A Kiss for Hallowe'en...

Happy Hallowe'en to everyone. I hope you won't be too frightened tonight...

As it is the dark season, and I like taking dark photographs. Here is one based on an old Dracula movie poster.... Enjoy and thanks to Catherine for being such a convincing vampire!

The White Dress...

I was very fortunate to be invited to attend one of Glyn Dewis' 'taster workshops' last Saturday in High Wycombe and Amersham. He is developing a series of workshops to teach his unique way of portrait photography, check out his website www.glyndewis.com . We started off the morning in the studio, spent a few hours going over the versatility of only using one light and one modifier; in this case an SB800 and an umbrella. We then took that knowledge and brought it outside and shot Catherine in a white dress in Amersham on a very cold afternoon, did I say cold?, I meant absolutely freezing...
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Catherine, White Dress #1

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Catherine, White Dress #2

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I made sure Catherine had a coat to hand between the shots when Glyn was teaching, and also I should say a big thanks to Katy our invaluable VAL (voice activated lightstand) who on more than one occassion saved the SB800 from certain death! And did I mention the cold...?

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Catherine, White Dress #2

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The set up for these shots is surprisingly simple; a single shoot through umbrella with an SB800 on a lightstand to camera right at about 45 degrees to Catherine. An exposure is first taken for the sky, underexpose by about a stop or so until you like the look, then add in the flash at about half or quarter power. And there you have it. Set the camera on manual and keep shooting.

The day was a great success and a big thanks to Glyn for giving his time, knowledge and experience to the group, to Catherine for posing and bearing the cold and Katy... and I am told there was a rather good portrait taken of an older gentleman... I prefer the ones of Catherine myself!

Catherine; living on the ceiling...

This is Catherine, no stranger to my photography; she puts up with it on an almost daily basis, we're married.

Recently, we had the opportunity to do some shooting in our good friend Paul's house. It is empty at the moment and undergoing major refurbishment. So, in the absence of a studio we headed out there one evening to have a bit of fun.

We have had this shoot in mind for a while now, Catherine in her skyscraper shoes and coloured tights. So off we went.
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Catherine pink #1

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Catherine blue #1

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We had a great laugh and toook quite a lot of shots.

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Catherin in pink

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Catherine in blue

The lighting was a simple one light set up; an SB800 and about 1/4 power through a white umbrella from camera left at about 45 degrees. The camera was set to manual at 1/250 and about f5.6 or so. I simply did the test shot and then the rest of the shots were all the same. Quick and easy.

Of course when you shoot in an empty house there are bound to be a few problems, such as... no power. And that means no light. Well, you can imagine what happened... we lost track of the time. I only realised this when the camera was starting to struggle with the autofocus. So we had to pack up in twilight, because I forgot to bring a torch, stupid boy. Fortunately the only thing that was left behind was a filter.

I think the constant flashing from the bedroom windows raised a few eyebrows with the neighbours... enough said!

Thanks to Paul for the loan of his house and to Catherine for being my model... again.

My Rose of Tralee

My Rose of Tralee is Catherine... if I say red shoes, you know who I mean... Catherine was born in Tralee and left it to follow her dream and mine...
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Catherine #1

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This is a shot of Catherine lit with two lights; an SB 800 to camera right in a silver reflector umbrella and a Vivitar 285 behind her to give the hairlight. The shot as you see it is almost exactly as it was out of the camera.

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Catherine #2, straight out of the camera

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I changed the photograph from colour to black and white and darkened the background just a tad. This is a simple technique that gives a very stylized effect. I first set the camera onto its max sync speed of 1/250th, chose an f-stop of 5.6 at ISO 100 and took a shot of the room. It was almost pitch black. I knew then that I could 'paint' back in the light I wanted to give me the low key, dramatic film noir effect. I set the SB 800 to shoot into a half closed silver umbrella. With the umbrella closed down I was able, more or less, to control the spillage of light into the room.

But I wasn't pleased with that alone, so I added a Vivitar 285 with a gridspot on it directly behind Catherine to highlight her hair. Both flashes were set to about 1/2 or 1/4 power and tweaked to get the result. I always try to keep the flash at a low power as the recycle times are quicker. And I have the added disadvantage of the Vivitar, being an older (and original) model; it's recycle time is slower yet.

There is a second technique to the final photograph here; the extended black background.

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the same shot with the canvas extended

The first thing I did was increase the canvas width to equal the image height. In Photoshop, I did this on a separate layer. It is then a simple matter to use the eyedropper tool to sample a piece of the colour immediately adjacent to the edge of the photograph and then dump that colour into the blank canvas area.

My good friend, Glyn, explains this technique excellently here... in a cool video, check out his amazing new blog while you are there...

Here are a few more shots from the shoot...

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Catherine #3

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Catherine #4

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Catherine #5

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A big thanks to Catherine, the perfect model.

Jimmy Choo 72 ... shoe photo competition

Yeah, thats right, I said shoes... there's a theme running through here...

The competition was set up to promote awareness of HIV and Aids in South Africa and 25% of net sales of a new collection created by Jimmy Choo specifically for this worthwhile cause is going direct to the Elton John Aids Foundation. A myriad of different styles of photography and images was submitted and I am delighted to say that I was a runner up with... Seduction...

Seduction

I submitted two other photographs along this theme...

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The Creation of Eve

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Red Shoe Diaries, page 72

(this shot was featured on the Jimmy Choo 72 home page)

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The '72' is significant as this is the timescale that vital life saving treatment has to be administered for these people to have any chance at controlling this terrrible disease. A big thank you to Jimmy Choo for the competition and for creating an awareness of this issue and the judges for picking my shot as a runner up. The competition entries can be seen here at www.jimmychoo72.com.

All the shots were taken on a Nikon D200, ISO 100 set on a tripod at f8 and the shutter left open for about 6 - 8 seconds. The light trails are from a Mini Maglite torch with the lense off and the shoes courtesy of Catherine.  And a thank you to Catherine for balancing in 'Seduction' (very seductively...!) for the 8 seconds!

Project 52 ... 3

The Shoe Queen of Berkshire...

Catherine likes her shoes. A lot. So there was never going to be any other shot than her with her shoes and these red ones are exceptional!

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D200, 17 - 55 f2.8, sb 800, Vivitar 285, Sunpack small flash

This was the first Project 52 shot that used multiple flashes. Again, the setting on the camera are not too important, except that i meter for the ambient light in the room, then under exposed by about two stops. I then added the SB 800 in a softbox to camera left about two feet from Catherine's face and a half or quarter power, I don't remember. The Vivitar 285 had a black straw gridspot firing on the picture (of the same red shoes!) over the bed and the sunpack was snooted on the side of Catherin'es face to give it a bit of a rim light.

This was a fun shot if rather cramped, with tripods everywhere! In a later post I'll show how I did the shoe shot in the background.