Portraits In The Bluebell Woods : Behind The Scenes

  By Dominic | May 9, 2013 - 12:43 pm | Editing, Equipment, Lighting, Lightroom, Photography, Tutorial, Weddings
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On Sunday just gone I was lucky enough to be given the privilege of shooting a wedding, well a blessing really, in a set of Bluebell Woods near Henley-On-Thames.

Carrie and Ken had actually legally been married at a registry office some days before the blessing, due to the fact the bluebell woods are not licensed for marriages, but as I understand it some of the guests weren’t aware of that and they themselves were treating the blessing as their proper wedding in the location they so desperately wanted.

The Bluebell woods were a perfect location for such a romantic event and they make for the perfect location for taking the bride/groom portraits after the ceremony has been done. You can go any which way with them, natural light that is perfectly exposed, add to that a bit of fill flash, or go slightly over exposed shooting towards the brighter areas of the woods getting a hazy effect, or you can under expose the woods getting a moodier effect that shows the patches of light that are actually reaching ground level but this usually means making the image to dark and therefore leaving the bride and groom in silhouette against the lighter patches of the background.

This can be easily overcome by the use of off camera lighting, and that is what I’m going to show you here. The bonus of course with off camera lighting means we can do more in terms of how we compose the shot, or more to the point where we take the shot from. With a flash fitted on top of the camera we have light that is just blasting straight forward and if we move to further away from the model it’ll become less effective. With off camera flash however we can work from quite a distance or up close, shoot from eye level or get down low because the light source isn’t moving away from our subjects.

So I thought I’d show you how I approach this kind of scenario, therefore the following is the basics behind how I shot this image below.

To start with all we are concerned about is the camera settings, so I put the ISO to it’s lowest being 200 and set the shutter speed to match the sync speed of my flashgun, in this case 1/250th of a second. I then set about taking some test shots. I started at f/8 and the ambient was a tad to dark for my liking. So I had two options. Open the aperture further to say f/5.6 or f/4 or whatever to make the ambient lighter, or I could increase the ISO. As it happens I wanted that little bit more depth of field that f/8 offers and so I stuck with f/8 and increased the ISO to 400. I now had the ambient where I wanted it, so from here on in, unless the ambient light itself increased or decreased there is pretty much no need to change camera settings.

So adding our model, or in this case willing bridesmaid whom I told I would be doing this blog and so happily took part in these test images, to this image above shows that she is indeed far to dark against the back ground and that some form of lighting is required.

So we bring in the off camera lighting. I tend to work wirelessly using the Nikon Creative Lighting System, ie using one flashgun as a commander to fire other flashguns as remotes, and this time was no different. My weapon of choice is a single flashgun through a softbox designed for used with flashguns and lightstands as opposed to those that are for use with studio lighting, they work the same but have different fittings plus it’s not too big and cumbersome to maneuver around and yet it’s not too small and that it’s ineffective.

So it’s now a case of getting the power of the flashgun correct. Here I work manually and will basically just take a guess at what the power should be. So lets start with half power. If it is to bright you have two options. Decrease the power to a quarter or simply move the lightstand further away from your model. If it is to dark, guess what, you have two options. Increase the power to full power or mover it closer to your model. The only limitation to this of course is if you move it too close to your subject that the lightstand ends up being within the image you are taking, then you will have to recompose your shot so that you can’t see it anymore.

So your final image should look the way you wanted, with the ambient being darker and moodier and yet your subject is perfectly lit. This works in woods, at sunset, sunrises, days where the rain is threatening and the skies are a moody black and it’s relatively quick and simple to do. Just expose your camera for the ambient light and let your flash power illuminate your subject, but always keep your shutter speed at your flash sync speed or less and try to keep your ISO low in order to have a nice, clean, noise free image.

Sure the main wedding image above has been worked on in Lightroom to give it that standout effect where I have accentuated the lighter areas and dumbed down the darker areas but the base of that image will have been the same as this one just above.

Anyway, hope this is of some help to anyone wishing to try off camera lighting, I had better get back to editing the rest of these images as I’ll have a bride wanting to know where her images are lol

 

Thanks for stopping by, catch up again soon

 

Dom :-)

Getting Some Shut Eye In The Group Shots!

  By Dominic | May 3, 2013 - 9:28 pm | Editing, Photoshop, Weddings
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It happens at every wedding, the group shots, and so they should do. It may feel a tad formal and old, but its traditional and serves its purpose in years to come when you look back through your wedding pics to be reminded of exactly who was present on your big day.

What also happens at every wedding is that someone somewhere within those group shots will have just shut their eyes at the very moment I hit the shutter, but this in itself is not much of a problem as I personally will get 2 or 3 shots of each group shot just in case that very thing happens, but also just in case someone momentarily looks away.

Now normally I’ll spot it on the back of the camera and make sure there is a good one among them but on the odd occasion, particularly on very bright days when its harder to see the LCD screen on the back of the camera the odd one or two will slip though, specially while you are trying to get through a lot of group shots as they do take up quite some time.

Cropped  To Show Eyes Shut

 

This again is rarely a problem, because of shooting 2 or 3 of each group shot, but what if one shot is perfect but the father of the groom has his eyes shut and yet in the back up pic someone is now looking away.

This is where good old photoshop comes to the rescue. Basically all I do is transplant the eyes from one pic into the other where the eyes are shut and hey presto the eyes are now open.

Cropped To Show Eyes Open Again

 

In all honesty it’s a tad more complicated than just that, and maybe I’ll do a tutorial on how it’s done one day soon, but once you know how it becomes quite simple and on average it takes me two or three mins to get the perfect result.

Anyway, I best get back to editing more of these images, catch up again soon.
Dom :-)

A Day On My Own, Or Be A 2nd Shooter?

  By Dominic | May 1, 2013 - 11:51 am | Weddings
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This weekend just gone I had the choice of a day doing as I pleased, but with the draw back of being completely on my lonesome, or offering my services to a wedding couple or more specifically to the photographer who had been given the job of shooting their wedding.

Well, this all comes about because my wife, Claire, had been hired for the whole day to take care of the brides hair and make up requirements, but, this job wasn’t completely on our doorstep, it was about an hour and a half from home. So with the fact she would have to be started at about 9am on the morning of the wedding and would be finished at about the first dance around 8pm, Claire decided it would be a wise idea to stay in a hotel local to the wedding so that the day wasn’t as long when you added in what travelling time there would have been.

 

She then thought it would be a good chance for us to have a long weekend away, as long as the inlaws would have the kids for us, and so we booked the hotel in Portsmouth from Friday night to Monday morning.

This though left me with a bit of a dilemma for the Saturday whilst Claire was working. I had three choices as far as I could see it. Spend the day at the hotel, staring at four walls and rack up a big bar bill, or spend the day wandering around Portsmouth and surrounding areas on my todd, or offer my services as a 2nd photographer to Alisha of Alisha’s Events-Photography at the wedding of Cassie and Matt in Fareham at the Lysses Hotel.

Although having some freedom to do as I please is welcome I just really didn’t fancy it, and as for just staying in the hotel well that was no option, so I offered to help at the wedding.

It was a few months back that we knew we were going to go down to Portsmouth for the weekend so it gave me time to contact Alisha and talk things through. As it happened we both attended a wedding fair near Chichester so I found her there and thats when I asked her if she’d like an assistant for the day. Thankfully, with Cassie and Matt’s permission (who were also attending the wedding fair), Alisha agreed.

So Saturday came and I went and shot the wedding alongside Alisha. We split the morning so Alisha covered the girls whilst I captured the boys, but from there on in it was the usual two tog coverage. It was a great day and it was a pleasure to shoot. The day somehow felt less pressured, though I didn’t approach what I did that vastly differently than normal, just the normal adaption to scenery and setting, and if asked by Alisha to do something I then went ahead and did it.

Not so sure the DJ for the evening party will have felt less pressure than normal, he may well have been under more pressure as Matt, the groom, is a DJ himself (Out And About Discos) and to my knowledge there were about 3 other DJ’s at the evening party to!

Well, it was a hard day as usual cos I felt just as shattered as I always do after a full day shoot, but it really was a pleasure to work with Alisha and it’s always a privilege to be involved with someones wedding. Many congrats to Cassie and Matt, and thanks to both you and Alisha for allowing me to help shoot it for you.

That’s it for now, I must get back to editing other wedding images, catch up again soon

 

Dom :-)

Surely You’ve Done That Wrong? : Wedding Group Shots

  By Dominic | March 10, 2013 - 3:25 pm | Photography, Tutorial, Weddings
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Funny how some things stick in your mind. Always as a kid I remember being told that when you take a photograph, try and ensure the sun is behind the photographer, that way your subject, or subjects, are lit up.

It seems I’m not the only one who remembers that little piece of advice because twice last year at two separate weddings I was questioned about my technique for the group shots, all because I don’t shoot with the sun behind me, I generally have the sun behind the group and if there is a chance I’ll have that group in a big old area of shadow if I can help it.

So why would I do this when the group isn’t being nicely lit up by the sun? Well it’s simply because the people standing in  front of me are then not screwing their faces up and they are not squinting because of the sun being far too bright.

Surely though this makes getting the exposure correctly balanced a bit of a challenge? Well it does a bit, the shadowy area, being the group, is now effectively in a mild silhouette against the bright background where somewhere above the sun is shining.

So how do I go about facing this challenge? This is just the way I approach it, and I’m not saying its the best way to do it, but I expose to the point where the brightest points of the picture, being the sky, are just on the edge of blowing out but don’t quite do so, meaning detail is retained (And how do we know detail has been retained in an area that looks close to being blown out?……Check your histogram, it’ll have the answers)

The pleasant side effect of overexposing the sky means the darker areas, being the people, are brighter than they would be if you’d have exposed the picture like you would do for a straight forward landscape, ie with the sky looking just like it does in front of you at that moment in time. The only other thing I do just to try and help out to fill some of the shadowy areas and to put a catch-light in everyone’s eyes is to use my flashgun. The effectiveness of this of course is down to the power of your flashgun, the distance from the group, and the exposure settings of the camera, etc etc.

The only thing I then have to do in editing afterwards is to bring down the lighter areas by using the Highlights slider in Lightroom 4. Then it’s pretty much just a case of working on the sky to make it look somewhat realistic. Lastly there maybe a need to bring up the Shadows slider by a minimal amount just to lift the darker areas a tad. It is far better for image quality to be making bigger changes going from bright to dark than it is going from dark to bright. Doing the latter you lose quality and introduce noise which is far from ideal.

I realise the image above is has a section of the sky which is blown out but it’s about a 10% section of the sky but on the whole the main part of the picture has ended up with the desired effect, and this image was from my first ever wedding so I don’t think I did too bad with it.

To avoid having to edit in this way the far simpler thing to do is shoot the group shots in a shadowy area anyway and gain some height over the group in front of you, using a small ladder, chair, or if the venue has a stepped pathway between levels in the gardens. Gaining that height means two bonuses, I can shoot downwards and eliminate the need to have any sky in the image, therefore making the correct exposure far simpler, and it makes it harder for anyone to “Hide” in the image by standing behind someone and being invisible, but all of this is totally dependent on the venue for the shoot and what you face on the day.

Like I’ve said above, this is only the way I approach and it may not be the best way to do it. It’d be great to hear opinions on this, or how you approach it when shooting your group shots. I just think this method allows the people in the group to be in a photo without screwed up faces and so look far nicer.

Anyway, that’s it from me for now, catch up again soon

 

Dom :-)

Focusing On Remote Photography

  By Dominic | March 7, 2013 - 4:20 pm | Equipment, Lighting, Photography, Review
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Don’t you just love a title that could have more than one meaning, makes the mind think.If you thought this would be a blog about taking your camera and heading off to places that are hard to get to, then your way off the mark, so if you’re intrigued read on.

This all starts with a trip to Focus On Imaging (aha! the first part of the title now makes sense) a couple of days ago, where initially I had thoughts of having no budget to take with me, but the good old Bank Of Wife allowed a little spending money in the end.

It was a great day that was spent wandering round the exhibition trying to make my mind up on how best to allocate these finances that were now irritating my wallet, a wander that was made a lot more pleasant due to the fact I was joined by a long term Twitter/Facebook friend who until that day I’d never met for real.

I’m glad Andy Wills had made the long journey south from the Leeds area, it was brilliant to meet him at last, he’s cracking guy and if things go the way we plan there may well be the chance he’ll second photographer for me on a wedding I have next year which is halfway up the country.

Likewise it was fantastic to finally meet the great Wilgenix. A man on a mission some may say, having decided to attend Focus for 3 of the 4 days, yet others would tell you he’s clearly out to punish his feet. Mine weren’t too happy after just a few hours of walking round the place! As ever the opportunity to catch up with other friends that attended arose, and that was brilliant as always but it’s so busy in there it’s often not possible to bump into them all.

Knowing the evening before that I would have some money to spend I did a bit of research into one set of products I knew little about but could see the far reaching benefits of having, wireless triggers. I know, like most out there would do, that PocketWizard are the supposed leaders of this area, but their costliness would mean I’d have no chance to get any, but that’s no problem to me as I tend not to believe to much in the hype behind any of the so called “Market Leaders” in any area of retail products nor do I have the wish to pay a premium for a “Name”.

So what did I look at? I had two or three options. First was PixelKing. This would allow for full TTL, but it still comes at a price which was above what I could afford for the amount of receivers I was after. So going non TTL and opting to work manually, which let face it isn’t that hard to do, gave me two other options. The Calumet branded triggers, or a set by Phottix. The Calumets were the cheapest but not by much but I opted for the Phottix Strato’s. I have to say even now I’m not sure why I went for those above the others but all that I had seen about them suggested they did what I was after and they did it well, and so far as I could see, without fail.

So, what do they do? They allow me to work wirelessly up to a supposed range of 150 meters, far more than anyone would ever really need, as a flash trigger or a remote shutter trigger. They have four channels and allow you to work with four different groups of flashes. To switch the groups on and off you very simply have four buttons on the back of the transmitter and you turn on which ever ones you want to use, from just one to all of them. They have sockets for PC Sync connections and come with all the wires you’ll ever need, they even come with Energizer batteries.

The one thing they do have, and have yet to figure out the benefits of, is TTL pass through. Basically with the receiver sitting in the hotshoe and then attaching a flashgun on top of the receiver it still allows TTL info to pass between camera and flashgun. How this would benefit any other flashes that are being triggered I have no idea, but I’m sure to find out somehow, and if you know please leave a message in the comments below.

I have taken a spare 15 minutes already to go and test them out, as you do, much to the annoyance of my eldest son who was collared into doing a little modelling for me. I set it up as a straight forward one light exercise using a flashgun shot through a soft box, which was also acquired at Focus.

I rattled through 30-35 shots working at different positions and trying two different exposures. The first was very much set up to capture some of the ambient light but with it underexposed by about a stop.

The second set was set up to all but eliminate the ambient light and leave the flashgun to light up Tomas and nothing else. It was an exercise that proved to be a successful one as the triggers fired every time, we even attracted some attention from the local boys in blue who thought I had a weapon of some description and was about to use it in a burglary. On being asked what I thought I was doing I was so tempted to be sarcastic but I simply showed them my weapon, a D700 fitted with a 70-200. I know theres every chance launching that lot at someone could do some damage but I’m not sure how it would help me break into anyones house.

Sheepishly they retreated as I made light of the situation by offering them my wedding services. I hope for theirs, and the communities sakes, that they ended the day with a proper result.

Anyway, the triggers work just as they should and the softbox, as cheap as it was, seems to do it’s job as well. I for one am looking forward to using them all on my up coming shoots and even though its a year away I’m looking forward to the trek back up to Focus already.

 

Catch up with you all again soon

 

Dom :-)