First Shoot of the Year (Part Three)

The key part of this shot was getting the background exposure and composition right, then adding enough light from the flash in my left hand to expose Helen properly.

The photo above and the one below were both taken in the same place at the same time, the difference being the second has a flash illumination the background, while Helen is lit by natural light. The flash is laid on the ground just to the left of Helen's foot, pointing towards the wall behind her. If I had taken some gels with me I could have changes the colour of the wall to better contrast with her hair. (Maybe next time).

And that's it for this set of photos.

Thanks for reading and a big thankyou to Helen for being an excellent subject as always.

First Shoot of the Year (Part Two)

This is a shot that initially on the camera LCD didn't look to good, with the histogram pushed all the way over to the right and a lot of the frame over-exposed. But, as I were shooting in RAW, I knew I had al least a chance of getting something good with a little bit of fiddling in Aperture. So with a bit of recovery, a mono conversion and a quick contrast boost, Voila!

Now this is what I call a "Lou O'Bedlam"shot. Natural light, open shade, prime lens wide open. This was shot in the shade of the huge Xmas tree.

This was shot in direct bright sunlight, with a truck trailer as a background. Once again i had the flash in my left hand right at the limit ( high speed sync at 1/8000 of a second!) filling in the shadows and providing a catch-light in Helen's eyes..

Right, that's Part Two sorted, see you soon for Part Three.

First shoot of the year (Part One)

Well, another year rolls around and it's time to get back shooting after the Xmas excess :)
One of my favourite models, Helen was up from university for Xmas break and we managed to squeeze a quick shoot in. I often travel light, especially when I'm shooting on location or on the street and this shoot was no exception. One camera body, one lens and one flash (with no stand and no softbox, brolly or other modifier). Lens-wise I used the Canon 35mm f2 prime lens. Although I use zooms a lot, sometimes a prime lens is great for forcing you to "zoom with your feet" and maybe try some compositions you wouldn't normally think of using.

Not those two reprobates again!

At the weekend, whilst shooting the pictures for Legacy Comics' "Halloween Havoc" Costume Competition, I had a chance to take a couple of impromptu shots of Chris and Vern in their "Harcourt & Haigh" guises.

The set-up was actually very simple, with a single 60cm softbox on a boom above camera, another flash on the ground firing through a brolly for fill, and a third flash on a stand behind the subject lighting the background, which was a "borrowed" white cloth drape.

I converted the photos to mono to give them a bit of that classic David Bailey, sixties timeless portrait vibe. It's a simple, clean look that can be done with relatively little equipment (you could get away with one flash, a window and a reflector, or maybe even just using natural light).

As always, many thanks to Legacy Comics for the use of the space, and to Harcourt & Haigh for, well, just being themselves :)

Pursuit of the Cybermen

I went out to shoot some Cybermen photos over the weekend, only to be faced with a few difficulties.
First, when I got to the park where I planned to shoot, I realised that BOTH my camera batteries where very nearly dead, and secondly the high winds were causing the Cybermen to fall over (a lot).
I managed to get some good shots, but it's a little nerve wracking when the camera might shut itself off at any second, every shot has to count! :)

Star-trekkin'

The originals, and still the best.

Spur of the moment shoot with Molly.

Last week I got a text from Emma Carter asking if I where free to come along on a shoot later on that afternoon. Needless to say I jumped at the chance, packed my gear and headed out.

Shoot with Sarah W

Last week I got the chance to shoot some photos of Sarah in the backstreets of Halifax, thanks fellow Halifax photographer Emma Carter.

Tuesday & Thursday Toy Challenge 2011 - So Far

Well, I'm now well into the first quarter of this years photos, and barring a couple of hiccups I'm pretty happy with what I've got so far.
Some of my favourites so far include;


This picture of a Lego Knight was inspired by an article I read by Ashley Pomeroy about John Boorman's Film "Excaliber". Apparently Boorman would shine a green light on the knight's armour to make it look "spooky", which is the reason for thr green gelled flash coming from the left.
The background was originally grey, but at the insistance of my five year old daughter I swapped it for a red one, which does indeed look much better.

The shot of the TARDIS is a rare one for me, in that is a Photoshop composite, whereas I usually like to try and do everything in-camera whenever possible.
The TARDIS was shot against a solid coloured background, cut out and placed onto a background from NASA JPL/CalTech.
The background was selectively blurred using a depth map to give the background "depth". I also made a 3D version of this picture, viewable here.

This picture came about as Charles Darwin's birthday (12th February) happened to coincide with the letter "C".
This idea had popped up on flickr with Star Wars Clone Troopers, but I'd not seen it done with Cybermen, so it seemed like an obvious choice.
It did get mentioned that I'd missed out a link (presumably the cyberman from either "Tomb of the Cybermen" or "Invasion"). In a way this is correct, but I'd intended to feature one Cyberman each from the 60's, 70's, 80's and "NuWho" eras. There's also a Beatles "inspired" version here.

This photo was one of those ideas that just jumps into your head fully formed.
Whilst "brainstorming" ideas at the end of 2010, it suddenly occured to me that in 2011, the "Ides of March" (the 15th) fell on a Tuesday. So doing a version of the assassination of Julius Caesar seemed a no-brainer.

So that's some of my favourites from the letters done so far. I've got some ideas already planned for F and G, so we'll keep on trucking and see what we come up with.

Vicy

On the same day as our shoot with Siobhan Emma and I also spent some time with Vicy at Peoples Park in Halifax. By this time the light was fading so we were more reliant on flash to get enough light and get it where we wanted it.
Initially we went with the tried and tested Canon 580ex in a 24" softbox, then adding a backlight gelled blue.



This time I tried having the backlight in the frame for a different effect (on these shot's I did Photoshop out the stand where it were visible). Finally we finished up by lighting Vicy with two flashes front right and back left, while using a third to light the statue in the background.
By this time it was getting late and getting really quite cold, so we called it a day, packed up our gear and headed home.

More photos from the shoot here.

Many thanks to Emma and to Vicy for being a trooper. Hopefully we'll get to work together again later in the year when the weather is more clement :)

Siobhan

Today myself and Emma Carter went into town to shoot Siobhan. As is often the case, the weather was less than perfect, drizzly, cold and a bit grey. The Piece Hall is our usual location for days like this, so we met Siobhan and set up on the top floor, where most of the empty shop units are.

I used my usual default location lighting setup, a Canon 580ex in a 24" Ezybox softbox, triggered with Yongnuo RF-602 radio triggers. For most of the shots I had the flash gelled with a 1/2 CTO (Colour Temperature Orange) gel to warm up Siobhan's skintones a touch.

















Later I added a second flash with a blue gel as a backlight.



Finally I shot some natural light shots with the 70-200 f4 IS while Emma used the flash setup.



More photos from the shoot here.

Many thanks to Emma and to Siobhan who braved the cold to model for us.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"

Well, a new year, a new alphabet :)
This year I'm planning on getting through all the letters in order and on time (unlike last year).
First up is Mission Commander Dave, a fine example of a Lego Space Astronaut, possibly dating from the early eighties (it may be as old as my wife!).

Done entirely in camera. The background is a still from Georges Méliès' film "A Trip to the Moon" (1895).
Shot with my new Canon G12 with a Canon 580ex speedlight triggered with a Canon ST-E2 and bounced off the wall to my right.

The Big Freeze

A few days ago I finally got round to trying an idea I've had in the back of my mind for ages, namely Cybermen in the freezer.
This was inspired by the Cybermen using cryogenic "Tombs" to hibernate for long periods of time in "Tomb of the Cybermen" and "Attack of the Cybermen".
Timing was critical for shooting this picture, as I had to wait until the freezer was mostly empty so I would have room to set up and light the shot.

More after the jump.

Snow Fun

Remember, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

Halifax from a Great Height

Halifax Panorama, originally uploaded by Hellbelly.

I've recently had the opportunity to take some photographs from one of the higher vantage points on Halifax, and thought it would be an ideal chance to try a panoramic shot.
Constructed from eight shots, composed vertically and stitched in Photoshop CS5.

More photos from high up here.

SNOW!!!!

Just a very quick shot (as it was freezing cold!). Just using a flash with a warm gel bounced off the most expensive flash modifier I own, which costs as much as a house!
(the front of my house).

:)

Bex

At the same time as I were shooting Fran, Emma and I were also shooting Bex.
We used pretty much the same lighting set ups on both models;

Clamshell lighting



And Ringflash

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And check out Bex's awesome side shaving!



Bex wasn't so used to being in front of the camera, so I used my patented "talk a lot of rubbish" technique and soon she was throwing shapes with the best of them.

And I still think she looks like Bjork :)

Francesca

Fran has modelled for Emma Carter (who was helping out on the shoot) before, but it's the first time I've photographed her and I certainly hope to work with her again.
First up we set up a 43" shoot thru brolly camera left and a bare flash to blow the background out to pure white.



Then we pulled out my (much underused) boom arm to use some clamshell lighting along with a silver reflector.



Finally we used the Rayflash and a bare wall for some ringflash shots.

Bring out The Gramsch!

It's been a busy few weeks photography wise. First up was a shoot on the streets of Leeds with Graham, who I've known for a long time, but not seen for a couple of years. We shot fast and loose with just one light, and mostly with the 70-200 F4 IS and the 50mm f1.8 prime, which produced some cracking images. After 2 hours rain stopped play, but out of 160 frames or so, I got 98 keepers, which I think is pretty good.
And I got to hang out with genuinely unique and strange (in a good way) individual.