As work on my current university project comes to a close, I thought I’d share a few tidbits of information I’ve picked up from the past few months.
Part of this project involved taking a series of headshots in a similar style. When it comes to headshots, there are a myriad of styles one could go for. To fit my own work though, and in particular other work in the project, I decided the portraits had to:
be simple and consistently executed;
be somewhat personal/intimate;
make some use of colour.
There was one big constraint, however: the university studio at the time had no strobes, no light-control devices, and no backdrops. Aside from natural light, the only available sources were the buzzing strip lights on the ceiling, and a selection of old halogen lamps.
Here’s the lighting diagram for what I came up with:
Devoid of anything to soften the light directly, I set up a flip-chart with a sheet of plain paper just out of sight, to the camera’s right. Bouncing the bright halogen lamp off of this created a much softer light, which could be adjusted for shadow softness by moving the lamp closer or further from the paper. Shadow contrast could be changed by moving the flip-chart further or closer to the subject.
With the main light provided by the lamp, I sat the subjects in front of a whitewashed wall, with a large window across the room to camera left. This provided a colour-contrasting fill light, which really gives a three-dimensional feel to the final images. Aside from cloning a pock-mark or two out of the wall behind them, very little post-processing work was done. A few colour adjustments were used to keep colour consistency between shoots.
Now the studio has a walk-in light tent, which does a decent enough job softening the halogen lamps. However, having a good understanding of these basic principles allows you to set things up in almost any circumstance.
Now, what self respecting photographer would travel to the other side of the world, and not get in the presence of kangaroos with their camera? Cliche as it is, I wanted to get it done. I did my research, and took the early morning train from Sydney Central into the Blue Mountains national park.
At a little past 5 a.m., I found myself in the small town of Glenbrook. Following the street lights, and then the dim light of my phone, I made my way to the park’s entrance. From there, I watched the stars in their final hours, waiting for the first glimpse of dawn.
Once it was light enough, I began on an hour long walk through the woodland and creeks. It was strikingly beautiful: the morning’s golden light touched the tips of the trees, and breathed life into the morning mist.
After a cautious descent down a rocky decline in the path, I arrived in a grassy opening. I surveyed the area – only to have my gaze met by a pair of grey-furred kangaroos grazing at the foot of the path. I had arrived at Euroka Clearing, a park campsite known for it’s wildlife population.
I spent the morning following the family of kangaroos through the clearing, shooting video, and practicing my bush-call with some local campers. As late morning arrived, so did the tourists: this area of the park was too difficult for coaches to access, so rather, a series of small mini-busses and camper vans flooded onto the campground. Knowing my communing time had come to an end, I headed back through the park to the station, heading to Karoomba to visit the local
landmarks.
And that concludes my trip to Australia. Thank you to all the friends and family that supported my fundraising; it was the trip of a lifetime.
Check back for your regularly scheduled programming!
This series of posts document The Joshua Foundation’s 2009 trip to Australia, as part of their Oz Experience fundraising program. They include a sample of photographs and text from my book documenting the trip, available as a paperback and free PDF at Lulu.com.
The Sydney Tower was our first chance for both teams to meet up together, with the superb chance to see the Sydney cityscape by night. The buffet style dining was a chance for the group to help themselves to a great selection of food, and the chance to try more exotic dishes like roast kangaroo and octopus.
As a special thank-you to the group, both the Skippies and Koalas were taken on a boat dinner from Sydney harbour. It was a chance to talk about the happenings of the past few weeks, and for most, a final night out before the big return journey.
The alarm clock rang at 7 a.m., in our dorm at the Sydney YHA. It was the morning everyone had to pack their bags, and go our separate ways.
As the afternoon came around, the Skippies and Koalas began shuffling down the stairs, and down the elevators, dragging their cases behind. In the lobby, people exchanged last hugs and a sometimes tearful goodbye, before boarding the airport coach.
And thus, the end to an amazing trip with some of the nicest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. Or at least, the part that involves The Joshua Foundation… Check back for the final instalment: Part V: Blue Mountains National Park.
Thanks guys, it was an amazing summer.
This series of posts document The Joshua Foundation’s 2009 trip to Australia, as part of their Oz Experience fundraising program. They include a sample of photographs and text from my book documenting the trip, available as a paperback and free PDF at Lulu.com.
The long-awaited third instalment of The Joshua Foundation’s 2009 trip to Australia, beginning with our journey and beautiful Wirrabee Gorge State Park.
I’d like to take this chance to thank Marcus and the entire Conservation Volunteers Australia group, for their hospitality and continuing service to the Australian countryside.
At 9 a.m., two CVA representatives arrived and described the week’s work sites to the Skippies. We would have to split into two groups – of which I joined the ‘first’, travelling with CVA representative Marcus, as part of the aptly named A-Team. Midway through the week, we would switch work sites with the other group.
Seeing as it had taken a few hours to get everything organised, we stopped for a morning drink before work. It was a cool day, like most of the days on the work sites: around 17ºC with a slight breeze, similar to mild autumn weather in the UK.
I looked up the road as we were packing up: “Kangaroo to the north!”
Everyone swivelled their heads as the brown-furred marsupial made its away across the road, and over our work site — followed closely by a dozen of its brethren, all making their own paths around the trees that had already been planted on the hillside.
A few of them stopped, and started grazing on some of the trees (and as we later found out, the guards too). […] The guards were assembled at the main ‘site’, with all the equipment locked away in cargo containers to protect against the wind. The first day was spent assembling hundreds of tree guards, and to navigate around the site.
Our last day working in Victoria was a welcome change of scenery for all. Rather than the wind blowing tools over, and the sun beaming through the cool air, we found ourselves at a cool woodland in Mount Buangor State Park.
Unaffected by the Victoria fires earlier in the year, the trees here towered over everything, rich with ferns and flowers lining the various bush-walks through the park.
And that concludes our Victoria leg of the trip. Check back later this week for Part IV: Sydney!
This series of posts document The Joshua Foundation’s 2009 trip to Australia, as part of their Oz Experience fundraising program. They include a sample of photographs and text from my book documenting the trip, available as a paperback and free PDF at Lulu.com.
Our first stop in Melbourne was the Royal Children’s Hospital, a large medical centre exclusively for the treatment of child patients. In the drowsy early hours after our flight, it was our first attempt of navigating the city, and its suburbs.
The visit was a very meaningful one for the group, as it was a chance for the group to visit the hospital’s oncology ward. For most, it was the first time they would meet the children that The Joshua Foundation’s work supports. It was an emotional experience for everyone.
A relatively short flight from Singapore left us in downtown Melbourne, a wonderfully vibrant city, its slanting streets intersecting in a criss-cross alongside the Yarra River.
As part of our stay in Melbourne, we had a morning tour of the Neighbours studio, including the real location of Ramsay Street. Jonny and Liam were less excited…
On the way back to the hostel, I took some portraits of The A Team (as our little group was known). I like how they turned out!
Check back later this week for Part III: Conservation Volunteers Australia!
This series of posts document The Joshua Foundation’s 2009 trip to Australia, as part of their Oz Experience fundraising program. They include a sample of photographs and text from my book documenting the trip, available as a paperback and free PDF at Lulu.com.
It was one of the glorious sunny days of Spring the day I left for Australia. As I shuffled my suitcases into Heathrow’s international terminal, I wondered if there would be any sunshine left by the time I returned…
It’s been years in the making, months in the writing (and weeks in the proofreading), but at long last, my book documenting my trip to Australia with Cardiff-based cancer charity The Joshua Foundation is up for sale.
As I promised, those photos and more are making their way online, starting with the first part of the story: our stopover in Singapore.
Stepping off the plane, the air seemed humid but cool. It wasn’t until we stepped outside, however, that we discovered the airport had air conditioning set to the max. Outside was hot, wet, and on our bus trip to the hotel, there was a monsoon of rain. It was an interesting way to begin our time at one of the hottest and most modern places on earth.
As the group made their way past security, I noticed something peculiar about the stretch of hallway which led into the duty-free shopping area.
By the side of the hallway, donning white gowns and face masks, were a group of staff crowded around a monitor. Beside the monitor was something that looked like a CCTV camera, set up to watch the passing foot traffic.
As I passed the setup, I turned to look at the screen: it was a heat-map, the passing travellers appearing as blue-and-yellow blobs on a black backdrop. With the recent swine flu scare, Singapore airport was taking no chances, pulling people with a fever aside to be examined.
This series of posts document The Joshua Foundation’s 2009 trip to Australia, as part of their Oz Experience fundraising program. They include a sample of photographs and text from my book documenting the trip, available as a paperback and free PDF at Lulu.com.
As part of my work photographing school concerts, I usually hang around the rehearsals taking “preliminary” photos. It’s the photographer’s equivalent of taking notes: seeing how the bands will be set up, where you can stand to get certain band members framed well, etc.
But during my visit to the 2009 Spring concert rehearsals, I ended up shooting not so many photos – but plenty of videos. Mostly influenced by the recent NIN video shot on a Canon 5D MkII, I tried the walkaround-video technique myself. It takes practice (and works better when you, say, have a NIN concert handy), but the results I got were pretty interesting. An exercise in manual focus if anything. Video is at the top of the article if you didn’t notice already!
In a sentence paragraph or two (or three or four):
I purchased the AI (of the OpticFilm 7500i, the 7500i SE and the 7500i AI), which is a good chunk more than the SE. I’m not sure if it’s worth the extra money, as all you get is a calibration slide and a different version of the client software.
Don’t get me wrong, the scans from this thing are fantastic. The UI slider lets you take the scanner up to 10,000dpi (which gets downsampled by some factor to get rid of any moire etc., you can change this), but it will go higher. There are settings for all sorts of film, as well as a mode for Kodachrome slides, which work pretty good. For when that fails, there are plenty of colour correction tools in the software to get it just right from the scan.
However, where the scanner fails is when you want to do bulk scanning. If you are only planning on scanning a whole bunch of film or slides, do not get this scanner. It is incredibly slow, as it scans each frame individually and has no mechanism for scanning several in a row. Currently I’m managing to scan a set of 36 exposures in just over an hour, at around 3600dpi, though what takes the most time is the iSRD scratch removal.
A word on the scratch removal: It’s really clever. After doing the scan, it runs another scan using infra-red (which shows up any dust or scratches), and then works its magic (which is CPU intensive—faster the computer, the better). Sometimes it doesn’t work, and for those times, there is a traditional dust/scratch removal algorithm, as well as a great clone tool.
Where this scanner is really useful is for getting huge scans from negatives, which is why I got this scanner in particular. I want to get large prints from my negatives, and in the 10,000dpi mode I mentioned earlier, you end up with a file more than large enough to print un-processed on A2 (60×42cm @ 300dpi). In terms of smaller scans for online and small prints, there are in-built options for doing a sharpen/unsharp mask on the way out, so there’s very little post-processing needed.
If you would like to see what a large scan looks like, right-click and download the following link for a 10,000dpi scan of this image (23MB): www.riggzy.com/files/Cripwell.jpg
I hope this helps, I had a lot of trouble getting some good consensus on these scanners. It seems that if you want to batch scan film by the roll at 4800dpi (large enough for A3 printing), Canon’s flatbed film scanners are the best deal. If you want huge scans, the OpticFilm series of scanners seems to be the best. Anything before the OpticFilm 7200i is Windows only, however.
I hope this was helpful! If you have any specific questions just reply and I’ll follow up. =)
I was browsing through Aaron Nace’s photostream yesterday (superb flash photographer, you should check him out), and in the information he posts with the photos, he makes a lot of mention of using ceiling-bounced flash. Just as an experiment today, I decided to try using a flash bounced from the ceiling, as well as a key light. The result was the photo above.
A D-Lite 2 was set up to the left of the camera, and pointed at the ceiling. A piece of card was used as a gobo to stop the flash lighting me directly.
To the right of the camera, and my left, is the D-Lite 4 with a shoot-through umbrella. Another gobo is used to prevent the flash lighting the muslin backdrop from the side, keeping it darker than me, and preventing any hard shadows that will show up creases in the backdrop.
Both the units were at a similar power, but as the ceiling-bounced strobe is much further and diffused in a much greater way, it serves as a subtle fill light.
Just to finish up, some broad strokes were made in Photoshop to apply some selective warming to the backdrop.
I’ve had it for a good year or two now, and I can say I’m very happy with it. It’s my usual carry-around lens, and for the price, it’s a bargain all-purpose piece of kit. I use it as the bridge between my wide angle and telephoto lenses (as well as a Canon 50mm).
Sigma lenses are known for not being as sharp as Canon lenses, but it’s never been a problem for me. I’m a big fan of this and my Sigma 12-24mm.
However, this isn’t one of Sigma’s ‘HSM’ (hyper-sonic motor) lenses, so the auto-focus motor can be a bit noisy compared to other lenses, if that’s an issue. Like all Sigma lenses, the manual focus grip is rubberised and really well made (with a minimum focus distance of 0.45m). Also, on a full-frame sensor, there is some vignetting at the 28mm end, but like all vignetting it can be corrected. I like it personally!
I would definitely recommend this lens, especially for the price. Very versatile and always performs well. Hope this helps =)
The essence of photography is the capture of light, so it stands to reason that having an understanding of how light works can be useful, if not a necessity.
In this article, I’ll talk about how using some basic principals of light can give different effects in the studio. However, there’s nothing to stop these ideas from being applied anywhere. These ideas are simple, but are the basis of any photographic ‘look’.
Put on your propellor beanies, and read on!
This article was orginally going to be part of Making Use Of Light: Basic Lighting Theory, but for the benefit of the reader, it has its own article. Read on for the review…
Above are photos for the past two days, the first being on the day I started: November 24th, 2008. I’ll be posting an update monthly with my best shots, or you can watch everything on my Flickr page.
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In other news, I’m about to take my first dive into the world of studio photography. gasp
Earlier today, I ordered a set of two Elinchrom D-Lite flash heads with various other bits and bobs, hopefully to arrive tomorrow. The last time I played with a flash unit was in a portraiture course at the Edinburgh College of Art this past summer, and they’re just so fun. I can’t wait to play with them!
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And finally: Welcome to my new blog. As the subtitle suggests, it will be a little more arty than my last attempts, but I’ll make time to talk about technology and productivity, two issues that I fight with daily. x.x
Until next time, take care, and I’ll have a review of the D-Lite units up soon!
