Category: Techniques

Photographic techniques with a camera

Greenwich…

 Gavin   Fashion, Low Light, Photoshoot, Strobist, Techniques
image
Tumi, sunset over Greenwich

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to receive an email from Tumi, a student at the London College of Fashion asking if we could work together on a photoshoot. I’m very glad she did too.

We threw a few ideas around and settled on an autumnal theme, with the aim of catching the golden light around dusk.

On the evening of the shoot we were very lucky with the weather, thhe sky offering up those sunset. To get the shot I placed Tumi on the beach, underemployed the sky by a stop out two and lit her with a 580exII firing into my shoot through brolly. I really struggled with the PocketWizards that evening. The Mini simply wouldn’t trigger the flash so I had to rely on the a second Flex instead. Even that wasn’t perfect but it was much more reliable than the Mini. I have to say though that this was the one and only time I’d had a problem of this nature. My only guess being interference from the boats on the Thames.

Another Shot in the Dark…

 Gavin   Black and White, Fashion, Low Light, Strobist, Techniques
Night life
Night life

I don’t often quote the parameters for my images but I will in this case: ISO6400, 0.5s@f11, handheld. That’s probably about the limit of what I can reasonably achieve wiht the 5DmkII. Nevertheless the image was very noisey and won’t reproduce at much over 12″x8″

So, what was I thinking when I set this shot up? Continue reading Another Shot in the Dark… »

A Shot in the Dark…

 Gavin   Fashion, Low Light, Strobist, Techniques
A Shot in the Dark
A Shot in the Dark

I love working in low light conditions but the shoot I did a few days ago over at Greenwich really stretched me and my equipment to the limit. This wasn’t just low light, for the most part we had no light. If that wasn’t challenging enough, add the beautiful Dilsa wearing a black dress and black hat and you guessed it we have a serious issue to contend with.

Continue reading A Shot in the Dark… »

Behind the scenes – Light Trails

 Gavin   Behind the scenes, Low Light, Strobist, Techniques, Tips
Behind the Scenes: Twilight Light Trails
Behind the Scenes: Twilight Light Trails
Twilight Light-Trails

Light Trails — Creating cool effects with flash and camera movement

Now I’ve found a good lighting diagram tool on the web, http://lightingdiagrams.com, I’m planning to write a series of posts that describe how I made an image and in particular how I lit it.

This article is the first such post and I’m going to start off really, really simple with the light-trail image I made on one of my twilight fashion shoots earlier in the year.

This is just about as simple as it gets when starting to add flash to light an image and the whole this was made from a single exposure, a single flashgun mounted on a light stand and a radio trigger. I did add a little spice though in the way that I created the background effect but I’ll explain how I achieved it and also why it works below. Continue reading Behind the scenes – Light Trails »

Creative Vision…

 Gavin   Strobist, Tips
Lanyon Quoit

Last weekend I followed David duChémin’s seminar on creative vision over at Creative Live. It was a fantastic session and really got me to thinking about the way I create my images. On reflection I have been doing exactly what David was encouraging albeit unaware. Case in point would be my recent visit to Lanyon Quoit just outside Penzance.

I went there at probably the worst time of the day. There was hardly a cloud in the sky. The light was very bright and very hard. The scene was one of extreme contrast with hot, bright highlights and dark, black shadows. Even the 14 bits of colour depth of the 5D mk II were going to struggle to capture that amount of dynamic range.

The image below will give you an idea of just how bad the light was. In hindsight I could have tried making an HDR image but that thought never crossed my mind. Besides I’d neglected to bring my tripod.

Original scene

So, how did I get from the original scene to the image I’ve shoen at the top of this post? Continue reading Creative Vision… »