Tag Archives: light

Warbirds Over the West: Making all the Images I Envisioned Despite Fear

01 Wednesday Jul 2015

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On June 13, 2015, the B-17 Alliance hosted the second annual Warbirds Over the West at McNary Field in Salem. This was the first time it was held at the Alliance’s new home in Salem. Knowing that my friends at the Living History Group Northwest were supposed to be at the show, I knew there was a chance for some images that were very important to me. I also knew to make them happen I’d need to ask some these great folks who I don’t know that well to do this for me with little benefit to them. (Can afford to give them some free pics, but little else.) This is a situation that often makes me quite anxious, so I was afraid I would chicken out and come home without the images.

I have been endeavoring to build a portfolio of images of people with vehicles in a Hollywood inspired style to show potential clients. The “aviatrix” shoot I recently wrote about with Sami Van Der Westhuizen and Carrie Strahle – makeup, was also part of this effort. If all went well at Warbirds Over the West, I felt certain I could reach the number of images I needed to show this portfolio as separate from my “people” portfolio on my web site.

With these images being the most important thing I had planned for the day, and the fact that the light would be deteriorating all day; I made it my first task for the day. Thanks to training with Toastmasters International and some other issues, I have been doing pretty well with these sorts of things when it has to do with my photography career. Thus, asking the various folks in these photos to pose for me went off without a single hitch and resulted in images that met what I envisioned very well. I couldn’t be more grateful for their help.

These images were shot and processed with the method I discussed on here earlier, How Do I Light Heroic Portraits? The only difference was I used a low-saturation version of the Lightroom preset I created. I usually do this with old military things.

Of course, there was a lot of other stuff going on at Warbirds Over the West. The headline was Grumpy was there from the Historic Flight Museum was giving flights to paying folks and doing flybys. Some friends from WAAAM flew the museum’s Taylorcraft L-2 and there was also a Stinson L-5 on hand. The beautiful, shiny DC-3 flew in from Aurora.

There was also live music and a beer garden, which proved to be the perfect way to chill after the big day.

In the end, it was a great day, I look forward to it next year.

Take a look at my Point A to Point B portfolio, the People, or the images from Warbirds Over the West.

Aviatrix at WAAAM

27 Wednesday May 2015

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Recently, I completed a model shoot at WAAAM with some of the old biplanes there. The route to this shoot was nebulous and the original point of the shoot got lost a little bit, but we made something great out of it. I believe WAAAM will get a great photo to hang in the lobby out of this and I certainly got some nice new additions to my portfolio.

I’ll begin my narrative with the human side of the story, as the shoot was an incredible experience, and this part of the story isn’t necessarily evident in the story.

I have been working with Ken Olsson with various things at WAAAM for several years. Initially, we met when I was writing a story about aviation museums in Oregon. I’ve always enjoyed talking with Ken, he’s friendly, and we’ve always had plenty to talk about. I met Carrie Strahle, of Carrie Strahle Makeup Artistry, at an ASMP event, and exchanged business cards with her. She is the kind of person that instantly strikes you as a friend, despite the brief encounter. In discussions with Carrie later, she suggested Sami Van Der Westhuizen might be able to help me with a project that I was beginning to think about at that time. Thus I contacted Sami on FB.

So when I came up with the idea for this project. I started by having a meeting with Ken and Judy at WAAAM and discussed this as well as a few other ideas. I did not want to move ahead with other elements of the project without making sure it was ok with them; although, I had discussed the idea with Carrie in friendly conversation and got her ideas on whether the logistics of this could be worked out or not. After getting approval from WAAAM, for a slightly different idea than what you see before you, I put out a casting call on FB. When someone suggested Sami, I wasn’t aware she met the height requirements we had at that point, I thought perfect. I asked Sami if she would be interested. Next step was to ask Carrie if she would be willing to do the project.

Finally, the day came. The photographic crew met at Joe Wilson’s studio, Joe is the membership chair at the local chapter of the ASMP. Sami was the only person involved I had not met in person. She came in with her boyfriend and I must say, they are some of the nicest people you’ll meet. So, with one of the friendliest, fun crews around, we got to work.

In summation, the shoot was a blast, in addition to producing some great imagery. I was able to make contact with existing friends again and make some new ones. On the professional side of things, Sami was amazing, what I noticed immediately was her ability to help me aim the lights shaving minutes off setup when I changed the lighting. Carrie’s work was fantastic; I especially loved the curls she gave Sami for the shoot.

One thing I learned about myself that had to do with the human side of the shoot, is I do get in a bit of “a zone” when I photograph. During most of the shoot, I got in this zone where I was only aware of Sami, myself and the plane. I came out of it occasionally to share what images we were getting. I was not aware of what others were doing around me on set. It really struck home for me when I started retouching images and I would notice a frame or two when a strand of hair on Sami would fall out of place and then suddenly, the next frame, it’d be all perfect again. From this it was apparent that Carrie was stepping in to touch up. Looking at the bts images my assistant (dad) made, it was more apparent; Carrie doing touch ups, everyone very attentive to what was happening, confirming what I had earlier suspected about me falling into “the zone.”

If you are a photographer needing a model and makeup artist, I recommend putting Sami and Carrie at the top of your list of possibilities. They do excellent work and will certainly help keep your set a fun place to be.

A young model posing as a late twenties aviatrix with a Curtiss JN-4D "Jenny" at WAAAM. (Rick A. Brown)

 

Now to move on to a technical thing, I wanted to explain how I made the above image.

It was inspired by a promotional video on the Profoto web site. I started by setting my ambient exposure such that everything would fade to black. Setting ISO 100, 1/160th of a second and f/16 ensures that happens really quickly under the indoor setting. I setup one light in a strip bank, as close as possible to directly above the Jenny. It was slightly in front of the plane and then tilted at a slight angle to make sure the light shone far enough back on the plane. Then, I lit Sami with a very large octabox placed 45° to her front and 45° above, essentially Rembrandt light. The octa was also aimed across her, feathering the light onto her face. This was primarily done to prevent spill on the background, but also makes the light softer on her.

Post processing on this image was really simple. Basically, it comes down to I applied Tonal Contrast from Nik’s Color Efex Pro4 on the plane and Sami’s clothes.

Please take a closer look at the images from this Aviatrix at WAAAM shoot, or my updated people portfolio.

Do You Smooth Skin?

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Do I smooth skin in my portrait photographs? ABSOLUTELY!

This is entry is going to be less of a how-to piece and more of a philosophical piece on retouching. I will start however, by giving a very brief explanation of what I do. I currently use the “high pass skin softening” method as discussed in Scott Kelby’s Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers Using Photoshop. I am considering learning the frequency separation method, but it looks considerably harder and I am quite happy with the results I am currently getting.

Now on to the real subject here, the philosophy of it all.

To me it seems like there is a growing tide of people pushing for totally unaltered images. I would say that at the minimum, this is horribly misled. PHOTOGRAPHS ARE NOT OBJECTIVE TRUTH and they never have been. There are many parts of the photographic process that make it impossible for a photograph to be an objective recording of what we saw. Starting with the fact that a camera can only capture a limited view and the photographer determines what is capture within that frame. Secondly, sensors and film do not function the same as your retina and lack the interpretive power of your brain, which has an immense impact on what you see.

Now, I do have a problem with retouching that drastically alters how a model looks. If your finished image has the model looking 50lbs lighter than she does, you are being dishonest. However, downplaying how noticeable a wrinkle is or something of the like is totally acceptable in my view. In fact, I find that an image presented straight out of the camera actually exaggerates how noticeable wrinkles etc. are, so retouching will more closely match the experience of standing before the person.

Furthermore, when talking to some who want to see zero retouching, I get the feeling that they also cringe at us using a softbox to light our subject with pleasing light. Thus, in acknowledgment of the “give ‘em an inch, they’ll take a mile” phenomenon, this could get ridiculous.

I think we need photos that do not lie, but feel also that this does not mean that the only thing a photographer is allowed to do is push the button. In my estimation, some are beginning to push this issue too far.

Take a look at my people portfolio.

Cycling Lifestyle Photos

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

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Previously I discussed building a lifestyle photography portfolio. So this past month I contacted the fiancé of the young woman I previously photographed cooking dinner and asking him if he’d be willing to ride his bicycle back and forth across one of Oregon’s many covered bridges at either sunrise or sunset for me. I was quite surprised when he said sunrise would work better for him, although morning does tend to work better photographically. First of all, despite the light being very similar, it’s usually a little better in the morning and secondly there’s usually less traffic to put up with on the roads, etc.

So we met at Gilkey Bridge at 6:00am. I had looked at the maps and tried to evaluate which one of the bridges near Scio would look best at sunrise. I eliminated Shimanek Bridge from the considerations because of the limited vantage points available that don’t place you squarely on a farmer’s land. This is something I wouldn’t do without permission.

We started the shoot with some backlit portraits. I was going for a casual look with some flare. When post processing I accentuated the flare a bit using the new circle filter in Lightroom. I centered it on the brightest part of the flare, inverted the mast to affect the center of the filter more. Then I increased the exposure a bit, reduced the highlights a tiny amount, reduced the clarity and saturation a bit, and finally added a tiny bit of yellow. Then in Color Efex Pro4 I applied the Glamour Glow filter to finish enhancing this look.

USA, Oregon, Scio, a cyclist, first thing in the morning. MR (Rick A. Brown)

Then, when the sun had gotten slightly higher in the sky, we began with the real work of the shoot; photographing him riding back and forth across the bridge. I worked it from many angles, using fill flash in a soft box with ½ cut CTO on the backlit images. The one limitation that frustrated me a bit was where the ground sloped away to the river did limit me from some of the angles I would have liked to have shot. There just wasn’t any way to actually stand in those locations.

Anyhow, overall I am very pleased with the results. Take a look at my portrait portfolio.

White Background, Clamshell Lighting, Beauty Shots

17 Monday Dec 2012

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Ahh, the photo sometimes jokingly referred to as the Oil of Olay shot, because this sort of photo is often used to advertise cosmetic products. It is fairly simple and not stylized much and has many features that might make people think it’s a boring type of photo, but it still has one attribute keeping it a perennial favorite; it’s probably the best sort of photo for the simple purpose of saying “oohh, isn’t she pretty” in a visual way.

This type of shot is primarily determined by the sort of light used. The basics are to put one light near the subject, above and in front of them angled at 45°. Then place another light below the subject basically as a mirror to the above light. This arrangement can be described as being like an open “clamshell,” thus the name of the lighting setup. The photographer has to shoot through the small gap between the two lights. The bottom light, as fill, can either be an actual light or a fill card. Many photographers, myself included, like the top light as a beauty dish with a diffusion sock. I personally use a reflector as a bottom fill, but a small softbox would allow more control. The reason I use the card is currently the softboxes I have are too large to be convenient for this shot. This light setup shows the woman’s features in the best possible light; soft and shadows that aren’t too dark.

I have improved on this type of shot, primarily because I have learned to make the light on the subject more intense, which makes everything work better. White backgrounds aren’t necessary, but are the customary background for this type of shot. I use a Lastolite backlight for this sort of thing currently, but a large softbox or illuminated piece of white background paper could also be used. However you choose to do the background, the important thing to remember is to illuminate it just barely enough to make it white, unless you want the light from it to spill onto your subject.

Post processing is very simple, usually at least. I do some basic adjustments in Lightroom, primarily increasing the contrast a little. Then I go into Photoshop and retouch the images according to the methods laid out in Scott Kelby’s Proffesional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop. The vast majority of the time, that’s it. You might notice that in one of the shots, I applied the High Key filter from Color Efex Pro4.

I have made this sort of photo with every female model I’ve worked with thus far.

Take a closer look at these images. Take a look at my portrait portfolio.

“Party” Photos

12 Wednesday Dec 2012

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I’m calling this last group of photos, for lack of a better name, “Party Photos.” These are the images I had Emily targeted for in our little shoot. Essentially, more natural looking portraits made in her home, she hosted the shoot by the way, very thankful to her for that. The home would be visible in the background, unlike the other images where the background was meant to either be not noticeable or replaced by another.

In the end, like the old Hollywood style photos, we photographed both women this way. In fact, the most popular images are proving to be the two women together.

Emily is a close friend of the woman who introduced me to the roller derby world, Alethea, who I had met through photography. This shoot was the first opportunity I had to really get to know her however and she is a wonderful lady, who kept her commitment to our shoot despite many issues arising for her that day.

Lighting for the shoot was of two basic types. The photos on the couch were a large octabank to one side and a strip bank in front of the ladies powered far down as fill. For the photos in the stairwell, we were definitely going for a less polished look to the light. What I did was put a beauty dish with diffusion sock at a 45° to the area where the ladies would be posing. I put the light much further away than usual, both to give the women a wide area to move around in and to give that less polished look to the light. The light bouncing around off all those white walls, kept it from getting too rough.

Post processing on these is kind of interesting. You can probably tell by looking at these, that I did not decide on one basic way to do this. First off I will say the retouching by Scott Kelby’s techniques, I decided to do less heavy handed than I usually do.

As far as the finishing effects, you’ll see there were basically three approached I took. First off, was the nothing special approach, where I finished the retouch and called it good. Secondly, was the approach where I used the Bleach Bypass recipe from Color Efex Pro4. This came with the software and is made of Bleach Bypass, Glamour Glow, and a vignette. Finally, there is my favorite of the approaches and is what I used on all the photos in the stairwell. After the retouch, I applied the Glamour Glow filter using the cool glow preset and the Darken/Lighten Center filter.

This is the post processing used on this, the most popular ever image on my web site.

USA, Oregon, Springfield,a couple Young Women enjoying Saturday Night. MR (Rick A. Brown)

Take a closer look at these images, or look at my portrait portfolio.

George Hurrell Inspired, Old Hollywood Glam Look Photos

10 Monday Dec 2012

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First off, I’d like to start by stating that these images are inspired by George Hurrell, but are certainly not supposed to be a direct copy of his work.

I’d like to continue with the story where I left off when I decided to ask Jenny, the dancer in the previous composite, if she wanted to model for me. I already mentioned that I had been envisioning this kind of photo for a very long time with a model with a specific look. There were a few women at this event that had this look. I spoke to one or two that night letting them know to contact me if they were interested; having never heard from them, I hope it’s because they weren’t interested and not that they forgot or something. Anyhow, Natalie, the darker haired of the two women in the above slide show was one of the women that had the look I had envisioned. Emily the other young woman, I had in mind for another sort of shot; in the end, I had both women pose for both types of shots. I was a bit nervous about proposing this idea to these two ladies as I didn’t know Natalie at all and only barely knew Emily. However, they both seemed really cool, so I definitely thought it was worth the shot.

Turns out, I was right on both counts; the ladies looked as expected in the image and were very good company for the several hours the shoot took. The three women I photographed that evening are definitely some folks that I am very happy to know.

Anyhow, let’s move on to how the images were made.

I had several lighting ideas pieced together from many different things that I read. The two that I thought worked best.

  • Place a beauty dish almost overhead without a diffusion sock. Bring it down at an angle to the camera until the models eyes are illuminated. Directly overhead leaves her eyes in a shadow, not a good look. Then power this flash up so that it illuminates her skin extremely brightly, but not blown-out. Then have a strip bank in front of the model for fill. Power this flash down to where it just barely provides some detail in the shadow areas.

USA, Oregon, Springfield, Young Woman, MR (Rick A. Brown)

  • Use the fill precisely as in #1. Take the beauty dish off the key light. Replace it with a grid. Place it such that it is 45° above and to the side. Aim it by asking the model to look at it and watch for when she can see the flash tube. Please remember to power the flash down before doing this, I forgot, this being my first time to use the technique and for a brief time I made Natalie quite uncomfortable. Without any diffusing materials in front of the flash, the light will be much brighter so this much lower power setting will probably give you the exposure you need, again you want to be approaching blown-out, but not yet there. This was my preferred of these two methods.

USA, Oregon, Springfield, Young Woman, MR (Rick A. Brown)

Then it’s on to post processing. I initially start in Lightroom, choosing the images I want to use. Then I apply the Camera Portrait profile and remove chromatic aberrations. Finally, I move to the basic panel and increase the contrast to +20 and increase the black setting until only a few pixels are showing black. At this point I right click on the image and choose Edit In> Photoshop.

Once in Photoshop, I start by converting the image to black and white in Silver Efex Pro2. I do this first because the image being in black and white sometimes changes what needs to be retouched, and thus you can save time by doing this first. For example, my method includes using the red color filter and this lightens everything red, this often makes the veins in ones eyes blend with the white, thus making retouching this completely unnecessary. Speaking of my method for this, I have created a preset in Silver Efex Pro2 for this. It includes a red filter, approximately +20 in contrast and soft contrast, -50 in highlight structure, -20 in midtone structure, +30 in shadow structure and +20 in fine structure. I then check to see if any shadow areas need local adjustment to bring out detail and I apply the copper toner using the most subtle preset.

At this point, it’s time for the basic retouching. I use the techniques from Scott Kelby’s Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop. I recommend you get this book. I got it in the spiral bound version, easier to use as a reference while you’re doing the retouching. A basic overview of what I do is lighten the eyes, retouch veins if they’re visible at all, lighten highlights in hair, retouch any blemishes, reduce the intensity of wrinkles (you could entirely eliminate, but I choose to maintain more reality than that), soften skin, and dodge and burn contours to accentuate dimensionality of face. For skin softening, I use the “High Pass Skin Softening” method discussed in the book; I mention it specifically because I vastly prefer it to other methods. It is very controllable and does an excellent job. I find the most important step for this look is the dodging and burning and I’ll explain why in the next paragraph.

After doing this retouch, I stamp all visible layers to the top; the [shift][ctrl][alt][e] shortcut. Then I open that in Color Efex Pro4. I run the Glamour Glow filter on the Warm Glow preset. I tweak this, primarily by lowering the warmth. This is where the dodging and burning really pays off, what the Glamour Glow filter does with that is truly magical and you’ll see it again in an upcoming blog post. It makes the image look almost three dimensional. Finally, to accentuate the look I use the Darken/Lighten Center filter. I place the center directly on whichever eye I think is more important to the composition, reduce the size of the center to the minimum size and then tweak the luminosities of center and border.

Hope you give this look a try; it’s a lot of fun. These sorts of images help your models/clients experience a bit of fantasy as well.

USA, Oregon, Springfield, Young Woman, MR (Rick A. Brown)

For a closer look at these Old time Hollywood inspired images, or take a look at my portrait portfolio.

 

The Importance of the Elinchrom Strobes

30 Friday Mar 2012

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Well, in regards to my new portrait portfolio (in the above slide show, the outdoor image isn’t new), I’ve written a lot already how important the teaching of the folks over at Kelby Training was, and how important Nik Software was. So today, I wanted to write a bit about how important the Elinchrom lighting kit was.

Recently, I purchased the Scott Kelby’s Light It. Shoot It. Retouch It. LIVE Tour Kit from B&H. You can see an unboxing video here.

I am loving this kit. Elinchrom products are excellent. The monolights are powerful and easy to use. Most notably the wireless system. This allows control of the power output of the various lights independently from the camera. This makes working with few or no assistants much simpler and efficient. The lighting accessories, the most important part of any lighting kit, are excellent. The quality of light they produce is amazing and other than initial assembly, are easy to use.

Any deficiencies in the kit would be there isn’t a boom, or any accessory to aid you in holding the light away from the stand. I quickly rectified this by buying an Avenger miniboom. It turned out to be a bit of overkill, but always better to have more performance out of your equipment than you need than less. The other deficiency would be that there are only two lights. Some of the setups discussed in Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It, require three. I rectified this by using a speed-light I had on hand. The only problem I had with this system was that the speed-light needed to be run by hard-wire. Thus, not allowing the wireless system with this setup, being less convenient. It worked fine though, and I will make do with that system until I can acquire a third BxRi 500.

Take a look at my portrait gallery or my older portraits.

Elinchrom Scott Kelby’s Light It. Shoot It. Retouch It. LIVE Tour Kit

10 Saturday Mar 2012

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I recently received this awesome lighting kit, available exclusively from B&H.  It is inspired by the gear used on Scott Kelby’s Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It tour; a fabulous learning experience. Thus far, I think it works very well.

I made a couple of unboxing videos of the kit. You’ll notice in the shooting part that I’m not in a nice spacious studio, but in a home that looks a little crowded and messy due to the lighting equipment in place. This is due to the fact that I intend for my business to be an on-location sort of thing. I will shoot portraits in homes and place of business and will rent studio space when that is a better option for some compelling reason.

I made two versions of the video because there is so much stuff in the kit. There’s the full length video of the unboxing then a shorter version with just me shooting with it.

First the full length.

Then the shortened.

Early Portrait Lessons

23 Thursday Feb 2012

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I’ve mentioned before, although not often enough that I’m sure all my readers know, but I am going to get into portrait photography very seriously soon. I am going to acquire some serious studio lighting equipment and make some portfolio images to promote this part of my business.

I thought today I’d write about some of what I learned with my first real experiment with this sort of photography. In this instance I had used a softbox on a Canon speedlight.

With the photos of the young woman, I went with clamshell lighting. The speedlight was mounted in the softbox above and to the front and we used a reflector below, with a second speedlight in a Lastolite Backlight to provide the white background. The mistake I made here was positioning the softbox too much above and not enough forward, shadowing her eyes more than I’d like. This problem might have been stopped if I was shooting tethered, making it easier to see that it was a problem while I was still shooting.

With the photos of the young man, the idea was to create an edgy photo of him playing bass with a balanced ambient exposure from the street scene. The big mistake I made here was that I did this too late at night and it was impossible to balance the street’s ambient light. I now know that the best way to pull off this look is to do a composite with the portrait being lit in the edgy three light method; two gridded flashes behind for rim light and a beauty dish above and to the front for fill. I’ve started shooting backgrounds for trying it again this way.