Anyone reading my blog for any amount of time knows how much I love sharing my passion for photography and I love teaching other photographers things that totally make their day. For the longest time I’ve been sharing lighting tutorials, composition tips, equipment comparisons on small blog posts but I’ve been wanting to share even more and for the last year or so we’ve been working on a new website where I can do just that.
This past fall I launched an Online Photography Education site called Shoot for Love, it is a monthly membership site priced to be as affordable and as accessible as possible. I will be posting more and more premium educational content including classroom style instruction, instructional video from past workshops, posing tutorials, retouching videos and more. I focus on techniques I use to create the images I love to create.
The monthly membership fee ($12.95) allows me to not only put more time and effort into these posts, it also comes with a money back guarantee so if you don’t find something you love simply request a refund! Here are a few of the things we’ve posted within the last couple months, with plenty more to come!
Studio Lighting Details and Diagram with a Parabolic Umbrella
Lighting Diagram and walk through of a studio lighting setup using a borrowed studio and borrowed lights.
A Photoshop Layers Walk through (video)
Jake Garn gives a video tour of one of his fully retouched photoshop files, layer by layer. A quick way to pick up on some techniques you may have overlooked.
Demonstration On Directing Models (video)
This is a quick little glimpse into some intense model directing by Jake Garn.
The Importance of Great Models
Heather - Makeup by Danielle Carlsen - Hair by Steven Robertson
Classes available at Shoot for Love
Finding Your Style – A class by Jake Garn
In this class shot exclusively for Shoot For Love Jake Garn discusses his path to finding his photographic style and shares this insight with the hopes of inspiring photographers everywhere to find their unique voice.
Lighting Tools 101 – A Class by Jake Garn
Filmed at the 2011 Shoot For Love workshop this is a great overview of basic lighting principles and available types of lighting equipment along with a slew of sample images showcasing different lighting techniques and equipment. We talk about the first step in learning light and that is understanding yourself. A must watch for any photography lighting enthusiast!
Posing and Expressions – A class by Jake Garn (Coming Soon)
Filmed at the 2011 Shoot For Love workshop Jake Garn shares posing tips and techniques to get the most flattering looks from your models, also a discussion on inspiring (and stealing) the perfect expressions.
Free Content on our Blog!
You don’t have to be a member to enjoy the website, we post plenty of free content including equipment reviews and monthly photography assignments.
NOTE: The assignment is to shoot where you live. Take a moment and look around and find… inspiration. If you are a photographer and would like details on completing the assignment (it’s free, and easy) visit www.shootforlove.com. B&H Photo Video is generously sponsoring the assignment with a cool little prize.
The assignment is to shoot within walking distance of your front door. See the world around you in a new, creative way. The inspiration behind these shots (and the idea for the assignment) is to really get to know your surroundings and your subjects. When you pay closer attention to the world you see every day you start to find images that are just a bit more, rare. Here is a sampling of images I’ve shot over the last month or two in and around my house and yard with this inspiration in mind.
Shot during different parts of the day, with different models, in different weather, in different locations. I shot all of these using the same general equipment. All ambient light, sunlight or artificial lights in the ceiling. One Camera. One Lens. Canon 5D Mark II with the Canon 50mm 1.2L (links take you to product details at B&H)
If you are interested in learning more about how I create these images and where I find inspiration visit www.shootforlove.com – an online photography workshop.
January 31st, 2011 – Salt Lake City, UT to Portland, OR
iPhone using Hipstamatic (a great photography app)
Steven Wood and I landed at 6:04PM, drove straight from the Portland Airport to Stereoblind studio where we met our two hosts along with two models and two stylists. This would be the first day of a three day shooting trip, seven models in three days.
The first day, right off the plane, was a shoot planned with a full styling team and three models. None of whom I’d ever met in real life.
This trip was a bit of an experiment. I wanted to see how hard it was to leave my geographic comfort zone and shoot, was it worth the hassle to bring a camera on short trips? Away from my lights, away from my studio, away from my connections. On a bit of a whim I was browsing Modelmayhem and spotted a model or two that I thought I would LOVE to shoot, and both were in the same city..Portland, a city less than an hour and a half away by plane. One thing led to another and I looked up prices which seemed much to inexpensive to be right, Steven agreed to join me. We’d do some shooting, check out the sites and maybe even test drive a Ferrari with a blind Al Pacino, who knows. I was ready for anything.
About 45 minutes before getting on the plane, a few hours before the shoot, I received an email from one of the models. “Family emergency, can’t make it. Sorry for the late notice…,” that sort of thing.
These happen, the longer I’ve been a photographer the more rarely they occur… leading me to believe that when they do occur it’s probably legitimate. I emailed her back thanking her for letting me know and… well, didn’t know what we’d do. No cell service in the plane, which was leaving soon.
We formulated a plan B at the shoot. Instead of one look each for three models we’d do two looks of two models. The results were… well… if I were into sports analogies I’d say it was a home run.
The lighting setup I used to achieve these is simple. A single strobe with a parabolic umbrella (86″) creates a very soft even lighting. The umbrella is directly behind me with the face of it perpendicular to the ground, if you look closely into the catch lights you’d see me standing in front of the light. To bring back some definition in the edges I placed two large, black foam boards on either side of the model, just barely out of frame. That is what gives that distinctive shaded contouring around the edges of the model, so to speak.
As seen in this simple lighting diagram.
Setup photo courtesy of Dan LaHaie and his iPhone
Lighting doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need a lot of attention to detail. As anyone on set that day can probably attest to – angles, distances, power and reflectors are tweaked and tweaked and tweaked… until… well, you just know it’s right.
This blog post is my homage to a photographic era of yester-year, the days before anyone had even heard of a little program called Adobe Photoshop, back when making a digital scan of your photo meant purchasing THOUSANDS of dollars in special equipment. This didn’t mean people didn’t do crazily creative things to their images, Man Ray was creating images like his one titled “Kitty” over 60 years ago.
Photo by Man Ray circa mid-1900s. Think about doing this one without photoshop.
Obviously special effects for the sake of the effect don’t make the images better, but in the world of creative expression every tool has power, and this post is all about creating images with three simple tools. A camera, a lens, and a flash.
The Challenge!
Here’s the challenge, I’m going to post three images, each one was created in-camera with only limited cropping and color correction in Photoshop. If you think you know the techniques I used to create them then post your guess in the comments! To make it fair I posted a full equipment list I used for each image.
Image One
Hint – I did not use a fog machine and color effect was created in-camera.
These results would be pretty easy to accomplish in photoshop, but pretend you’ve never heard of Photoshop and explain how I accomplished these inside the camera… it’s not very hard by the way! Just label your responses 1, 2 and 3.
Once enough people get it right (could happen quickly) I’ll post a full explanation. Good luck!
Great lighting is all about the modifiers. Whether it is the clouds that filter harsh sunlight or the light shaping tools that attach to the front of your strobes – the way you control the light can have subtle (or extreme) differences on your subject. I photographed three models using all the same equipment – changing only the light modifier attached to the front of my Elinchrom 300RX Monolight.
The Beauty Dish is a staple, and a favorite, for many photographers, especially those specializing in commercial beauty shots. The Elinchrom Deep Octa is often warmly compared to the Beauty Dish for having a similar light quality, yet boasting the ease and convenience of being both lighter and easier to manage on-set as well as more portable (since it folds up nicely into a bag) – not to mention costing a little bit less money.
So which is better? Looking around the internet I couldn’t find a side-by-side comparison and we all know if you want something done then… well… lucky for me the amazingly helpful staff at B&H Photo Video agreed to let me test drive the two light modifiers so I could make just such a judgment call, for you, my loyal blog readers.
So without further ado.
vs.
Although the following sample images are labeled, keen eyes should be able to discern which is which just by looking closely. See if you can spot the dead-giveaway. I’ll give you the hint, it’s in the eyes. (click the images to greatly enlarge)
One thing to keep in mind is that all of these images are directly out of the camera, absolutely no post-processing work has been done to any of them. Since the Beauty Dish puts out a bit more light the power was adjusted up slightly for the Deep Dish shots, that is the only difference.
Brynlee
This was the first test and as you can see the difference is distinct, yet subtle. The Beauty Dish (left) seems to flatten Brynlee’s features just a bit while the Deep Dish Octa (right) carves out the structure in her cheek bones and eyes a bit more. Keep in mind that Brynlee has a very unique face structure (which I’m semi-in-love with) and while your preference on lighting may vary I very much prefer the image on the right.
(click for a larger view)
Demi
She also has an amazingly unique face with perfectly rounded features. You can see how the beauty dish seems to make her face glow from within while the Deep Octa seems a little too specular. Notice too the softness of the shadow under her chin along with more shadows carving through her collar bone and upper chest. However, the Deep Octa does seem to add a softer highlight on the tip of her nose along with brighter lips. Overall my preference is for the image on the left.
Jillian
Jillian has a more angular facial structure which the Beauty Dish compliments so perfectly. Notice how the image on the left simply seems to have more dimension on almost every feature. The Beauty Dish just seems to carve the light around her angles making for amazing shadows and highlights. Again, I prefer the left image, by far.
Jumping to a Conclusion
I used both of these modifiers extensively beyond these three tests to help round out my thoughts and I’ll be honest at first I thought both were quite interchangeable. Initially I definitely had a preference for the Deep Octa mainly because it was a bit easier to take on and off, all you had to do was twist it off of the strobe. The beauty dish wasn’t much more difficult but the weight made using it on a boom-stand a bit cumbersome and I always seemed to forget to take off that little reflector from the front before un-twisting the dish.
It was only after “getting to know” them a bit better that I started to discover the subtle differences – differences that are difficult explain without sounding like a nut-job – but overall I found myself being drawn to the quality of light produced by the Beauty Dish for probably 3 out of 5 set-ups. If I had to choose one then it’d have to be the Beauty Dish since I can see myself wanting to use it more often, however, both of the modifiers get a ringing endorsement from me – especially since the Deep Octa happens to be a bit more convenient and a bit better under certain circumstances, such as photographing unique faces like the amazing Brynlee!
If you don’t already have one of these I’d definitely recommend saving up some pennies and picking one up!
Ever notice how most digital black & whites look sort of washed out? That’s because they’re using what an off-set printer would call an “unsupported” black. When a graphic designer wants a pure, rich black they use a black “supported” with additional inks making a dark silky black instead of a sort of dark grey that would appear if you used just black ink.
Well, the same principle applies to black and white photos. By blending additional inks into your black and whites you get a richer tonal range which gives you more details in your highlights… a complaint many film shooters have about digital images.
Take a look at these for example, a black and white made by just desaturating the colors vs. a duotone (or tritone) image. As you can see by using additional inks you can create black and whites with a lot more visual appeal.
Good news is duotones are very easy, and I made a quick video tutorial to show you how. Enjoy!
If you don’t already have a copy of Adobe Lightroom I highly recommend it. Available at B&H (with a $50 discount through 1/2/11)
Remember back to when you were first learning Photoshop? You probably went through and applied different filters, maybe you tried doing a colorized-black-and-white image, maybe you created some color effects stuff like that. Well, the idea was to experiment! You didn’t know how things would turn out you just started TRYING things.
There is nothing wrong with this experimental stage, but at some point you need to LEAVE that stage and you need to come into your digital darkroom with a very clear idea of what you want and some basic ideas on how to get there… otherwise you’re probably just making your photos worse, not better.
I love using Photoshop as both a conceptual tool and a tool to make slight (nearly invisible) improvements, and in the case of the Samurai series I went in with a clear idea that I wanted to create a slight vide0-game reality to these images.
To show my post-processing handiwork I downloaded a Before & After plugin from Instruite that is kind of cool. There should be a little slider that you can move back and forth to see the changes, first image is straight out of the camera.
Point-and-shoots are easy to carry and easy to use and that portability comes at a price though, they have relatively slow shutter reaction, no detachable lenses, can’t shoot in RAW format… I could go on.
So how do you shoot underwater and still keep the control? Well the solution is simple – take the Canon 5D Mark II under water with a case from AquaTech. I decided to take one out for a test-drive!
It was a sunny weekday afternoon when UPS unexpectedly dropped off the underwater casing so I called Brynlee and asked her how well she could hold her breath, ”I can do it! But, can I keep my nose plugged?” she asked.
“Unfortunately you cannot touch your nose,” I explained.
There was a long pause, “I can do it!” she promised.
So off we went to shoot in an outdoor swimming pool and just try some things out.
When we showed up we realized the pool was extremely cloudy from a recent water treatment. The water was completely safe, just cloudy for another day or so. This technical problem is easily solved when you have control over your equipment and the AquaTech underwater casing allowed me to have access to nearly EVERY necessary button on my 5D Mark II while underwater. The water visibility was less than 6 feet, give or take, so the camera controls got a very good test since I had to change everything from shutter speed, aperture, ISO, auto-focus point and pretty much every other setting you can think of.
It was a weird experience changing these without actually toughing the camera and I realized something interesting…
I actually don’t consciously know how to change many of the settings use all the time. I actually couldn’t remember how to change the shutter speed… my hands just knew how to do it when I was holding my camera but at this second I wasn’t actually holding my camera directly so I had to stop, and think hard about how I normally changed the shutter-speed. After I got over that barrier the controls became much easier, but it gave me some food for thought about the necessity of really knowing your equipment. I think it’s a good sign when you know your equipment well enough that you work with it on a completely sub-conscious level… reserving the rest of your brain-power for the idea at hand.
I do have two (very, very small) complaints, one, you can’t manually focus and two the casing makes the camera a bit bulky but there is a very nice bonus – if you drop the camera, it floats!
Here are a handful of finished images from the shoot (retouched in Lightroom and Photoshop).
This was just a preliminary test but I am seriously, seriously tempted to add one of these to my permanent collection of equipment, I’ll be posting some additional results in the coming weeks! If you’re interested on current pricing and additional specs visit B&H Photo online.
This is an educational announcement, no inspiration here just wisdom. If you already have an automatic backup system in place skip this blog post and look at my gallery instead. If you don’t have an automatic backup system then keep reading.
I just purchased this one week ago after my 1TB version was all filled up. This won’t be a technical review of hardware… so if you’re looking for that look elsewhere.
So why is this the most important purchase?
You will suffer a hard drive failure at some point in your life, unless you’re ridiculously lucky. When it happens it will either be the biggest stress that you’ve faced in a long, long time or it will be a minor inconvenience… YOU get to decide what it will be RIGHT NOW!
Common Types of Backup Available
Online Backup Sites (like Carbonite or Intronus or Mozypro)
Internal Raid (duplicate harddrives with mirrored data)
External Harddrive (Using Apple Time Machine)
Manual backup onto CD/DVD/Microdrive
So of all those I opt for option 3. External Harddrive. Is it as secure as other backup options? Well it does not always protect data in the case of rare events like war, floods, hurricanes, or Dick Cheney hunting accidents… things like that, but it does protect against a much more common form of data loss – unexpected and unannounced harddrive failure.
Backing up with a Mac is about the easiest thing you’ll do in your life. To start automatic backups all you do is open your system preferences, click on time machine, select the backup drive, turn the BIG switch from Off to On.
You’re finished.
You can tweak the settings if you want but the backup starts immediately, once backed up it continually updates the backup file. And it really does work like a time machine, you can open a folder and choose whatever version of a particular file you want to back up to within the last several days… distance of time in the past depends on the size of backup space available.
Why do I Use G-Technology?
I like these external hardrives from G-Technology for a couple reasons. Not only do they look sleek they also run nearly silently, they are pretty durable (I haven’t broke one yet) and work right out of the box with Mac (and work well).
I’m going to be honest, I don’t know a ton about hardware… but this is my third or fourth drive from G-Tech and I’ve had no problems with any of them. They also get good reviews… if you find a better external harddrive I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
In the mean-time do yourself a favor and pick one up… here’s the one I bought (August 2010), you may need much less or much more space than me… look around and find a solution that fits you!
Lighting Diagram and walk through of a studio lighting setup using a borrowed studio and borrowed lights.
Jake Garn gives a video tour of one of his fully retouched photoshop files, layer by layer. A quick way to pick up on some techniques you may have overlooked.
Filmed at the 2011 Shoot For Love workshop this is a great overview of basic lighting principles and available types of lighting equipment along with a slew of sample images showcasing different lighting techniques and equipment. We talk about the first step in learning light and that is understanding yourself. A must watch for any photography lighting enthusiast!
Filmed at the 2011 Shoot For Love workshop Jake Garn shares posing tips and techniques to get the most flattering looks from your models, also a discussion on inspiring (and stealing) the perfect expressions.
