Theme 1 - 'Family day' photoshoot

Overview - Shoot 1

Prior to this course I did a photoshoot in a local church hall to take some pictures of a friends band, since then, I have done several more shoots and for the purposes of this course I wanted to document the planning, implementation and post production and key learns from carrying out a photo shoot.

Planning phase

In order for the shoot to be successful, several key elements had to be planned and organised. The subject of my shoot was 'family' which would give me the opportunity to take pictures from all ages. The initial step was to arrange the date and obtain a venue. I chose the same place that I had used previously as It had great facilities and was very reasonably priced! From then I was able to secure the booking and start advertising the event to local friends and family.

I booked groups into slots of 30 mins, 20mins shooting time and 10mins break inbetween shoots. Prior to the event I texed everyone to ensure they were still able to make it. Unfortunately, due to a sickness bug, 3 out of the 7 were unable to attend. In hindsight, this was a blessing as it allowed me more time inbetween groups.


Equipment

1X lastolite highlight 6ftX7ft backdrop and train
4X light heads and stands (inc leads)
2X shoot through brollies
1X nikon D80
IR transmitter
1X 18-135mm lens
1X 50mm prime lens
1X lightmeter
masking tape
ipod and speakers
balloons
soft toy


Implementation

I arrived 1 hr prior to the first group to allow myself to set up the portable studio, take light readings and ensure all of the health and safety aspects had been covered. The lighting rig looked like this:

2 of the flash heads were placed inside the lastolite highlight to produce a uniformly lit backdrop. The other two heads had shoot through brollies attached to them and were placed either side of the backdrop train. The purpose of the brollies was to diffuse the light to create a softer and more uniform effect on the subjects. The meter readings were taken from the backdrop and facing the light.

In order to comply with health and safetly issues, I taped the cables and the backdrop train to the floor to avoid tripping (especially as yound children were going to be present)

The purpose of this lighting rig was to create a high key effect. (see link)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjyTTiFCVHM

The shoot

When the first groups of people stared to arrive, I did a couple of test shots to check the levels. The following shot was taken using:

Shutter speed - 1/60s

Aperture - f1/16

ISO - 200

Focal length - 38mm

The apperture was f1/16 because of the strength of the lights in the backdrop. They only had a half power setting (200w) or a full power setting (400w). So in order to match the power with my front to lighting heads, I put them on full power in order avoid the halo effect around the subject when the background is lighter then the foreground.

http://www.entheosweb.com/photoshop/halo.asp

The above link will take you to a site that demonstrates how to produce a halo effect. I certainly didn't want the effect in my shoot, hence the small f stop.

The resulting shoot went well, with the production of a number of final shots that I was happy with as they reflect the subjects that I was shooting:

Post production/Key learns

I used lightroom 3 and CS5 to boost the levels and convert to black and white. My key learning during tghis shoot was to re-meter when changing lenses. On the last set, I photographed the following picture, without re-metering which resulted in the final image being over exposed:

Although the final image was better (see below), I struggled to improve it sufficently for complete satisfaction.

I learn't a valuable lesson during this shoot and used it on my next shoot the following week.

Overview - Shoot 2

A friend of mine has a friend who is the Matron at Oundle School near Peterborough who was very keen to have a photo shoot by me after seeing the results of a photo shoot that I did for my friend in June. The following link provides an overview of the school, it's grounds and local area. I used this in my research so that I could plan the day. 

http://www.oundleschool.org.uk/

Planning phase

The main areas that I had to consider in my planning were the following:

• Location and traveling time
• Available space for setting up the equipment
• Talking to the Client to determine the types of shots she wanted, who will be attending and how much time was available to complete the shoot and pack away the equipment.
• Equipment planning, did I need to borrow any pieces of equipment in order to complete my shoot?
• Health and Safety - what are the health and safety considerations in the venue?
• What sort of final image does she want? e.g. disk with final images, canvases, prints etc...

Equipment

1X lastolite highlight 6ftX7ft backdrop and train

4X light heads and stands (inc leads)

2X shoot through brollies

1X nikon D80

IR transmitter

1X 18-135mm lens

1X 50mm prime lens

1X lightmeter

masking tape

ipod and speakers

balloons

soft toy

Implementation 

I arrived an hour early as I had a distance to travel and wanted to allow time for traffic. After meeting the client, I set up in the allocated room using the above listed equipment.

The Shoot


The shoot lasted 3 hrs and consisted of a variety of people with age ranges from 4 months to 84 years old!





Theme 1 - Pic 2 - re-creation of Lemons and Limes

I wanted to practice re-creating further images at home, using the equipment I have there. I chose this subject (see above) due to lack of 'human' subjects to choose from! I also like it's simplicity and contrasting colours. The composition is also very simple with a central focal point.

I quickly realised that I needed a black background, a lime and lemon and a single flash head. I have a set of interfit EXD 200 flash heads and kitted it out with the standard reflector. I arranged the set up as shown below:

I then chose my 50mm lens and did a light reading using my sekonic L385 light meter. I chose a 1/60 sec shutter, manual focus and an aperture of f5.6 in order to get most of the subject in focus, but the background out of focus. I shot the picture just above the level of the subject. It is shot in RAW to enable me to change the white balance and exposure in lightroom 3 if necessary and produced the following image:

In order to achieve this picture, I tweaked it in lightroom using the following process:

I feel that the resulting image does resemble the initial image. What I have learn't from this exercise is:

• How to create a softer cloning effect in photoshop by changing the cloning tool and changing the opacity.
• Where to position the key light to create the correct level and position of shadow.

Theme 1 - Low-key photography

Low key photography


I have always prefered the more dramatic images of Low-key portraits than high-key as they seem to reveal more of the sitters personality and emotion. Below are a examples of low key photography:

 During Photography class last week I tried in the studio to re- create this image with the help of Maggie. I like this image because it is very atmospheric and moody, I also underestimated how difficult it was going to be!

The lighting set up was similar to this:

We used a single light with a honeycomb grid on the end to help direct the light.

'Like snoots and barndoors, a honeycomb grid ia an attachment that narrows and focuses the beam from a stobe lamp. The primary difference is that a honeycombe grid provides a smoother less dramatic graduation to the edge of the light. These grids come in four standard angles of beam widtht; ten, twenty, thirty, and forty degrees. The smaller the angle of beam width, the tighter the beam of light'. ('Digital photography and lighting' (2006) C.Jamieson and S.McCormick p.71)

The difficulty we had was where to place the key light. If we placed it at 45 degrees to the subject (as demonstrated in the diagram) the shadows were too severe and too much light landed on the models face. If we placed it slightly behind the model, we got a 'rimmed' effect that was not what we were after.

'Rim lighting is a technique used to give shape to objects in a photograph by backlighting the subject. When it is used in a subtle manner, rim lighting can be barely detectable. When rim lighting is used as an effect, it gives the subject a lighted halo around them and an ethereal look. Rim lighting is most often used to define shapes against a background, but it can also be used to highlight subtle effects of a photograph such as tiny hairs like those on the rim of a flower' (T Moergan (2009) eHow contri

The resulting image (see below) was taken with the key light  at about 50 degrees to the camera and against a black backdrop.

The metering was taken using an sekonic L-358 with a set ISO of 200 and shutter speed of 1/125. This recommended an aperature of f/4.0. I shot it using my Nikon D80 with a 50mm lens and used manual focus.

Reflection

Although I'm relatively happy with the final image, It doesn't quite replicate the image fully. It is also slightly out of focus and the background is not jet black as the light has 'spilled' over onto the floor of the studio. In the future to prevent this from happening I could use a heavy black cloth (velvet) on the floor inorder for the light to be fully absorbed. For a first attempt I'm quite pleased, but will try again and next time will use black cloth and focus on the subject before turning the lights off