About technique and more.

Mixing ambient/available with strobes

/in , /by

A situation most photographers encounter many times is mixing ambient/available light with strobes.
There is however a pretty simple rule you can always use to remember how to influence the look of a scene.

Shutter speed controls the available light
Aperture is the flash
ISO stays the same

If you change the ISO you have to change the aperture (because this is fixed pulse from the strobe).
By changing the shutter speed you can let in more or less ambient/available light.
This way you can make a background outside darker (faster shutter speed) or lighter (slower shutter speed) while the exposure on your model (the flash) stays the same. Do remember this is of course with manual flash with ETTL this works slightly differently.

Also remember that there is a point where the ambient/available light can actually over power the strobe, especially outside when working with fill-in flash this can happen quite easily, that’s why I always advise to setup your strobes on full power first and lower the output by counting (if your system has 1/10th or 1/3rd digital settings and is reliable). If you change the shutter speed you have to remember that if you double or halve the shutter speed this is ONE full f-stop so if you know your aperture and the combination of ambient and flash you actually can very quickly calculate when the ambient is higher that the flash. If for example the setup is f11 on the model on 1/125 and you overpower the ambient with 2 stops, you know that when you shoot on f11 1/60 you are now overpowering the ambient with just 1 stop.

This comes in very handy when you start adding constant lighting to your scene like in these examples.
You can actually (to a certain level) control how much the lightbulbs emit, or how far they blow out.
I love using the Elinchrom ELCs for this because they can go down REALLY low in power, and that’s awesome for mixing them with this kind of light.

For this setup we used one strobe on the model and one blue gelled strobe on the back for the smoke effect. The chandelier was powered by 230V 😀

Mixing light sources can be incredibly fun but also a bit difficult at first. Also take into account that some light sources have a different color temperature (to be exact EVERY light source has a different color temperature, that’s why we use the X-Rite color checkers), you can solve this by gelling the strobes, or…. just leave it and play with it like I did in these shots, I love the cool hues you can get this way.

As a rule of thumb:
Outside light : no correction
Tungsten : Amber colored gels
Fluorescent : Green colored gels

Or find the proper CTO gels, you can of course also stack gels, I always advise to by them not to heavy and get two, this way you can stack them together if necessary.

Model : Danique
Dresses (black) by Sinister

Danique June 17 2016 2441

Danique June 17 2016 3408

Because black and white can be stunning

/in , /by

During the editing process of images it’s always a hard choice for me to go for BW or color…
So most of the times I just select BW and often love what I see, but then I go back to color…. well and I also love what I see.
Some images however are “born” to be BW, like the image on top from Danique.

The other two images I’m still in doubt about, but hey we live in the digital age so why not have them both 😀
Do you always struggle between BW and color?
And what’s your preferred way of solving the dilemma?

Now some images I intentionally shoot to be BW and that’s easy for the simple reason we already start with BW in our mind. So makeup, clothing, background etc. is all setup for the conversion. But sometimes it’s more difficult.

Danique June 17 2016 1575 bw

Danique June 17 2016 1575

For the love of old movies

/in , /by

It’s not a secret I love comics, horror/SF movies etc.
So when I get the chance to incorporate this into my images/work I’m always happy 😀

During a recent cosplay session we did one of the last models was dressed up as the bride of Frankenstein, and although I hardly do any “additions/changes” in retouching, this image just “screamed” for some extra treatment. The final result you see on top, and here is the original.

Cosplay May 29 2016 32667

This is already the retouched image of course but still in color.
What did I do?

The model was shot with just the smoke against a black background, on a wooden floor (our studio floor).
I used several pieces of grass to change the floor into a more “real” ground for the model to stand on.
After this I looked through my images I shot during trips and found the cross and castle to be perfect for what I wanted and I inserted these into the background. The castle was shot during day time (as was the cross) so they were made a lot darker. I decided to keep the sky pitch black for a more “eery” feel, so the original sky was cut out of the castle shot.
The moment I took the shot I already knew it would become a black and white shot, so after this I went into Alien Skin Exposure X and changed the look into something a bit more fitting the idea I had, which was a cross between an old movie poster and something from the 50-70’s tv shows.

Can it be better?
Yes of course it can, I don’t do a lot of compositing and this was thrown together in a few minutes, however…. as you might have noticed during our vlogs and social media posts we recently added a nice Cintiq to our studio gear.. and that’s for a reason…. time changes and of course I want to keep challenging myself so during the coming months I will be incorporating a bit more of these kind of shots into my portfolio/work… don’t worry I will probably not start shooting models against gray seamless backgrounds and photoshop everything, I still believe that the majority of a shot should be out of the camera, but I am planning of combining my passion for drawing and photography a bit more together….. who knows what will happen.

Tip : The most simple location can be awesome

/in , /by

Often I hear photographers complain about the lack of great locations…
I always tell them “the best locations are in your head, and often right in front of you”.
Somehow it sometimes seems that if there isn’t a great location the creativity is gone, or is it just that……

In my opinion every location is great to photograph, but I often do look for certain extras like contrast, grunge (rough) and color, OR the lack of it. The more rough the better in all honesty, on the other hand something really static and modern can also be awesome, as you can see there is always something if you WANT to see it.

As I joke I sometimes say “put on your photographers eyes and hunt, don’t look for opportunities but try to find uses for what you see” this is a different mindset but often helps a lot.

Now if you add a little bit of styling to it (or a lot like in this case) you’re on the way to a great shot.
These shots were done during a workshop in Manchester with Nadine, a very simple light setup with one Elinchrom beauty dish with grid straight at Nadine. The wall didn’t look like much but I loved it, and seeing the responses from the attendees as soon as the images came in… they did too.

Nadine June 8th 2016 Manchester 0285

Nadine June 8th 2016 Manchester 0289