Combining natural and artificial lights

May 15, 2011

Until only recently I was either using only natural or only artificial light (speedlight or strobes) in one picture at the same time. However, rules are meant to be broken (yes, it was a very weird rule I had to use only one type of light during a shoot) and lately I've been combining and mixing natural and artificial lights. I really like to use one type of light as a hair light and the second as a fill light or as the main light.

I particularly like to use natural light as a hair light for several reasons. Firstly, if I use a speedlight as the main light, then I have much more control over the light, its strength, position and I can apply light modifiers onto the speedlight. Secondly, if I have to shoot at noon when the natural light is not too flattering (yes, sometimes I just had to shoot at noon when it's the only option for a model, a make-up artist and a stylist), using the natural light as the hair-light is the best option. Thirdly, having the sun behind the model and sometimes having it in the frame and then compensating the exposure with the speedlight can give some nice and creative results.

These Jeans Are Made For Wearing

April 15, 2011

I love 2 things about blue jeans as a photographer: their color and their texture. Most jeans are in a really nice blue color spectrum and temperature, which is nice to look at and doesn't overpower a subject in an image. Add a nice texture to this pleasant blue color and a good-looking model and you'll have a perfect combination for a photo shoot (not to mention you'll also need good light but it's a different story).

I had few photo shoots during my recent stay in (Gdansk) Poland in March and I asked Diana to be my model for a spontaneous photo shoot in the Oliwski Parc in Gdansk. We had a really nice weather, a bit cold but sunny. Although we met at around 2pm when the sunlight was still harsh, there was a lot of shadow from the trees and bushes which I used in order to get nice soft light on her face. I also used the sunlight as a hair-light. To my surprise, Diana had with her a couple of outfits and after about an hour shooting she told me she had a jeans outfit (jeans trousers and jeans shirt).

We both like it so much that we decided to do the rest of the photo shoot in the jeans and I think it was a perfect decision. I particularly like how the colors of the jeans (both of the trousers and the shirt) and their texture fit into the bright light and spring feeling of the pictures. What do you think? I think these jeans are made for wearing ... especially in spring :)

Using a mirror to frame a subject

March 24, 2011

Until just recently, whenever someone talked about pictures of a person taken in a mirror, I only associated this kind of pictures with Facebook profile pictures of teenagers (I think you know about what kind of picture I talk about). But I have discovered the great advantage of mirrors during my recent photo shoot in Poland - mirrors are great to frame a subject. There are other ways to frame a subject, for example with door frames, windows, trees, etc. but I never used a mirror to frame a subject before.

Using a mirror to frame a subject can be a bit tricky and difficult when you use strobes and/or speedlights because these additional light sources can create reflections in a mirror and light spots. Therefore, you should be careful when using lights for these kind of shots - a quick tip: first get your model or subject in a right position and take a test pictures to see what is visible in a mirror, then position your lights so that they are not visible in a mirror and are out of the mirror's frame.

Another thing is that any lines (within mirror's frame or any other lines) can be used to define a picture or a subject. Lines or even patterns can be very helpful in drawing the attention of a viewer to the subject in the picture or separate the subject from the rest of what is in a frame. Next time you'll be taking pictures, take a close look at any patterns or lines either in the foreground or in the background, try to change your position or reposition your subject to use these lines.

Take a camera everywhere you go, even bowling ...

March 7, 2011

You'll hear that every time you talk with a photographer: "Take a camera everywhere you go". I have mentioned that already a couple of times on my blog already but I'll add something this time. Therefore, "take a camera everywhere you go, EVEN BOWLING!".

But seriously, the whole fuzz around taking a camera everywhere you go is really about 2 things:

1) you don't know when & where to expect a great opportunity for a picture and having a camera with you (almost) all the time makes you ready for taking that great and unexpected shot;

2) practice makes perfect - it's a no brainer; the more pictures you take, the better photographer you become.

I went bowling in Brussels with a group of friends a couple of weeks ago and I took a camera with me (surprise, surprise!). To be honest with you, I didn't expect to take any pictures but I ended up taking few shots with my trusty Nikkor 35mm F1.8 DX, which is a great lens for low-light situations. Even though Nikkor 35mm F1.8 DX is a very bright lens, I still had to crank up ISO to get more or less sharp shots but I also spent some time on getting blurry & motion-like pictures.

Belgian Geeks Photo Shoot: Knight Wise & Niejana (video)

March 4, 2011

I would like to share with you a slideshow video (click the picture above) from the pictures taken during the Belgian Geeks Photo Shoot with Niejana and Knight Wise - a Belgian geeky and very cool couple. If you follow the blog, you probably saw some of their pictures in my previous post Improvising a Photo Shoot on Location.

In case you prefer to watch it directly on: Youtube.com (click) or Vimeo.com (and click).

Visit Niejana and Knight Wise's website www.knightwise.com

Improvising a photo shoot on location

February 26, 2011

I love working with people, professional or aspiring models, people who want their portraits taken, people who look for specific type of photography for their businesses, commercial or promotional purposes. However, it's not always possible to prepare some of these photo shoots and often it's necessary to improvise... actually you can never be confident that you're 100% prepared for a photo shoot as a photographer. There are almost always unexpected things happening: bad weather, people not showing up or showing up late limiting your time for a shoot, location turning out different than you expected, etc (the list can continue forever).

You can't be prepared for these unexpected circumstances (quite obviously they're unexpected) and you have to be ready to improvise - being able and ready to improvise during a photo shoot is a must and actually it's the only thing you can be sure of and control before a photo shoot. Just to make it clear: you can't go for a photo shoot completely unprepared thinking that you can improvise everything but you need to be ready to improvise when needed, let your creativity unleash and just 'expect unexpected' as I say.

I had a photo shoot, during which I had to improvise, a couple of weeks ago in February 2011. I met with Knight Wise and Niejana of KnightWise.com - I refer to both of them as THE Belgian Geeks :). Knight Wise and Niejana are a really awesome couple from Belgium who are not only into technology but also into Starwars, podcasting, videocasting and all the geeky stuff (honestly, I'm not sure what I'm talking here about because I'm not a typical geek... I'm just a photography geek). Anyway, going back to the topic, I met with them in Tongeren (Belgium) (which was also my first time in Tongeren) and I had no idea what to expect - we didn't have a fixed photo shoot location and their house turned out a bit too small for a photo shoot.

The only option was to improvise, especially when I decided to start off with a photo shoot outside at a countryside. Knight Wise and Niejana took me to a nearby popular park, just outside of a city and I immediately started to look around for interesting places, foregrounds, backgrounds and patterns... anything that would be interesting and supplementary for portrait photography. I don't think I have to mention that I tried to take the pictures of Knight Wise and Niejana around the theme of the 'Belgian Geeks'. They mentioned to me during the photo shoot that they even didn't have their engagement photo shoot before they had the wedding few years ago. So I decided to use this opportunity to shoot few engagement / couple / love pictures. At some point, I just asked them to sit on the ground and I let them interact with each other - it turned out great and I learned one important thing: Geek love is tough love (look at the picture where Niejana hits Knight Wise with a very robust and expensive laptop) :)

Strobist info for some of the pictures: I used a combination of Nikon's SB-900 Speedlight on a shoot-through umbrella and sometimes I also used a light-reflector for pictures taken outside (but I also tried to use as much natural light as possible, something just modifying it slightly with a light-reflector. For indoor pictures, I used 2 Lastolite Lumen F400 lamps with shoo-through umbrellas as well.

Pen Tablet - an essential tool for post-processing

February 12, 2011

Little I knew about pen tablets, not to mention how useful they are, when I was starting my adventure with photography few years ago. A pen tablet seemed to me as an unnecessary tool at that time, which was used only by very (emphasis on VERY) professional photographers and graphic designer only - and oh boy, how much could I be wrong. I underestimated the value of a pen tablet for my post-processing job and photography workflow that I can't believe I did when I think back to those times when I didn't use one. I got my pen tablet from Wacom over a year ago and it's been an integral part of my workflow ever since.

Yes, pen tablets can be quite expensive but you'll start to value their functionality very quickly. The time I spend on post-processing has dramatically decreased with a pen table by at least 50% and it's not an exaggeration by any means. Editing pictures with a pen tablet is not only much faster but it also feels much more natural than using a mouse and it's much better for your arm and joints than sitting with your hand grabbing that unergonomic mouse all the time (which can also be painful and cause Repetitive Strain Injury [RSI]). If you already have started considering getting a pen tablet, you don't have to buy a very expensive one, high-end from the top of a shelf. Wacom produces very good pen tablets and even their cheapest and simplest tablets are great to start off with.

Overexpose or underexpose - that is the question

February 6, 2011

I heard two opposite opinions in the past few years whether it is better to overexpose or underexpose pictures. Obviously, the best condition is when you expose a picture correctly, but you might find yourself in a situation when you might need to underexpose or overexpose a picture and you will have to choose which one is better: to underexpose or overexpose. I heard Scott Bourne (at least I'm pretty sure it was him) saying that you should underexpose by one stop to 'naturally' saturate the colors already in a camera - this apparently saves you some time in post-processing. However, this tip is more applicable for film photography rather than digital photography, because saturating the colors in post-processing can be done nowadays in a matter of few seconds.

My preference is to overexpose when I have to, instead of underexposing pictures. The reason is quite simple and it has to do with the amount of data DSLR can gather and save in RAW files these days (and I just realized that I should have mentioned at the beginning that we talk here about pictures shoot in RAW, which retain much more data and information than JPG files - this is really helpful in post-processing). So why do I overexpose when I have to? If you underexpose and you want to brighten a picture or a part of it in the post-processing, you might find yourself having noise in the underexposed area. Overexposing doesn't create that noise effect and even thought a picture may seem really blown out if you overexpose, a camera captures much more detail in those overexposed areas than you think - this is the magic of RAW files. Therefore, when you darken a picture or parts of it, you will still see much details in the previously overexposed areas.

Focus on your subject, not gear

January 26, 2011

I've recently read a very interesting blog article Less Gear, More Character? by Bert Stephani and I have to credit him for giving me the idea on the following article. I completely agree with Bert's opinion that gear can stand in a way between a photographer and a subject, especially when too much gear is used or the focus of a photographer is on the gear and not on the subject.

We photographers often get excited with the releases of new equipment, not to mention buying new gear - we are like kids who just got the most awesome and the most awaited Christmas gift - getting excited, sometimes even screaming or jumping up and down (having said that, our wives, girlfriends, husbands and boyfriends should be all given Nobel Peace Prizes for accepting our behavior but that's a completely different story). This enthusiasm can often lead to focusing too much on the equipment and not enough on the subject during a photo shoot. Don't get me wrong, being able to use the equipment, the tools and the light sources during a photo shoot is important but it is a client, a person and a subject who should we focus on. Gear and equipment are just tools that help us in capturing the subject.

This topic is much broader and deeper than I actually thought it was when I started writing this article. Another important aspect about focusing on a subject (we are talking all the time about a person) and not gear is the significance of establishing certain relationship with a person, of course on the level photographer-subject/customer. Don't forget that quite often, the photographed person is nervous and doesn't know what to expect from a photo shoot. It is in your best interest to establish and create a friendly atmosphere and make the person feel comfortable. It helps in capturing great portraits or similar type of pictures, which otherwise could come out really bad, especially when the person is nervous, tense and doesn't show his/her true face and behavior.

Another point is that it's also in your best interest to focus on the subject and see it as a customer, a returning customer in the future as well as a 'live' walking advertisement of your services, who could refer their friends to you. I think it goes without saying that all your efforts should concentrate on making this person welcomed and special during a photo session but if you don't know what I'm saying.... treat him/her like a new lens, a new lighting setup or a new camera :)

When you focus your attention on the gear and not your subject and customer, then you might create an unfriendly environment, which will not only prohibit you from taking great shots but also might cause you to lose that customer in the future and his/her recommendation of your services. I'm not saying that equipment is not important, it's a tool (just like your camera) that helps you in getting great shots but it's your subject that should be the main focus. It's up to you to find that right balance between the two.

Pictures: This was my first photo shoot in 2011, where I tried to unleash my creativity. A friend visiting Brussels was very kind to model for me and it was actually her idea to do a bit of a retro photo session. Strobist info: I used one speedlight SB-900 from Nikon in the manual mode triggered with Cactus Wireless Flash Trigger Set V4 mounted to a big shoot through umbrella (110cm/43'').

The Importance of Networking for Photographers

January 10, 2011

If you have just started your adventure as a professional photographer or you plan to do that, probably the most often and important question you ask yourself is on how to have (new) customers. I won't explain you here on the importance of a good portfolio, an appealing website and using web 2.0 tools (like Facebook or Twitter). However, I would like to point your attention to the importance of networking as a photographer, which some photographers (especially those new professional photographers) tend to forget about. Networking is actually much more important for having customers than anything else. YES! Even your thousands of followers on Twitter and hundreds of 'friends' on Facebook won't give you as much opportunities for new customers as networking and word of mouth.

Therefore, networking is much more effective for having new customers, especially when we already made happy previous customers with delivering photographs and products in line with their expectations. Satisfied customers who remember you well and have good memories from working with you are much more effective and efficient 'living advertisers' than anything else. They will definitely mention you and their experience on working with you to their friends, families and co-workers. They will even refer anyone looking for a photographer to you if they are happy not only with your final results but also with the way you work, communicate and approach your clients. Therefore, a photographer should also be a good communicator, a friendly and engaging person with excellent customer relations.

The pictures accompanying this blog article were taken when testing new shoot-through umbrellas (110cm) together with Nikon's Speedlight SB-900. The light source was positioned as close to the subject as possible in order to make the light as soft as possible.