Category: Techniques

Photographic techniques with a camera

Warning – PodCasts can seriously lighten your wallet

 Gavin   Digital Darkroom, Journey, Lightroom, Musings, Photoshop, PodCasts, Techniques

I’m listening to the latest podcast 79 by CameraDojo, and they’re doing a grea review of the latest products by Adobe: Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5. Trouble is, they’re making them so appealing I’m now hesitant to check them out. I just know that if I do I’ll want to upgrade. I’ll probably need a new laptop/pc too so if I do upgrade I’ll be looking at probably a £2,500+ investment.

Think Mrs LightMatters might not like that 😉

UPDATE – I caved. I had a quick peek at the upgrade price on the Adobe site. I wish I hadn’t as I’m now working out how many images I need to sell to cover it.

BTW – Great podcast. Keep up the good work.

A lesson in sales…

 Gavin   Business, Sales, Tips

There is a definite art to selling. There are definite DO’s and definite DON’T’s. When you come across a great salesman/saleswoman, someone who really knows what they’re doing rather than push-push-push, it’s a really great experience for BOTH parties. Sadly you don’t find these people very often which is a real shame. I touched upon this subject in a recent post, here and my change in attitude towards telesales, here. This post expands on this a little further.

This afternoon, I had a telesales call from someone at BT trying to sell me advertising on an internet directory. After initially posing as a customer I quickly established that this wasn’t in fact a enquiry but rather was going to cost me. How did I, as the prospect feel? Annoyed and feeling that this wasn’t someone I could trust. He’d already lost me. At this point I’d already made up my mind I wasn’t interested but more importantly, I wasn’t going to be parting with any money. Continue reading A lesson in sales… »

Battery power

 Gavin   Equipment, Tips

I don’t recall suffering from this in the good old days of analogue photography, but these days I’m forever charging batteries of one sort or another. The list just keeps getting longer too. For instance, these days I have to do the following prior to every photo-shoot:

  • Camera battery – 2 or 3 Canon LP-E6
  • Flash batteries – upto 24 AA batteries (3 flash guns with 2 sets of 4 batteries per unit)
  • Radio triggers – 6 AA batteries. 12 if its a long shoot and I’ll need two sets
  • Portable back-up drives – 8 AA batteries (2 drives with 4 batteries each)
  • Spare AA batteries

That little lot adds up to getting on for 40-50 AA batteries. Managing that number of batteries is not without problems.

Continue reading Battery power »

On the grid… Part 2

 Gavin   Available Light, Equipment, Strobist, Techniques
1/4 Speed Grid

A few days ago I mentioned that I’d bought a couple of Honl Speedgrids to attach to my Speedlites. The original post can be found here.

I had the opportunity and the pleasure of using one of these, the 1/4 Speedgrid, during my Notting Hill Beauty Shoot and here is an example of what one can achieve with these magic little devices.

As a comparison, I’ve also included a version that I lit with just available light. Both images were shot in the same room with the model standing in exactly the same place. Continue reading On the grid… Part 2 »

Notting Hill Beauty Shoot

 Gavin   Available Light, Beauty, Low Light, Studio, Techniques
No-light

Here is a selection of images taken during a recent beauty and make-up shoot over at Notting Hill.

It was a very busy day. Four great models and 2 MUAs. Three changes of outfit/looks for the models. Three shooting locations: my portable studio, low light and soft, natural light. And all this within just one basement flat.

I think that is why I love doing this – I can turn up at a location I’ve never seen before with a plan and the kit to make it work. Very often the location will throw up many more opportunities than I would have imagined. Take the low light images in this set for example. When I saw the hallway with it’s black and gold walls, the shaded wall lamps and the picture mirror I knew instantly I would get some really great shots. It pushed me to the limits of my equipment but nevertheless, it performed admirably. For the techies, most of the low light work was taken hand-held at ISO1600, f2.8 at about 1/30 to 1/15. Continue reading Notting Hill Beauty Shoot »