Environmental Portraiture, Second part.

Going to locations that a client likes makes for great portraits and can be a great amount of fun.  The downside, (there's almost always a downside) you have to travel and carry your stuff somehow.  I suppose the downside of an actual studio would be rent, an electric bill, insurance on the place and having to have regular hours to be open where you have to physically be there.

In this shoot, Erica Lucero's dad took us to the ruins of Abo, New Mexico.  It was a bit of a drive, but Erica's dad was my old First Sergeant from my Army days so I didn't mind.  This shoot was more of a favor to him and was very pleasant.

There are a lot of old buildings around so we did a series of photo's around them.  They fit her "cowgirl" image quite well.  I used natural lighting and a single, off camera flash for a little fill light.





Everywhere in the ruins were interesting backgrounds and we used as many as we could find.





I was on to something new when I did these and wanted to incorporate one photo for me as much as for her.  It's a technique called Multiplicity and it's done by taking several photos and layering them in a photo processing program.



This was her favorite photo and is the one her dad printed, framed and has sitting on his desk.

I put a camera on a tripod and used a remote to trigger it.  I locked the focus to manual so I'd get the same depth of field in all the shots.  Erica simply moved in the set and I took a frame at each position then layered them and erased parts of each layer exposing her in all the positions (I'll probably make a video of how this is done some time in the future.)  This was very popular with her teenage friends and landed me several more shoots.

Environmental Portraiture

Environmental Portraiture is different from Studio Portraits.  An environmental portrait is taken in a clients home, place of work or in a place other than a studio that he or she is comfortable.  Here's a shoot I did at a clients home where I used small flashes to set up studio like lighting and used her home as the back ground instead a studio back drop.

Angel and her Daddy.  I used a Nikon SB-600 flash, on a light stand and a shoot through umbrella to my left side.  I Had another Nikon SB-600 on the floor behind them for a separation light.  I used a Nikon SU-800 flash controller to fire them.  I had a silver reflector on my right for fill flash.  They were sitting on their couch in their own living room and looked more natural than posed.



Here's a shot of Angel on the car she was taking to her Prom.  I used the sun shining from behind her as a fill light and used a SB-600 off to my left as a Key light.



This last shot was back inside Angel's house, with her sitting in a chair.  The same lighting scheme as before, flash on my left and behind, silver reflector to my right.




I've found taking portraits in a clients environment is a lot of fun for me and them and the photo's seem to turn out better (making for a happier client.)  The clients seemed impressed I could set up a studio in their homes and they enjoyed helping me move and hold lights and reflectors and to have fun during the shoot making for a fun time.

The downside is having to take your lights, light stands, umbrellas and any other impedimenta you have along for the shoot.  Using small flashes makes this less painful.

Next up will be two environmental portraits in outdoor locations.

Using an off camera flash.

I've been practicing lately using a flashgun mounted on a light stand or hand held and here are a few photo's from to today.





Here are a couple more, I put a snoot on the flash to create a circle of light on the model.





This is a lot of fun and using the snoot took a lot of testing and fiddling with.  Trying to figure out how to aim it was the most difficult part of the task then getting exposure and flash setting down was next.

Something else I learned is the position of my flash commander in relation to the flash gun has the effect of the flash not firing.  When I put the light behind me, it didn't fire so I had to move next to or behind it to make it work.

It's an IR commander and I imagine a radio commander would have performed better.

My wife's friend, Misty, liked the levitation photo's I did with Lauren so she wanted to try it.  Here's what I got.









Misty was a great model and up to trying different things.  Her work shoes prevented her from jumping very high, but she's up to trying it again with better shoes.  Her clothes were a bit loose and showed too much movement, do she's going to wear something a bit heavier to cut that down.  The photo's did turn out alright because it was a windy day.

I was watching Digital Rev TV on YouTube last week and saw a video about Levitation.  I think Kai, the announcer is very funny and it was fun to watch him demonstrate how to photograph people to look like they're levitating.  He posted a link to his inspiration for trying it, an oriental camera girl.  

After looking for a model for a week to give this a try I finally got my oldest daughter to come over and we spent an hour taking pictures (I was taking the photo's, she was jumping all over the place.)  I wanted a fast shutter (1/1000) so I fiddled with the aperture and ISO until I got something I liked then had her start jumping around.  

After taking 149 photo's we finally got five we really liked.

There's a friend of my wife's who wants to model these poses and when she can get some time off I'll be shooting her.

What to use instead of a tripod.

A few years ago I was listening to a German blogger and he suggested using a bean bag as an alternative to a tripod. It's been so many years since I heard that blog I can't recall the photographer who made the suggestion to give him credit. Anyway, it sounded good, so I made one and tried it.

Tripods can be bulky and awkward many times and time consuming to set up. They can also malfunction or break at awkward times.

A bean bag can be a useful alternative in many situations when you need a long shutter speed, want bracketing shots or even a self portrait. They can be set up in a lot of places very quickly and taken down just as quickly.

You can set it on a block wall;

The roof of your car;

The dashboard of your car (remember if you do this you will have to adjust the white balance to account for the tint of your windshield. You should also ensure the windshield is clean.)

Or the seat of your motorcycle.

It even works with Super Zoom point and shoots;

and pocket size point and shoots.

Of course a bean bag can't replace a tripod in all situations such as standing in an open parking lot or field, but it's small, light and easy to carry and can come in handy in many situations. I made my bean bag with my sewing machine, some fabric and small plastic beads. I imagine filling a sock or ziplock bag with dried beans or rice would work just as well.

If you decide to give this a try let me know how it went for you and what you might have learned doing it.

Using focal length in outdoor portraits

I read in the Digital Photography School blog a post about taking portraits out of doors and what to do about the back ground. A question the photographer might ask him/herself is, "how much background do I want in my frame? Do I want to concentrate on my model alone or do I want to show my model in an interesting setting somewhere?" (I'm using 'model' as a generic identification of the subject in your photo like a spouse, friend or relative.)

I took my oldest daughter, Lauren, to a lot with iron sculptures to demonstrate how the background disappears from the frame as I backed farther away from her and used my zoom to keep her the same size in the frame.

Here's a photo of Lauren I took from a few feet away and my lens set back to 18mm

As you can plainly see she is framed close and there is a lot of her and a lot of background in the photo. A close zoom like this might be used to show your model and where you are in the same frame without having your model appear too small and almost unrecognizable (something I see in so many tourist photos.)

In the next photo I've backed away from Lauren several feet and zoomed my lens to 95mm. Here you can see the background starting to disappear and she is the same size in the frame.

Last shot from several feet away and zoomed out to 200mm.

Here you can see the background has almost disappeared and the model still fills the frame. You can do this with almost any lens/camera that can zoom. If you're using a simple point and shoot you will want use the Landscape setting so the camera will use a small aperture and get the back ground in focus.

Another note on using flash outdoors.

So many people don't use the flash on their cameras when shooting out doors during the day. Here's an excellent example of why you should.

This is my buddy Dawn modeling for me.

In this first example I don't use the flash and you can see the shadow on Dawn's face. I suppose I could make it lighter by post processing it, but why bother. Just pop up the little flash on top of the camera and take the photo the right way.

As you can see the flash filled in the shadow and Dawn's face is well exposed and you don't have to post process anything. So, to all you snapshooters out there, use your flash.

I had my cameras sensor cleaned right after I saw these photo's. Dawn does not have a spot on her face.

Four months since my last update... so much for the resolution to make a post a week.

I like High Dynamic Range images (HDRi.) I've read many pro's and con's about it and really don't care about them. I like it so I'm going to play with it.

HDR is taking multiple images (three to seven) at different exposer settings to get a wide range of light then layering them on top of each other and tone mapping the image. There is a way to do it in PhotoShop and Stuck in Customs has a good tutorial on how to do it. There are several other programs that do most of the work for you, all you have to do is some tone mapping. I use Dynamic Photo HDR. It's an inexpensive HDR program and is very easy to use.

I am told the concept came from photographing the inside of cathedrals and was used to capture the entire range of light. If a photographer set the exposure to get the light from the stained glass windows the rest of the room would be too dark in the shadows. If the exposure were set to light the entire room, the light from the windows would be blown out. So the concept is getting multiple exposures then layering them to get the entire range of light in one image. I'm sure that's an oversimplification of the concept, but it should be easy enough to understand.

Here is an example of using three frames at 0 ev, +1 ev and -1 ev.

This is the Albuquerque train station at Central and 1st ST, downtown.

0 EV Here you can see the front of the building is properly exposed, but the door and windows are dark.

+1 EV Over exposed by one step you can see the building is washed out, but the inside of the door and around the windows is properly exposed.

-1 EV Underexposed by one step you can see everything is dark. This layer will be to bring the highlights back to normal.

In each frame you can see the shadows and highlights look different. Now let's see what happens when they are layered onto each other.

You can see in this photo how the shadows in the door are now lit and the face of the building isn't blown out.

The easiest way to get the photo's is to use a camera that has an exposure bracketing mode. I've tried to do it with a camera that doesn't have bracketing and a tripod, but the results were three photo's that didn't quite match because the camera moved too much when I manually changed the EV for the three shots. Something I have found is if the shutter speed is fast enough I can take the photo's by hand holding my camera and setting the release mode to continuous advance.

Here's another interesting facet of HDR; you don't always need more than one frame. Here's a faux HDR photo of my brother using one frame and tone mapping (I get heavy handed with the tone mapping.)

HDRi has it's critics and isn't for everyone, but for those who do like it I hope this little post helps.