A selection of non-project based posts sharing my techniques & experiments. Plus tutorials showing behind the scenes images & setups of my off camera flash photos.
I’ve been doing an awful lot of client work lately, and thats lead to a dramatic decrease in the amount of images I’ve been sharing. Not because I can’t share the shots, more because… where does time even go? My lady & I put an end to that last night by having a few hours of […]
She & I spent a few days at the cabin in the woods over the weekend. In between coffee on the balcony & trips to the beach we made some time for a few photos.
Well 2013 has been an interesting year to say the least. Ups & downs, back & fourths… you know how it’s been. I’m not big on New Years resolutions, I never have been, but for 2014 I am going to try to enjoy the little things more.
My friend Daniel is a pretty awesome illustrator, the kind of illustrator that likes to draw axes & beards as well as beards & axes. At the end of last month I did a quick promo shoot for him in the attic of our favourite local independent coffee shop.
“There’s a smoke machine in the other room if you want to use it?” Erm… yes! Yes I do want to use it! I want to take a photo in the dark! With lights & candles & drama & aweomeness. So we made this.
Shooting in extremely bright midday sunlight is always a challenge, harsh shadows & ever-changing lighting don’t help the situation. It’s even more ambitious when you want to balance/fight the sun by adding a flash or three. I wanted to get a super bright, almost dreamy, backdrop so I wanted to shoot from a shaded area with a few trees for framing & then use strobes to even that out with the rest of the scene.
Another small set of Leah from yesterdays shoot, but with a really different feel. I used two softboxes almost paralel to the wall, this gave me a really large spread of soft light. I then shot along the wall to get a profile with lots of depth & contrast. That helped to bring out a lot of detail & give the location some verticality.
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a lit portrait, so I text my friend Leah & arranged something for today. I’ve had this location in mind for a while but hadn’t had the chance to use it. It was a good job I had a torch with me because we couldn’t see a thing in there. We were pretty much shooting in pitch black, it made focusing a challenge but I still got a bunch of nice shots out of the evening. Enjoy these two, I’ve got some more to edit & I’ll post later this week.
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.