Making People Happy with Natural Light.

I was hired by Compendium Inc. to photograph their new series of greeting cards and the displays they are going to be sold from.  That posed an interesting challenge. I love shooting still life, but their style is a bit different from the one I usually go for.  They wanted  bright images, with a strong 'natural light' feel to them. This is sometimes easier to be said than done here in the NW, where natural light is often rapidly changing during the day. My solution was to shoot with mixed light, putting the displays (and the model in another similar shoot) next to a large window and letting the natural light to work as a global fill, about 1.5 stops below key. Then I  put a large softbox 6ft high on camera right to be the main light source, well aligned with the windows. Then a strip light behind the display on camera right and two smaller ones pointing and the white background.  To give the image a bit more of a 3D 'punch' (but while under the watchful look of the AD,  to stay consistent with the Compendium look ) I used as  a cheap ring flash adapter  as fill.  The flash  was mounted on an on-camera Canon Speedlite.  So umm,  five lights total. Note:  this set up requires your other strobes to have optical slaves.


Have  you noticed that the format of the blog posts has changed?

Just Shirts. But.

This is my favorite still image from a shoot I did for a fashion company that designs, you probably guessed it, shirts. The most fun part of the shoot was deciding how the shirts should look like, or, better, what should the viewer feel. And who is going to be the viewer? The target customer of the company a +40, married, reasonably wealthy, married guy? One never really sells a shirt. And a shirt is a shirt is a shirt...so we thought that the buyer (most likely his wife or so the marketing research offered) would rather imagine her partner doing cool things rather than being at the office. The look and palette came together shortly after that: a bit of americana, warm colors, old wood, a truck parked somewhere. Yes the shirts have to 'feel' more than just 'look' nice. This is the final result, or..the final result I liked the most, but not the one that made it to the final campaign. Oh well! But how did I get the shot? $20 worth of wood panels painted to make the wood darker, a softbox with extra diffusion from an opaque plexi panel low and inclined behind the shirts (the bottom of the box was flagged) ringflash on camera and two super thin strip lights on the sides. Shot from above. The most important thing? The styling of the shirts done by the always impeccably perfect Kimberly Swedelius. Oh yes, remember to copyright your images once you are done with the shoot. Just saying.

Shoot what you like with a touch of ring flash.

The client that will give you the most creative freedom..is yourself. I often shoot
things that I have got for myself (even if sometimes it means waiting before I wear/use them).
Well, they obviously inspired me, so. You will be pleasantly surprised how a client will then like
what you have shot and ask you for a similar look.

This time I picked these shoes from Above and Below, a small company in London that make unique sneakers. They are made of reused fabric from the London Tube and recycled leather. Pretty neat uh? Their website even has a soundtrack that is rather spot on.

So the shot: the scheme was fairly standard: gridded spot behind/above, side speedlite behind the shoes and on camera left (made sure that it did hit the logo), ring +softbox as fill. The color scheme was a play on the dominant colors: green and blue. I added layers of magenta (shadows) and yellow (highlights) to highlight them. As a final touch I dialed down the contrast on the highlights to give the image a bit of a 'film' look.

Now excuse me while I go on a walk...

Ring Flash for fashion: Yokoo Scarves!

For this set I shot three scarves from Yokoo, a fancy knitter from Atlanta. Her great designs have been featured on the NYT. I wanted a look more sculpted than what is usually done for this kind of fashion (think Antrhopologie). The set up is the evolution from the one I had used recently for the Baby & Co. store: beauty dish high at camera left, strip behind model on camera right, gray background and flags.

This time I added a ring flash as fill. I did not need too much power (I was shooting at f5.6) and so I used the cheap ring flash modifier mounted on a 'on camera' Canon 580x II. The ring flash really defines the texture of the scarves.
The coloring was done in post and the shadow gradients in the background where enhanced in Lightroom using the gradient tool
(brightness and color, try it! It's at the top right, next to the brush in the 'develop' module). Models: Oralie, Jennifer and Amy. Make up and hair: Fiona Pepe

You can see the full set here

Strobes tests: Alien Bees against Elinchrom. Lumopro against Canon 580x II.

Today I happen to have handy a bunch of different flashes I always wanted to compare. Yes. Which one is more powerful, and by how much? The best way to show this is to use a light meter, put it at ten feet from the flash set at full power and measure what people call the "Guide Number". Basically the required aperture to illuminate a subject as medium gray. This is a useful number for undiffused strobes as for them it turns that:

Guide Number = aperture x distance = constant.

So if we measured f4 at 10 feet, the guide number GN is 40, which means that at 5 feet we will achieve the same exposure at f8 (closer, brighter, and so we can use a narrower aperture).
The higher the GN, the more powerful the flash. This of course at the same ISO.

So here are the numbers, I used ISO100 in all cases. Packs and flashes were all at full power.

Elinchrom Ranger S head with standard reflector + "A" Ranger RX pack. GN 250 $2100
Elinchrom Ranger Ring Flash + "A" Ranger RX GN 220 $1500+$1700
Alien Bees B800 +standard reflector GN 130 $280
Alien Bees B400 + standard reflector GN 90 $225
Canon 580ex II (zoom 80/28mm) GN 130/90 $440
QFlash+standard cone GN 110 $1080
Lumopro GN zoom 85/28mm GN 90/71 $120
Canon 580x II + Coco Ring Flash GN 35 $440+$80

Btw, I have found another test here on Flickr. Results are similar.

So what have I learned?


1) more expensive flashes have more power and the area where they are able to light uniformly is *much* larger (and rounder!) than with the cheaper speedlites (see the image). But greater power comes with a price (and greater responsibilities, but that is another story).
2) The Canon 580x II is good! More powerful than the LumoPro and the QFlash, but *only* if you use the zoom feature. Read the manual..or pay $300 extra bucks compared to the LumoPro, which is a lot easier to use (see and extended review)...mmm.
3) The Canon+ the Coco Ring flash performs well, but the output is not that great, unless you are in studio. The zoom factor makes no difference with the Coco attached.
4) The QFlash is weak sauce for the price $1080 (head+pack)
4) The Speedlites are a tad cooler than the Elinchroms.
5) The Ranger pack has two outputs: A and B. A is 1+2/3 stops brighter.
6) the ABees Long throw reflector increases output by 1 stop! (from the Flickr Strobist group test)