Day 149 - Self Portrait

I wanted to experiment with some very strong side lighting, so I put myself in front of the camera for the first time in a while.  I used one flash in a shoot through umbrella camera right and placed a second one rear camera left on the background to give a tonal gradient opposite to the one across my face.  I asked Sian to press the shutter as I find the trial and error of using the remote release and a tripod a little frustrating.  In return, she suggested I take my t-shirt off.  Fair's fair I suppose.

Day 134 - Sophie Nova

Something a little different today.  I had an unbelievable shoot with Sophie from Model Mayhem out on the moors near Marsden.  Despite the cold wind, it was a fantastic experience to work with someone as professional and creative as Sophie, who brought something new to every location and shot we worked on.

We covered a number of different styles and I haven't had chance to edit all the best shots yet.  I'm hoping I can show more from the shoot locally later in the year.

Strobist: Cross lighting using YN460-II (1/2 power) camera left rear as hair light, Sigma 530 DG Super (full power) camera right as key.  All working about 2 stops below ambient to darken the sky.

Day 133 - Sea Holly

Sian kindly bought me some flowers to play with this week and my first subject was a spiky little sea holly.

I used a single YN460-II (left rear) with a Cactus V4 trigger to give the strong backlighting.  The soft front light was achieved with a big white foam board reflector very close (5cm?) to the right.

Day 129 - Night Portrait

I was hoping to get another interesting dusk portrait shot in the garden tonight, but Sian was a bit later home than anticipated and the blue evening colours were gone, leaving me with some inky blackness to work with.  Cheaper than a velvet backdrop I suppose.  Nothing if not determined, I stuck with the original lighting gameplan of a single flash in a shoot through umbrella with a warming 1/4 CTO gel.  Instead of a wide open aperture and long exposure to maximise the background light I decided to stop it down, shorten the exposure and up the flash power to compensate.  There was no sky light to maximise so I might as well have the extra depth of field and guarantee I had no camera shake.

Here's the final result.

Day 108 - Chair portrait

More thanks to Sian for posing again, although at least this time she got to sit down.

Strobist:  Sigma 530 DG Super with shoot-through umbrella camera left, YN 460-II bare above right as hair light.

I think this lighting setup is getting there, but still needs a little tweaking to lighten up the area around the eyes, which each get a shadow from one of the strobes.

Day 107 - good egg

I took this using a single flash with Lumiquest Softbox III very close behind the egg, with large white reflector in front to give a little texture to the front surface.

Day 103 - Smarties have the answer

Chuck some sweets in the air and hope some of the are in front of the camera when I hit the shutter.  While a faster rate of continuous shooting would help, I don't think this experiment quite justifies the 7-8fps D300s that I lust after.  And, to be honest, the flash (camera left, white foam board to the right - are you getting this now?) wouldn't keep up anyway.

Day 102 - Sian's new top

My thanks to Sian for modelling her new top and even putting some make-up on.

Strobist: YN 460-II with Lumiquest Softbox III camera left as key.  Sigma 530 DG Super with shoot-through umbrella camera right for fill.

A second one with slightly different post-processing after the click...

Day 100 - funky toy

I was hoping that the photo for day 100 would be something splendid, but as it happened we spent most of the day in the car so this will have to do.  Just a single bare flash to throw some hard shadows.  If you can't tell where the flash is, you shouldn't be reading this blog ;-)

Day 99 - Dad

Here's my Dad, not looking too tired after a week of us staying visiting.

Strobist: fill with Vivitar 730AFC on low power bounced off the ceiling, YN 460-II @ 1/8 with Lumiquest Softbox III for key camera right, Sigma 530 DG Super @ 1/32 bare gobo'd  rear camera left as kicker

Day 97 - bowl with a hole

A rather nice bit of pottery for you:

I shot this using one speedlight with shoot through umbrella above right for fill and another bare above and behind the bowl to give the well defined holes in the shadow.

Day 96 - Southend photo shoot

I had an excellent photoshoot with Jenny from Model Mayhem today, mixing up the bright sunshine with some off-camera flash at the seaside.

A few more of my favourite shots from the session after the link.

Day 94 - Tulips

Some more tulips...

The composition isn't particularly interesting, but I liked the lighting.  These were shot using the YN 460-II with Lumiquest Softbox II as key camera left.  I got the background by firing a bare Vivitar 730AFC on low power through some frosted glass.

Day 91 - Easter Bunny

Easter chocolate.  One for Jess and one for Anna, but Anna is a bit small for chocolate.  Jess, on the other hand, is making short work of hers.

Strobist - Sigma 530 DG Super with shoot through umbrella directly above @ 1/32.  YN 460-II @1/64 with Lumiquest Softbox III camera right.

Day 87 - Annabelle portraits

Annabelle is turning into quite a good model a the moment.  She's very happy to sit still while I pull faces and hand her toys.  I'll try to make the most of this before she gets mobile.

This was taken using the a shoot through umbrella with the YN 460-II as the main light and two other flahes to light the background.

Another smiley colour portrait appears after the click.

Day 83 - I have the power!

This shot is an attempt to show the control that can be achieved with manual off camera flash.

To get this look I needed to bring the ambient exposure, including the bulb, right down low with a combination of exposure time and aperture.  Now, as I want to light my arm using the flash, I'd rather get the exposure time down low so I don't have to use a tiny aperture and nuke my arm with full power flash.  Using a flash, the fastest exposure I can get is limited by the sync speed of the camera.  This is quoted as 1/250s for the D50, but, as this fine piece of machinery has an electronic shutter, we can work a bit quicker than that, even with a wireless flash trigger slowing things down.  Having set this down to 1/320s (I have got faster than 1/500s on other occasions), I stopped down the aperture to get the bulb looking right then bumped the flash up to give the correct exposure on my arm.

Day 82 - Syrup

A bit of dripping syrup today...

I would have liked to make the spoon look shiny, but didn't have an extra white board to reflect in it had to be dark instead.

Day 79 - glass class

I've been reading up on lighting glass, so I thought I'd best have a practice shooting this wine glass.

Strobist info: one flash (Sigma 530 DG Super and YN 460-II) on each side, fired onto white boards @ 1/32 power.

edit - On reflection, this should really have a black border.  Oh well.

Day 75 - self portrait

A little three light experiment today...

This used a central key light in a shoot through umbrella and a bare flash either side to the rear as a kicker.  The one camera left had a purple gel.

Day 67 - flower portrait

Another flower picture today, using three flashes.

I didn't note down the flash power details for this, but one was in the Lumiquest III softbox above right to light the petals, one was directly behind on the wall using a purple gel, and the third bare flash was camera left to light the stem and give a slight gradient to the wall colour.