This next shot is simple yet it really spoke to me. There’s a sense of isolation that’s appealing, and I romanticize the experience further by using a soft colour palette.