Astro Visual Photography

Playing around one evening with some lights, my daughter and I decided to get a shot of her ‘driving’ her car.

Driving

OBJECTIVE:

I wanted this to look like one of those shots we see in the movies where the actor is supposed by driving along at night.

COMPOSITION:

The composition this time was created with the vignetting as much as the subject placement.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/60th – f2.8 – ISO 320. 51mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Hand held. No Flash.
Not wanting too much noise I kept my ISO down but chose a low f-stop to still try to keep my shutter speed above where I needed a tripod. Generally speaking I try to never use anything under 1/60th when shooting people because it doesn’t take much to create motion blur even at that speed.
The light is produced from a bright LED light/flashlight/torch sitting on the drivers floor.

POST PROCESSING:

A little sharpening for her eyes, curves to both brighten the light areas but also darken the dark areas. I may have also used a black brush to darken a couple of areas a bit more but I don’t remember exactly.

END RESULT:

I’m happy with this one. The light source has produced strong shadows but also highlights. A reflection of part of the dashboard suggests that the light source is in fact the cars dashboard lights.

Meet Brooke. Brooke is a friend of my daughters and she enjoys modeling. We needed Brooke for an environmental shoot for a website that required photos of office workers and also wanted to provide her with some shots for her portfolio.

The Secretary

OBJECTIVE:

To show a secretary in her environment but feature the model. I didn’t want her lost in among the various props.

COMPOSITION:

We did various shots with Brooke, and my daughter who does some modeling as well. This particular shot was the ‘talking on the phone’ shot.

We were using our own office for this and it has several large windows with vertical blinds which are very handy for directing ambient light. The light helped me to decide what position to place Brooke in.
We tried a few with the computer monitor behind her but found it all a bit busy.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/200th – f2.8 – ISO 320. 60mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Hand held. Flash. Light from the Vertical Blinds.
I used the Ext flash mounted on the camera here as wanted her face and eyes bright.

POST PROCESSING:

Sharpening, curves/levels to increase contrast. I then applied a strong glamour blur to give a soft feel to this shot but selectively brought through the features I wanted sharp such as her beautiful blue eyes.

END RESULT:

The light from the vertical blinds has done a great job of giving life to areas that the front on flash would have left darker. We can distinctly see there are at least 2 strong sources of light in this photo which is what we wanted.
My external flash has filled in the facial features well without being too strong, and has brought those blue eyes well and truly into the limelight.
The post processing has softened Brooke’s skin although her skin is quite smooth as it is. The softened skin fits well with the softness created around her and in the background though.
There is a bit of shadow on the wall from the light sources but using a low flash setting has at least reduced that to something which is not distracting.

Not every photo has to be clear about what it is portraying. Perhaps what you want  to portray is some mystery, some intangible notion or thought. Sometimes the power of a photo can come from what it isn’t saying outright, but from what it’s suggesting to the viewer. A good photo of this genre will suggest different things to different viewers.

Lost in Thought

OBJECTIVE:

I wanted to take a photo that used light and shadow, but not flash as a light source. I also wanted the photo to say something although I wasn’t sure what that was at first. I was in a pensive mood. I wanted to take photos but felt rather uninspired. That’s when I realized I could use me and my mood as the subject and with luck, it might produce a photo that could be interpreted differently by different viewers.

COMPOSITION:

The light coming through the vertical blinds made some of my decision for me here. With the blinds only slightly open I could see the sort of light I was looking for … directional. This meant I needed to place my subject to the left of frame and choose to put myself well to the left to show more of the blinds, but more importantly, create some active space. Active space (sometimes also called negative space) is an area of the photo with less elements in it, that is used to leave space for what happens next, to suggest something. In this case, I wanted the viewer to follow the gaze of the subject and wonder what he might be looking at, and therefore thinking as well.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/60th – f8 – ISO 200. 68mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Tripod. No flash. Only lighting was the ambient light and the strong light coming through the blinds.

POST PROCESSING:

Small amount of sharpening. A lighting render tool used. A blur technique applied.

END RESULT:

The lighting render created a dark outer vignetting effect which, in turn, created the effect of using the person as a frame for the left side of the photo. The blur technique I used softened the blinds but allowed me to keep the facial features sharp and clear which I think enhanced the effect of the active space.

I think this does as it was supposed to. What is he thinking? What is holding his attention? He looks worried? Concentrated.

There are so many techniques used in portraits. Some are simple and some require a load of setting up with expensive lighting and backdrops etc. I don’t have any of that.

Allyce Portrait

OBJECTIVE:

To use alternative lighting to create some light/shadow effects.

OBSERVATIONS:

It was late afternoon so the light was just beginning to fade. We were outside in the backyard with Allyce lying on a towel with a couple of props, a feather scarf thing and a soft toy snake.

COMPOSITION:

I wanted to be in close so I could feature at least one eye. My focus was centered squarely on her leading eye. Seeing as Allyce wanted the props in, I at least needed to include some aspect of those as well. Sometimes it’s as much about what the ‘client’ wants as it is what you want.
In this shot I went for a diagonal composition in terms of her face.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/200th – f3.5 – ISO 200. 70mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Hand held. Spot metering.
I used an external flash on the camera but angled it up and used the pull out card to deflect the flash at the subject. However, this was not the main light source as I dialed it back so it only created some highlights in the hair. Shooting flash straight at your subject tends to flatten the subjects textures. Lighting from other directions tends to lift those textures.
My main lighting was a 3x 3watt LED setup I use for night riding on my mountain bike or road bike. It’s very bright. However, a very bright torch with a white (rather than yellow) light will work as well.

POST PROCESSING:

A slight sharpening, curves/levels adjustment.

END RESULT:

The LED lighting was off to the right side as we look at this photo and has created a spot light effect which through the outer part of the photo into shadow. The light was bright enough to light up Allyce’s hair from her cheek outwards creating that brown/auburn colour.

The wide aperture of f3.5 created a narrow depth of field (area in focus) around her eye and hair creating a feature of those by blurring out the rest of the shot. This lessened the likelihood of the props becoming distractions also. She was deep in thought when I took this and it shows I think.

Thanks for coming.