Light Control: turn the sky from white to blue
Before flash:
After Flash:
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- Exposure , Hear the Shadows , Inspiration , Photographic Flash , Photography Lighting , Photoshop , Real-light Overlays , learning
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Archive for the 'Exposure' Category
Free Lightroom Brush Presets by Seim; Brush Preset collection
Free Lightroom Brush Presets by Seim; Brush Preset collection
Did you know that in Lightroom2 You can use a brush to make precise corrections, and even have brush presets ready to go to make those corrections easy.
Well I knew about LR brushes, but I had not given enough attention to them until Matt Kloskowski posted up some darken brushes, and got my mind in gear on a great workflow asset.
Here’s a collection of brush presets I made for… Burn, Dodge, Color Boost, Color Drain, Skin Soft, and Detail Boost. Remember that these don’t work the same as my Develop presets. These are for “Brush” settings. If you need to learn how to install them take a look at my Installing Lightroom Brush Presets article. The download is above. Just download unzip and follow the directions.
| 2.5 |
- Action download , Exposure , Free stuff , Lightroom , Workflow
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Thinking Big: outside the music hall
Expounding on last weeks ‘big space’ tutorial…
When I speak on achieving higher creativity, I talk about light being the entryway for more possibility.
Above is one of my shots lit with an Alien Bee 800 with 11 inch reflector with a Roscoe 3442 gel for 1/2 CTO conversion. Below is a shot within seconds of the above, without the off camera lighting.
I shot that basic image with a couple different focal lengths:
I hope that these shots inspire you to look at the big things around you and consider how your creativity would lead you to interpret them with lighting. However, don’t just assume that your off camera light must light the whole building, I prefer to think of lighting a scene:
Since my strobe lighting my photographs is 40 meters away, I don’t have difficulty choosing an exposure when my subjects move because the whole scene gets even light.
So when I have my exposure, I begin to explore the space photographically just as I would with natural light. Sometimes I look to my LCD for review, but otherwise I just work off the concept of the light that I felt and saw as I was setting up and testing. If you’ve never seen any available light photographs from me, take a look at this Bahamas Destination beach wedding photographer’s dramatic, atmospheric, cloud, sunset, portrait slideshow.
For an exercise, setup your light at dusk and get far enough away that your exposure is consistant. Get comfortable and explore the light, hear the shadows with me.
| 3.2 |
- Assignment , Exposure , Hear the Shadows , Inspiration , Photographic Flash , Photography Lighting
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Hear the shadows: Front and Back
Front and Back fashion bridal portrait
Lighting is simply about contrast.
Contrast defines shapes.
Clearly seen either one will help you make a good picture.
If you’re a beginner, don’t be tricked by f-stops or ratios; remember to see what you’re interested in - and then get enough light on it to make a picture. Don’t loose your muse, before you start. Gaining complex lighting does not help you gain a better picture.
Here I used an Alien Bee 800 set to minimum power with 30 degree grid spot on the standard 7 inch reflector. Roughly 6 feet from the model. You can see the falloff starting at about the hips.
Canon 1d - 50mm lens - f2.8
| 3.2 |
Small softbox on location
Continuing my explanations from the gear I use - today again the small softbox:
So I was out on an engagement shoot and had done all the normal stuff and wanted a little something extra…
But the simple daylight angle was not very flattering and the busy environment of the playground rope piece made for a very messy image - cool - but a little too messy - what could I do quickly to improve the impact of my couple in the space…
Here I am climbing around searching for the right perspective….
Read on to see the final shot and read about my camera settings making it….
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Using a small softbox in close proximity
If you can swallow this yucky corporate video there’s probably a nugget there for you.
I use the extra small softbox, as you can see in my bag, but I always use it hand held because the principle:
the larger your light source, the softer your light
Only applies if you are computing your exposure solely on the quantity of light that is coming from that source.
Your light source is relative to the subject.
A 18″ softbox is a small light source compare to a 70 inch man - so what is it good for?
Working close
I often use the ST-E2 transmitter and keep the flash on TTL allowing me to control the contrast using Exposure compensation on the camera. In this way, you can see how I’ve blended the daylight balance in the room - the tunsten source in the background - and finally the softbox providing the ‘key’ or main illumination shaping the subject.
There aren’t any shadows though, because my baseline exposure is the light in the room. I’ve used the soft box to create a shaping highlight. So there’s a bright shaped area, and a darker flatter area.
In this shot an assistant was holding the light (as I can only shoot hand held - light to my left). Here again you can see how I have blended the ambient and bumped it up with the softbox. Using your light to see shapes is really the psychological core of ‘making light real’. Light gives you that power to sculpt and form.
To achieve this exposure with your camera in TTL auto flash as well as Aperture, Shutter Speed, or Program exposure mode. Adjust your main exposure compensation value to -1EV. That’s it - the flash exposure will correct for everything else - easy eh?
Upcoming later, I have a video clip titled the 3 minute portrait, that will show how I’m using the mini softbox. So the question of size must come up at some point….and you have to know the right answer when you’ve found the right question.
Is the 18 inch softbox big enough?
NO - so (moments later) I switched to using the ceiling as my soft-box.
Size is relative to proximity (distance from the subject) and you want to always have a softbox as big as or larger than your subject.
| 3.2 |
