You can see these, & probably some more at some point soon, on my flickr under the tag NAConf.

DAN MALL — Design-ish

NAOMI ATKINSON — Going Beyond

TRAVIS SCHMEISSER — We Used to Build Forts

ROBBIE MANSON — The Mindful Designer

TRENT WALTON — Break Everything

CAMERON KOCZON — The Potential Impact of Design

DENISE JACOBS — Your Brain on Creativity

FRANK CHIMERO — It Moves

SIMON COLLISON — Event Organiser/Super Man

Attendees

Yesterday after work I shot over to Leeds to see bad boy photographer Jordan Green, with him being down in Farnham most of the time now we don’t get to hang out so much but it’s always nice to see him. He dragged out his friend Katie & we played with lights & took some photos in 600 mph winds — challenging.

Luckily Jordan & I are pro as fuck, we got the lights up & shot a few spots around Leeds until we lost the feeling in our fingers (Brr cold!). The shot above was my favourite from the night, which you can see on my flickr too. I’m sure I’ll get some more uploaded when I get a chance to edit them… Hmmm actually maybe my favourite shot was the one of Jordan being a pimp:

Jordan The Pimp

Lighting Diagram

Been a little while since I had all my lights out for a play, been craving it today — so I convinced Sarah to let me shoot her in the face. POW!

You can see it on my flickr too… if you’re into that sort of thing.

My lights TOTALLY looked like this:

Super Bonus Alternative Shot

I shot this one with my Canon 135mm F/2.0L, ditched the ringflash and upped the power on the softbox to a 1/4th.

We had good food, coffee, dogs, walking, video games, movies, cranes, snow & everything in between. I got to play with Baxters latest addition to her camera arsenal too, the Canon 45mm Tilt Shift, wow that thing takes some getting your head round. I also got started shooting a roll of film on my Canon 1V-hs sent to me by Sam on a film swap. He’s already shot it once so we’re gunna end up with some really interesting double exposures.

Ashley aslo published a post on this excursion and the picture of her at night with the BOKEH is on my flickr.

The prints will be pretty large — 20 inches wide, which will be about 26 inches (66cm) with the frame. Super limited edition — only 10 of each shot will ever be produced! They will all be stamped signed and numbered for authenticity (on the mount & on the back of the print). And obviously this has got my name on it so the quality is going to be excellent.

Your support for this project by purchasing a print will help fund more projects like this in the future. So if you’ve learned something, enjoyed yourself, felt in any way like you’ve gotten something out of it, or of you like just like seeing my photos then here’s how you can guarantee that I’ll be doing more things like this.

These framed, limited edition prints are on sale NOW from my Big Cartel store at £80.00 (about $125) with international shipping available. So go buy buy buy!

Shooting Conditions & Location

When you are shooting with the sun, the time of day, location & your positioning are very important. Believe it or not THE SUN IS BRIGHTER THAN YOUR FLASH which can make it very hard to balance, especially since you can only use a limited range of shutter speeds due to the flash sync speed. Shooting a bit later in the day can make your life a lot easier, especially if you’re wanting to shoot with a wider aperture. I did this shoot at around 5pm when the sun was just starting to fall out of the sky.

If you are shooting with the sun behind you, lighting the background & subject, it would be fairly pointless adding a flash you either want to be shooting into the sun, almost creating a silhouette of your subject, or shooting from a location that’s shaded, or both. I went for both on this shoot — I found a nice spot in the woods facing the right way for the sun set, under the cover of a lot of trees.

Basic Framing & Exposing The Available Light

After I’ve got my location right what I like to do is get my basic framing; nothing set in stone (it can be tweaked later) I just need the general idea so I can start getting the available light just how I like it. I use a tripod for quite a lot of my shoots so I get it setup, camera locked into place & then wander round till I’m relatively happy with it.

Whenever I am doing a strobist shot I ALWAYS get my available light, in this case daylight, exposed correctly before I add in any flashes. It will make subsequent steps so much easier to get right & help you get to a better end result in less time. With this shot I wanted to get the nice orange tones out of the sunset & leave my subject quite under exposed, almost silhouetted, while staying within a useable range.

Usable Range — When you are setting up your camera for a strobist portrait remember you only have a certain usable range with some of your settings. As we are shooting a person we want our shutter speed at at least 1/50th & we are using strobes so no faster than 1/250th. We’ve got to consider aperture here too — if we are shooting very wide, e.g. F/1.4, it’s easy to over expose the daylight; if we are shooting very narrow, e.g. F/16, we could soon be in a position where the flash just isn’t bright enough.

Too Dark

ISO100 — F/2.0 — 1/200th

I guessed some initial settings that I thought might work with the daylight & give me the look I wanted. First try left my shot much too dark all over but I got a good starting point to work from.

Too Light

ISO400 — F/2.0 — 1/50th

The next lot of settings I tried were much too bright for what I wanted & I had lost the colours from the sunset.

Just Right

ISO200 — F/2.0 — 1/80th

Third time lucky, I split the difference between the last two shots & nailed it. My background looks good & subject is underexposed — now I can start thinking about adding some of my own lights to bring the subject back to life.

Add Strobes

Because I was in such a dark shaded environment, I wanted to use two strobes in this shot. The first as key light to expose the subject nicely & then a second fill light reducing the contrast of the scene & illuminating the area around the subject a little giving us a little context. The fill light isn’t essential, you could happily shoot without it, but I thought it really added to the shot & would save me time trying to rescue some of the details on the ground & trees in post production.

I always start by getting my key light right first; I wanted to get a really nice soft light & cast a gentle shadow onto the tree from the subject. The process of getting the exposure for the flash right is very similar to exposing the ambient light, except this time we are changing the settings & position of the flash.

The Key Light

I put my Canon 580ex into my Westcott Apollo & placed them out wide & to the side. I set it to a low power, 1/32th, & took a shot, it was too dark & the shadows were too flat — I turned it up & moved it slightly further from the camera then took another shot. I did this a few times until it was on 1/8th power & I was happy with the positioning.

Adding The Fill Light

Once my key light was dialed in I set up my fill light, for this I was using a Canon 430ex in an umbrella box. The umbrella box is great for giving a good even spread of light. I set it up camera right — quite high & angled down. I then used the same process to get the power right — 1/8th. You can see that the fill light gives us much more environmental detail.

It can take a little bit of playing around to get the lights just right, it’s very trial & error, but after a little experience you’ll notice it’ll take you a lot fewer tries to get it right. I’ve done a nifty little top down lighting diagram for you too just to make it a little easier for you to get your head round where everything was.

The Shot

All the strobes are in place, the natural light is exposed beautifully, all that is left to do is take the photos! Work through some poses with your subject, remember you are meant to be having fun, talk to them lots, put them at ease, make them laugh. Take LOADS of photos, if you take 100 photos & you have 1 good one then you are WINNING & you’ve probably got some tigerblood in ya.

This is one of my finals with a touch of editing, mostly a bit of contrast and some tonal adjustments. You can see this shot on my Flickr where you’ll be able to check out the large version & see all the EXIF data… if that’s your kinda thing.

Watch Me

I didn’t even think it was possible, but I think this video is even worse than the last, at least you’ll be able to see the shoot a bit… I should have planned better.

Home Work

So basically cancel whatever plans you did have for this weekend, you’re going out to do a photo shoot. No seriously, I don’t care who’s birthday party/bar mitzvah/funeral you are meant to be going to — cancel it. You are gunna do a shoot, in the daylight, with a flash, like this. Once you’ve done it leave me a comment & let me know about it. You should upload it to flickr too & add it to my Flickr Group!

You should follow me on twitter to hear about my nextpost, oh & all the other adventures I get up to.

Thanks

Big thanks to John for doing the behind the scenes footage, Leah for modelling & Abi for doing the makeup & styling — & to Josh for letting me borrow his 550D to film this on.

The first shot/upload taken from my 450D.

The project went well for me, during the course I really got into off-camera-flash photograph, portraits & I even did a Project50 within it.

My first ever ‘strobist’ shot.

Post 365 I didn’t stop taking photos, photography was such a big part of my life by this point it felt strange when I didn’t take a photo for a few days.

In July I had a serious craving for a project again, and started my 2nd Project50. I knew I could do the photo-a-day part so for this project I wanted to concentrate on a consistent quality & style.

I actually felt a lot more drained after project 50 than the 365, probably due to the amount of pressure I put on myself. But I soon got my photivation back and have been shooting like a maniac since.

It’d be rude to end this post with out mentioning my new baby, I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings. I recently got a Canon 5D MkII… my dream camera. I am so stoked to have her, nothing has changed the way I shoot more, the only thing I can compare it to is getting my first prime lens.

Quantifying Creativity?

I was in two minds about publishing these stats, I worry about looking narcissistic but some people might find some statistics from the last two years interesting.

• 952 Photos Uploaded Publicly On Flickr
• 111 Photos Explored
• 24 Photos Featured on Flickr’s Front Page
• 853,697 Total Flickr Views
• 4 Projects Completed (365, P50-2009, Week Of Self, P50-2010)

Thanks

I’ve met some great people and made some great friends through photography, I’ve gotten a lot of support from people I know and complete strangers alike. It’s great, I only take photos for myself but when someone else appreciates them too that’s awesome. So thanks to anyone who has involved themselves in my photo journey.

Here’s to another two years.

I don’t really know what to do with myself to get out of this funk, I don’t particularly want to do another Photo-A-Day project (Like my 365 or Fifty of Fifty), but maybe some sort of other project would be good for me? Something that focuses less on time & more on a particular image aspect or style but still applies a little presser. Or maybe it’s my last project that has made me feel like this & I need to just step back from it all. I could maybe even just shoot film for a few months… But then I work well under pressure, I even relish it blah.

Without some sort of direction it just doesn’t feel right, but right now I don’t think I’m able to choose a direction so I’m floating. I fear that’s making me feel slightly apathetic toward it. This is all just me thinking out loud I guess but if anyone has any thoughts or opinions I’d love to hear them.

I’m going to London on Thursday with Kym for a long weekend away, bit of casual shooting, coffee & good company might do me some good.

I get asked a lot — “What makes you want to do this?” or “Why would you do this if you aren’t getting paid for it?”, generally my answer is — “Just for the sake of it” but let me expand on that a little more. To me the value of this project is completely inherent in the act of doing it or, more importantly, the act of completing it to a level of quality with which I am happy — I did it to prove to myself that I could.

I decided from the start I wanted to really make these shots stand out as a series; I wanted to give them all something that tied them together. I love film, & the idea that a single frame can really tell a story so I thought I’d try to achieve that cinematic feel with well thought out composition & post processing. Also, being a designer with a passion for well set type I wanted to add a typographical twist to the shots — hopefully carry on the story telling a little bit.

I approached this project as I would anything else in my life — diagonally. I scribbled down any ideas I had for photos into a Moleskine diary, along with any events, words, people, anything I could think of that might help. Laying it out like this made it a lot easier to get a clear picture of the whole project in my head. I could see the days where I was going to need to do a bit of extra organisation or need to ask a friend for help.

I also wanted to make an effort to document the more interesting setups in the series. Every photo that used off camera lighting has strobist info in the description & I started adding setup photos, which a lot of you will know I already add to quite a few of my prior photos. I also did about thirteen setup videos, a new thing for me; my iPhone 4 made producing them pretty easy & the quality was good. You can check out all the videos on my Vimeo page.

I always suck at summing up projects; I really struggle to step back & look at the project objectively to assess what I’ve achieved. I am probably overly self critical & I rarely like anything I produce for more than 2 hours after I’ve done it. I guess that’s got something to do with why I put together some statistics. I know that most of them are meaningless, especially Explore, but it makes my creativity & skill level quantifiable; my mind likes that.

Regardless of how I feel I have done, I enjoyed the project a lot. I put more pressure on myself this time than in previous photographic challenges & I think I responded well — I only thought about killing myself a few times. So I guess in that respect the project is a massive success? Yeah… cool.

Statistics

As I said above, in some bizarre way, statistics help me quantify my ability as a creator of photographic images. Not on a personal “Do I like this image?” kinda level but more on a global “How well has this image gone down” sorta thing. I put together loads of stats from this project & thought I would share some of them. If you’re as geeky as me you might enjoy them. I wish I had time to make a more in depth info graphic, as theres tonnes of data! But hey, I’ve got a million other things I should be doing!

The Site — FiftyofFifty.co.uk

I built this simple site to showcase the project on it’s own platform. Flickr is great for people to follow & interact with a project in real time but once it’s over, it’s very easy for a project to get buried. I built the site in HTML5 with some sexy CSS3 & also added a really nice iPhone optimised interface for the iPhone, including high res retina display graphics. Oh & if you add the site to your home screen you’ll see a rather sexy icon that John O’Nolan designed for me, what a guy!

So What’s Next?

What a good looking question, thanks for asking — but I’m not telling yet! I’ve got some stuff to catch up on that I put off to do this project, including the next ‘How I Shoot’ post, but don’t worry, my flickr will not be neglected. I have loads in my edit pile to get through & I can never last long without taking a photo or two! But more to the point I have already started planning the next project… it’ll be something a little different but hopefully just as enjoyable as this has been for people. Stay tuned.

The Giveaway!!

Yep! I am giving away a full set of fifty 7″ by 5″ prints from the project to just one person! In fact they are the exact ones I used in my final photo! Cool huh? To be in with a chance of winning all you need to do is follow meon twitter & tweet:

Read about @RickNunn’s Fifty of Fifty photo project & you could win fifty beautiful prints – http://bit.ly/fiftyoffifty

The winner will be picked at random & announced here on the 1st of September 2010.

Competition now closed — the winner is… Rob Barrett!