January 17ht, 2010
We were going to have a shoot on Sunday because of scheduling problem we couldn’t, so we hung out outside (yes in the cold-around 30°F), taking pictures with the planes at the park =)
Exposure:0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture:f/4.0
Focal Length:35 mm
ISO Speed:100
Exposure Bias:0 EV
Flash:SB-800 on the subject left (camera right) with an orange gel.
Model: Cream
Model: Hugh
Location: Long Island City
Natural light using a reflector.
Click here to see more pictures from this session
Last month, thanks to B&H we were with Rick Sammon and John Williamson learning about lighting for two days. It was a nice day and here I’ll share some of the pictures that I captured and some techniques that I learned.
The first day was at the event space in B&H, we learned about the different types of lighting and what equipment we should use depending on what we want to achieve. Of course everything depends on the equipment that we have handy at the time of the shoot. You’ll notice that you don’t need a lot of equipment to get great images, the most important thing is to know how to use the tools that you have and master them.
The second day we went out to Central Park to test the equipment and all the techniques that we learned the day before.
Using a single reflector we can fill in the shadows. Let’s see what happens when we take a picture without the reflector:
The face of the model looks a little dark, and it’s hard to see her eyes. Let’s add a small reflector:
Now we have a nice illuminated face. It’s just that simple, with a small reflector we direct the light to fill in the shadows. This particular day was overcast and that was good because the clouds acted like a huge soft box making the sunlight very nice, soft and even.
Another images using a big reflector. Thanks to Joey Quintero for your help!
Since we were a lot of people with just two models….
… Jennifer and David from B&H decided to model for us…
And for those (myself included) who didn’t want to get into the mass of photographers to take pictures of the models, we decided to model for ourselves using a big (42” or bigger) umbrella with a SB-600 attached.
I was using my D40x with the SB-800 to trigger the flash; cameras above the D40x have TTL capabilities on the camera and can trigger the SB-600 with the pop-up flash with no problem. I needed the external flash to trigger the other one. Here are a couple of portraits of the photographers taken with this equipment:
Trying split lighting here:
And butterfly with Rebeca (need to work a little more on this one):
A fellow photographer, Fabian Cambero from Venezuela, was able to come to the shoot and he was brave enough to go into the crowd of photographers and take really nice pictures of the models; you can see his pictures here.
Here is a picture of me taken by Fabian Cambero with natural light:
Last week we rocked the streets of Long Island City with the dancer Heather McGinley.
It wouldn’t have been possible without the work of Shveta Sawhney with hair and makeup.
Here you can find the rest of the pics, feel free to create your favorites folder.
Last Monday (August 3rd, 2009) I did a shoot with Chozn, an R&B and Hip-Hop singer.
(Natural light)
Most of the pictures were lit with an external flash SB-800 and the effects were done in Lightroom 2.3
Visit Chozn’s site: http://www.myspace.com/choznone
Enjoy the slideshow with all the pictures
Alina Chuyko
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Tal Peer
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Tania Green
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Lauren Efron
See the entire photo shoot here
I have new projects and I want to continue blogging specially about photography and all the cool stuff that I’ve been learning during all this time.
I’m into fashion and planing to do wedding photography too, so stay close and see what’s going to happen here.
I’ve been learning a lot at the event space in B&H , I really recommend it if you are close to the NY area, they always have amazing photographers in different areas and I find very helpful all their advice, tricks, tips for photography, lighting and also how to make profit out of it; they also have talks about video and other topics, but most are photography related.
If you can’t attend the events, just go to the B&H event space web site and check out the videos of some of the talks.
Anyway, I went to B&H and Joey Quintero was talking about “Low Key Lighting” and all the cool stuff that we can do with this nice technique, that was very cool and I’m planing to practice this technique soon and of course sharing with all of you.
At the event, one of the guys was telling me that his studio is more for “high key lighting” and to make a long story short, he invited me to do a test shoot there. At that time the only thing that I knew about high key was the name and the few points that Joey said when he compared it to the low key, but I accepted and arranged a shoot with Sherelle and Angel to go to his studio and test it.
Basically High Key Lighting is a bright and even picture. The main color is usually white but it’s not necessary, these days the picture doesn’t have to be white but it has to be very bright, should have a minimum of contrast and very few shadows. One important thing is, more than just lighting your subject, you should be careful to contour your subject. We should use a very low contrast ratio such as 2:1, which means that the background is twice as light as the subject.
Here are some examples:
Here are more images of the session where I tried some of the high key Lighting techniques. (Hopefully I’ll go to Joey Quintero’s next workshop where he’s going to talk about high key.)
Hey, I’m learning.. this was a test and I think it that came out very nice. Feel free to leave your comments and if you know how to make a nice high key.. just let me know!.
Arianys Wilson Photography.
