Independence Day, 2009

Happy 4th Everyone!

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Learning to Light White

Tonight I stayed after work to shoot some corporate images of my friend Connie. Connie teaches our corporate staff the ins and outs of giving top notch presentations. I must say that while watching her teach a seminar, she's impressive. And she's very nice too. 

Connie needed images of herself showing her gestures and mannerisms while teaching a presentation class. Each image will be part of a PowerPoint presentation that she uses to teach her online webinar presentation classes. I asked my friend Jerry, who's a pretty good photographer in his own right, to assist. 

I decided to photograph Connie on a pure white background as this would allow each image to seamlessly blend with the white background in her PowerPoint slides. Jerry and I chose a large conference room where I set up two White Lightning Ultra 1600 strobes (WL) with Pocket Wizards in the middle of the room about 15 feet from the background, which was a white seamless wall. I used a 47" Octobox in one of the strobes; the other in a 36" softbox. Why not use two Octoboxes? Because I only have one. I was looking for nice, even lighting across Connie, which is why I decided on the big boxes. 

Next, I set up one Nikon Speedlight with a Pocket Wizard about 4 feet from the background wall, aimed directly at the wall. I set the power to 1/2 power. Why the Nikon Speedlight? Because I wanted to see if I could use both the White Lightnings and the Speedlights in conjunction with each another.

Conclusion? Yep, you can use hot shoe flashes in conjunction with heavy duty studio strobes, as long as you power back the studio beasts. I mean, a hot shoe flash at full power will never put out enough light to compete with a studio head, so to balance them successfully, the studios must be powered back. 

At this point, I began by setting my exposure for my subject by having Jerry stand in as Connie, who had not yet arrived. I randomly chose an aperature of f/9 and a shutter speed of 1/250. I then shut off the overhead ambient florescent room lights and used the WL modeling lights to see how the potential WL strobe lighting would look on Jerry. Because the WLs are monster strobes, I knew I had to dial back the power on each head. After taking a few meter readings, I settled on 1/8 power with each WL about 3 feet from my subject. That gave me my working aperture of f/9. 

At that point, I shut down the WLs to work on the background lighting with the Speedlights. To get the pure white background I wanted, I knew the background exposure at the wall needed to be 1 1/2 stops over the key light exposure of f/9. That would give me a background exposure reading of about f/16 - almost twice as bright as my keylight exposure of f/9. At f/16, the background exposure is a bit more than 1 1/2 stops; more like 1 2/3 stops. Pretty close though, so I went with it. 

When I actually turned the Speedlight on and set it at 1/2 power, my incident reading showed f/5.6 -  about a stop and a third underexposed. Not good. So I cranked up the power to full and tried another reading again. This time I got f/8. Still not enough light. However, had it BEEN enough light, at full power, I was concerned that I would have sucked the life out of its batteries had the photo session gone longer than planned. 

At this point, my option seemed like it was time to set up another WL because I needed the power. But I'd seen other photographers use two Speedlights together to increase the flash output so I thought I'd try that first. 

I added a second Speedlight with a Pocket Wizard next to the first and dialed them both back to 1/2 power, and then took a reading. Whoa, f/22! Too much light, but now I knew I wouldn't need the other WL. I dialed down both Speedlights to 1/4 power and took another reading. This time, pay dirt! f/16. 

Next I went back to where Jerry was standing and took another incident light reading at the back of his head. Remember, I had a working key light aperture of f/9 and I needed f/9 at the back of his head to keep light wrap to a minimum. In fact, I really didn't want any wrap. When I took the reading, I got a reading of f/5.6, which was a bit underexposed, but that aperture probably would have worked. Jerry and I discussed this and we decided to go for f/9, so we moved our subject spot back a couple of feet, towards the Speedlights. Doing this gave me a reading of f/9 at the back of his head, while maintaining a wall exposure of f/16. Perfect... 

Now it's time to get started with Connie. Connie came in, took her position and we began the session. All told, the session took about 15 minutes, which was good, because Connie was meeting friends for dinner and she didn't have a lot of time. It was also good because this was an actually a REAL session, with a REAL customer, who had REAL deadlines to deal with, which gave me a limited time to work. Just like in the REAL world.

The final images looked OK, but there was one problem... too much light wrap on Connie's left arm. After analyzing the image, I realized that the problem occurred because one of the Speedlights was exposed. By that I mean, it had nothing shielding the massive amount of light coming off the wall. The left Speedlight had a gobo (Go-Before-Optics, or Go Between) in front of it -- and that gobo was Connie herself. With her black outfit, she was actually absorbing some of the light bouncing off the wall and that kept the light from wrapping around her. Her right side is well-exposed, with no wrap at all. However the right Speedlight had nothing blocking it so all that light came off the wall, right back at her, and then wrapped itself around Connie's left arm and side. Check out the image to the left for the details. No big deal to solve, as it simply means in future sessions, I'll put up a couple of black panels on each side of the set and angle the lights at the wall from behind the panels. Note to self: MUST USE GOBOS. 

So that's it. I was very happy with the shoot, as I learned that lighting is all about numbers. If I work the numbers correctly, the pictures will turn out as I envision them. 

Just as Dean Collins taught. 

 -30-

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I'm Back

So - I'm back.

As you can see, it's been awhile since my last post. What can I say? Helluva year. From cameras crapping out to my father passing, let's just say I'm just glad 2008 is behind me.

Photographically, I've decided to move in a completely different direction. No more nature or landscapes, unless of course, these pictures are smack dab in front of the camera. No, I think it's time to think about photographing people again... only this time rather than making news images, it'll be more from the corporate angle... annual reports, public relations-type images, and perhaps a few senior portraits along the way.

To prepare for this new direction, I've spent the past six months studying lighting from the following photographers and their blogs:

• David Hobby (Strobist.com)
  
• Chase Jarvis
  
• David Tejada
  
• Joe McNally
  

What tremendous resources. Unless you're just downright brain dead, you can't help but learn something about lighting from these top-notch pros.

In the posts to come, I'll share new images, along with the thoughts and lighting diagrams that went into making them. I'm learning this stuff on the fly so it should be interesting.

Mark

-30-

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Photogenic Snail

Today I checked the status of my camera repair on the Mack Camera Web site. I found the following message waiting for me:

"The unit is in line for a technician to be repaired."

According to this, I guess Mack first must fix its broken technician before my camera can be repaired. Hmmm... perhaps the message should have read:

"The unit has been processed and is ready to be repaired by a technician."

I hope they do a better job fixing cameras than they do communicating using the English language. Oh well, at least I know something's going to be repaired.

In the meantime, staying on-topic, I made this image of a Brown Citrus Garden Snail back in '02 using a tiny, off-camera J.C. Penny strobe and a John Shaw-inspired Butterfly Bracket.

What's a Butterfly Bracket? Essentially it's a flash bracket designed by Shaw that lets you 1) get the flash off the camera's hot shoe, and 2) position the flash at the same reference point above the end of any lens each you use the bracket.

I used this bracket all the time back in the days when I was using macro lenses and extension tubes for my 1:2 or 1:1 life size macro subjects on Fujichrome Velvia film. Using the bracket and incorporating Calhoun's Law, you can make your expensive SLR/dSLR a simple point-and-shoot camera when working with macro subjects.

For the bracket to work correctly, you must run a series of bracketed exposure tests to find the correct aperture to use. Email me and I'll explain how to run the tests if you are interested.

Once you run the tests and find your working aperture, you set the lens to the working aperture and set the shutter speed closest to the ISO of the film or digital sensitivity that you are using. In this case, after running the tests, I found my working aperture to be f/16. Since I was using Fuji Velvia, which is rated at an ISO of 50, I set my shutter speed to 1/60. So for this image, f/16 @ 1/60 got me a correct exposure.

With extension tubes, I found that I could use f/16 with any lens as long as I positioned the flash at the predetermined reference point. Remember, my reference point was over the front element of the lens - any lens. Had I made this image using Fuji 100 film, I simply would have selected f/16 as my aperture and then selected 1/125 as my shutter speed. Why 1/125? Because the ISO of Fuji 100 is 100, and you set your shutter speed to the highest speed closest to the ISO. In this case, 1/125 was correct; not 1/60. Remember, the highest shutter speed closest to the ISO.

This picture of a Brown Citrus Garden Snail is the result of using the tiny J.C. Penny flash and the Butterfly Bracket. I found this little creature in my yard's landscaping.

Here's what my Web site says about the snail:

"Although snails and slugs usually have major cases of the uglies, this Brown Citrus Garden Snail proved to be quite photogenic as it slowly moved through the lush tropical landscaping of an Orlando residential yard.

The Brown Citrus Garden Snail is despised by those in the citrus industry because it causes extensive damage in orchards by feeding on leaves of young fruit trees.

Biological control of this snail comes in the form of a natural predator snail called the decollate snail (rumina decollata)."

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Limited Gear? No Problem

Of all the portraits I've made, this remains my favorite because it shows what you can accomplish on-location with limited lighting gear and a few brain cells.

Working with a single White Lightning X800 strobe, I used a 48" Octobox, no light stand, a set of Pocket Wizards, a tripod, some warm ambient light, and my friend Mike as a human light stand.

Mike was great, as he held the Octobox five feet in front of and above his sister-in-law for this portrait. Reducing the power of the strobe to 1/4 power allowed me to use the Octobox as a soft main light. It also allowed me to use the soft ambient tungsten light behind her as both a hair light and a background light.

As Mike and I tooled around a devastated New Orleans in March of '06, Mike's brother's family graciously opened their home to us while we documented the ongoing problems of the city. This portrait, along with others I made of the family, was my attempt at saying thank you for the wonderful hospitality they showed us while we were in The Big Hurt Easy.

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