About technique and more.

Using backlighting and metering tip

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Often light is coming from the front or the side, however it can be very interesting to use light from the back.
Now how do you meter something like this?
In fact it’s very simple.
An incident light meter will meter the light falling on the subject and give you the correct reading, if you put that value in your camera you’re subject will be properly lit. Now a lot of people tell you different things about light meters, ranging from “you don’t need one” to ….. well let’s put it this way a lot of confusion is caused.

 

Trust me when I tell you that a light meter is just a tool, it gives you a way to very quickly get a proper exposure and it’s not hard to use. As you can see in these examples I metered the front of the face of the models and put that exposure in the camera, the only light source used is an Elinchrom Ranger behind the model, so the “scatter light” actually lights the model and is metered. In a studio environment it will often (99.9%) means you’re metering towards the light source, but as you see with this setup I now actually metered towards the camera. Just remember that you hold the meter in front of the area you want to be correct and meter “the light” that is hitting THAT area, it can be the strobe straight on, but also scatter light or ambient light.

 

Enka workshops Augustus 15 2014 199

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Using reflections

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One of the things that’s always a guarantee for a good shot (or an interesting shot) is using reflections.
Reflections can be seen in many surfaces, but also in water of course.
So when you’re shooting in a location where you see some pools of water make sure to figure out a way to use it in at least some of your shots.
Enka workshops Augustus 15 2014 33

Top of Denmark

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One of the things I absolutely love to do when traveling is finding places that are a bit “weird” or different. And in Denmark we wanted to visit two of these sites, the first is a lighthouse that was captured by sand (later more on this) and one was the absolute top of Denmark called Skagen. This is where both the Skagerrak and Kattegat come together, this gives a very dangerous situation and this is why swimming is not allowed in this area.

 

When you arrive in the location there is a huge parking and a small tractor bringing you to the point…. we of course decided to walk, it was only 500mtrs…. well that must have been the longest 500 mtrs ever, but we are used to walking so it was more than doable but if you are a bit less fit make sure to take the tractor, walking through the sand is pretty heavy.

 

On the way to the destination you pass some old bunkers, which of course also are interesting to visit, but that’s not why we where here, but I of course had to take some quick snaps 😀

Denemarken Augustus 7 2014 16

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Using masks

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The face is an incredibly important part of a shoot, it’s where we get the expressions from, and of course it’s the first thing we look at.
So we have to make sure the face is always correctly lit and visible, right?

 

 

Well most of the times yes, but sometimes it can be very nice to play a bit with masks.
The nice thing is that first of all the mask itself will have some form of expression, but the thing that really draws me towards the use of masks is the way some of them respond to the light and what’s also very obvious is that when the model wears a mask she/he will have to work more with the body to create the look/expression you want, and this can give some interesting shots especially when you start combining it with some harsh shadows.

 

In this blogpost some images I shot with Anna during a webinar last week.

Anna Juli 16 2014 Webinar C1 B (1 of 2)

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