Mixed Light Sources - Window Light with Speedlight for a Quick Portrait

Recently I took the above portrait in the lounge of a private home. I used a blank white wall as a plain background, light from the open window provided the strong side light and background light, and a camera mounted sb700 pointed into the corner of the ceiling and wall behind me provided the main light. All in all it worked out quite well for a "high key" type portrait.

I shot this with my now favourite portrait lens, the AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G on the D300s.

Three Bottles of Campari on a Seamless White Background

Nikon D300s, Nikkor AF-S 85mm f/1.8 G, f/11.0, 1/160s, ISO 200, 1x Elinchrom D-Lite-it 2, 2x  Elinchrom D-Lite-it 4, 1x Large Sheet of White Cardstock, 2x Long Narrow Strips of Black Cardstock on each side of product, 1x Sheet of Clear Glass.

The Nikon 85mm f/1.8 AF-S G is my new Favourite Portrait Lens!

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while would have noticed that I really like the Nikon 50mm F1.8D on DX camera as a portrait lens, in fact it was my "go to" lens for several years when I needed to take portrait photos. This portrait was taken with the 50mm. I have not changed my opinion that the "nifty fifty" is a really nice lens for portraits, but the designation of "favourite" has now been reassigned to the Nikon 85mm f/1.8 AF-S G!

After several months of use I can say with full confidence that I highly recommend it as a head and shoulders portrait lens. The quality of the out of focus areas is sublime, and is only bettered by lenses costing at least two or three times as much. (The 50mm f1.8D is 4x cheaper than this 85mm, so if you are on a tighter budget then it still ranks right up there!)

The pic shown here is taken at f8.0 (on a Nikon D300s) and the background is still pleasingly blurred while beautifully sharp on the subject which isolates the subject from the background very nicely, thank you very much!

If you are from Malmö in Southern Sweden, then I highly recommend you get your own copy from Scandinavian Photo. They have it listed here: Nikon AF 85/1,8G AF-S Please note, I am not employed by or paid by Scandinavian Photo, but when I get great and friendly service from a company then I love to tell my friends about it! Tell them I sent you. :^)

Is the Decline of Camera Sales Good For Photographers?

I have read a lot lately about the declining sales of dslr and mirrorless cameras in favour of phone cameras that have boomed onto the markets in an undeniable fashion. Apparently the major camera manufacturers are scrambling to revise their targets and adjust their production and bottom lines to better reflect the current market trend. I predict that this trend will continue and that we will see a partial return to pre digital camera times when Joe Public carried small, easily portable cameras and the big cameras were left to "pros" and serious amateurs.

The cameras embedded into every smartphone are now good enough to produce nice results for the average person to get acceptable photographs without having to take an expensive course and be able to directly load the results to Facebook, Blogger, etc. Convenience always wins with the consumer public majority!

Could I now also predict a possible upturn for photography as a profession as more people decide that they would rather have a pro with a big camera take their wedding photos than Uncle John with his shiny new camera that has detachable lenses and a big flash simply because Uncle John ditched the inconvenient to carry around and use camera and now only has a Samsung S4 instead?

My theory is that as fewer people have dslr's they will come to rely on someone else, possibly the local high street professional, for their serious photography needs again. I surmise that this transition will take time to become apparent because it takes a while for these things to trickle through, but maybe the pendulum has peaked to the top of it's swing and is about to swing back.

Anybody fancy a quick look into their crystal ball and see if I'm right, or if maybe I'm just a hopeful dreamer? Haha!

Meanwhile back on Planet Earth...
;-)

Downtown Fredensborg - Deserted

Taken at 23:03 at night and totally deserted it's almost eerie, but great for taking photographs. At this time of night there was still enough light in the sky to balance nicely with the street lights and end up with a single shot containing a wide gamut of fairly even exposure. This sort of photography always requires a tripod as we have to deal with longish exposures and hand holding is impossible without getting a blurry and unusable photo. Tripod = sharp and clear. Get a good sturdy tripod, it'll do wonders for your photographs!

Most people shoot until the sun goes down and then they head indoors for dinner. I try to hang around for an hour or two (or more) after sunset to get this sort of light. It can make for long, cold, hungry evenings, but it gets pictures that very few people are willing or able to take simply because they lack the dedication and commitment to suffer a little inconvenience to get the photo they really want. But then maybe I'm a little too obsessive about these things? ;-)

Nikon D300s, Nikon 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 VR, sturdy tripod, remote trigger, f10.0, 13.0s, 18mm, VR off, ISO 200, Auto White Balance, Matrix Metering, Aperture Priority, quick run through Dx0 Optics Pro 8, and then some adjustments in the curves tool of PSP X5.

Using the Sun as part of your Lighting Setup

I like to treat the Sun as an integral part of my outdoor lighting setups to add depth, warmth and ambiance to my subject. In this instance we were shooting some portraits down at the beach in Landskrona and the setting sun was giving a beautifully soft and warm light that was just perfect for portraits!

The light from the Sun is coming from near the horizon to camera right and I also have a Nikon sb700 on a pole shooting through a smallish brolly to camera left and a little above the subject. I had my assistant holding the flash and I let the Sun take care of itself. ;-)

Nikon D300s, Nikkor AF-S 85mm f/1.8 G, 1/320s, f2.8, ISO 200, flash triggered via Nikons wonderful CLS wireless triggering system, hand held.

Portraits are about People!

I know it seems a rather obvious statement, but if you are going to make portrait photography your speciality, then the most important skill is not whether you have mastered the convoluted workings of a modern camera, or if indeed you have a really great "top of the range" piece of high megapixel wizardry, or if your lens can outresolve even the best that aliens on another (more advanced) planet may or may not have. It doesn't even matter if you have the best software that money can buy, or indeed rent, and have taken all the right courses, purchased all the right plugins, and know all the right scripts that a (sometimes dodgy) education can buy. Heck, it doesn't even matter if you can ride a unicycle! What does matter is your people skills!


I love working with people, which is why I love taking portraits, shooting weddings and events, and anything else that involves being around and interacting with humans of all shapes, sizes, creeds, nationalities and eccentricities. I worked in retail, sales and other customer centric businesses for many years and loved every minute of being of service to others!

I have found in my years of photographing people that the first and best thing is to get them to calm down, relax and stop thinking of the camera as an assault weapon bent on their destruction. I know they feel that way because that is exactly how I feel every time the roles are reversed and I find myself on the wrong end of the photo capturing device.

Spend time talking about what they do, what their hopes and aspirations are, how it's going at work, where they went to school, how many languages they speak... etc. etc. Really just become their new, and trusted, friend. As quickly as possible. And it doesn't help to try and fake it either! It has to come from the heart or they will see right through your facade and you will never get the best out of them. Ever.

So really what I have to say is this. If you are not a "people person" then probably portrait photography is not for you. If you are not sure if you are, well then maybe you aren't and a career in landscapes would be more your cup of tea. How do you know for sure? Well, do some soul searching, ask yourself if you genuinely care about people, be honest with yourself. If you do, then brush up on those communication skills because they will set you apart from the rest and your clients will keep coming back as well.

Anybody can learn how to use a camera, but very few photographers know how to get the best out of their subjects. The ones that do are already known to us because it's this one skill that makes their portraits stand out from the crowd.

The pic above is of an up and coming young singer songwriter in Southern Sweden called Fatima Al Atar. Look out for her soon to be released CD, judging by her voice I think she could be the real deal!

Happy shooting!

Traffic Circle in Fredensborg

The (almost) Eastern corner of the Landskrona Citadel

After posting a few low-light/night shots of the Landskrona Citadel I decided to post one of it during the day, and what a beautiful Swedish summer day it was!

Waterfront at Lake Esrum in Denmark

I still haven't got used to the extremely long summer evenings in Scandinavia, despite having been here for over a year now. This is my second summer in these northern countries and the beautiful lingering light still appears miraculous to me after a lifetime of the abrupt sunsets that characterise the evenings in Southern Africa. This particular photograph of the waterfront at Lake Esrum was taken at 20.03pm, and there was still another hour of useable light for a fruitful and fulfilling photowalk that splendid Danish summer "magic hour".

Livet är mycket bra!

Beautiful Studebaker at the southernmost tip of Sweden

I came across this beautiful Studebaker while visiting Smygehuk, Sweden's southernmost point. A few minutes later an old guy who looked like he may have bought the car brand new ;-) came over, got in and started it up. Started first turn, no smoking, sputtering or fuss ...and what a truly beautiful nose this car has!

Jetty on Lake Esrum in Denmark

I have photographed this jetty before, but never in a beautiful pastel painterly sunset like this!

Fredensborg is one of my favourite places in Scandinavia, and Lake Esrum is down past the palace a couple of kilometers or so from the town center. It is a beautiful walk through a forested area interspersed with parkland from the palace and then the beautiful lake is the cherry on the top.

Life is good!
:-)

Lake Esrum Sunset

I don't often venture into the world of HDR, but when I am faced with a huge lighting challenge like the one in the scene above there really is no other way to get the full dynamic range on offer. If I exposed for the setting sun the boat in the foreground was diminished to murky blacks and greys, and if I exposed for the foreground the sunset became a wash of blown out highlights. Cue bracketing function on camera, roll on Photomatix (I never upgraded from version 3!) tweak in PSP X5, and voila! A simple exposure blend is enough for me, I try to keep these looking as natural as possible given the circumstances because overworked HDR is an abomination to behold... at least to me.

Campari on Ice - another three light product photograph

Same basic lighting set-up as the photograph in the previous post.

Three Light Product Photo of Baileys' Liqueur

A (reasonably) simple three light product shot of a bottle of Baileys' Liqueur. But how to set up the lights to get this effect? Answer below the photograph of the very yummy Baileys'.

The rim highlight you see on the edge of the bottle is from two strip lights behind the subject, one on either side and about 10" out from each side.
The background light is a gridded reflector with a sheet of round plastic inside to give the smooth glow.
Finally a snoot about 3' directly above the camera, aimed at an angle down and onto the bottle to light up the label.
The bottle is standing on a small sheet of glass out of a cheap frame someone bought me for Christmas, cleaned and polished... but the edge is a little too rough for my liking.
The sheet of glass is standing on four drinking glasses.

Below you can see the subject with each of the three lights on individually so you can see what each one does and you can also see the sheet of glass and the glasses.

This took about 30 minutes to set up and then the actual shooting was all over in just a couple of minutes, then it took a few more minutes to transfer the images to my computer and about 10 minutes to process, and then another 30 minutes to break the lighting setup down again! Which just goes to show, the actual photographing is really just a small part of what photographers do! :-)

Slow Shutter Speeds with Studio Flash for Ambient Colour and Mood

By combining a slow shutter speed and studio flash I was able to get the nice warm ambient glow of the candle falling on the scene as well as the lighting effect of the studio lights. The shutter speed was a very leisurely 4.0 seconds and the Elinchrom flashes fired at the beginning of the exposure. The Elinchroms are providing light on the label of the olive oil bottle (snoot), some fill and highlights (softboxes).

At a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second the mood and warmth is completely lost:

Doesn't really work for me the way the first one does...

And lastly, a slow shutter speed shot with all the studio lights switched off:

Olympus Trip 35 Hero Shot

I haven't been able to use my Olympus Trip 35 for over a year now just simply because I cannot find anywhere in Southern Sweden to process film. If anybody knows of a good lab please let me know, I really miss shooting my Trip... but at least I can shoot pictures of my Trip!

Here is a typical camera "hero" shot of my beautiful Olympus Trip 35 complete with authentic period Olympus Pen flash attached. The flash has a few small bits missing but that's ok, the pic looks great with it on. ;-)

Tahdah!

Oooooh! Aaaah! *Spontaneous applause*

"Why thank you, thank you very much!"

Five Bottles of Wine - on Black

With studio lighting anything you imagine is possible. Best investment I ever made!

Some good advice, if you want to improve your photography then another camera, or some other lens is not going to do it. Rather invest time in learning how to light your subject better, I guarantee that will have a major impact on the quality of your photos, much more than another high priced f2.8 zoom ever will. The temptation is always to get that new specced dslr with the more megapixels and higher frame rate, or that new VR version of the same lens you already have, but unless you change the way you light you are wasting your money. Next time you have bucks to blow, go get a speedlight instead, or a nice softbox, wireless triggers, light stands, umbrellas, heck just about anything but yet another camera body. Be strong, resist GAS, you can do it! ;-)

Mmmmm, beer! - Lighting is in Layers.

I like to think of setting up lighting as adding a series of carefully thought out layers. I normally start out with a background, work out the lighting for it and then slowly add layers until I match the vision I had in my minds eye for the particular subject.

Here is a final shot of a glass of beer and the can and then I will show the various "layers" of light as I added them in my quest for this photograph:

First up, the background light shot which is a softbox aimed from behind the product:

Next, snoot only aimed at the label of the beer:

Now, snoot and a strip light from the right of camera:

Fourth up is the snoot, strip light and a large fill from camera left:

And finally, back to the final shot with all four lights firing at the same time:

Works for me!

The best part about photographing beer is consuming the product after the session is over! :-)

Snooting a Snoot is very snooty indeed!

Had to snoot my snoot today to get the shaft of light exiting the front a little more tight and controlled to highlight a label on a wine bottle. Here is the snooted snoot:

Piece of cardboard from a recent tent purchase (not a light tent, the camping kind) with a round hole cut in and a toilet paper roll cardboard tube stuck in the hole tightly. All taped on with some masking tape. Worked. No more to say.

And here is the result, well two of them really, one with a white background and one with a black background:

And the compulsory "set up" shot just to give you an idea of what was going down: