As I had so much flour left over, another shoot with it was, well inevitable. However, before inevitability could strike, James Wall, marketing director of Lencarta lighting wrote to me and asked if I’d be interested in doing it again at their studio in Bradford, to promote the SuperFast lights I had been using for the last few shoots. Well – I’d be doing this sort of thing anyway, so this was not a hard decision, and wouldn’t need to sell anything – these lights are genuinely fantastic.
Now – there’s a joke in here somewhere about the model being self-raising, but to be honest, It’s too late in the day to be crafting that, so just make up your own and insert it here…
How much do you need? I had no idea. I’d seen a few flour (or “dust”) shots around on flickr, and Pinterest and this seemed like an ideal job for my new high-speed IGBT Lencarta studio lights – movement, flour backlit, hair flying etc. Well, I bought 4 bags of Sainsbury’s most basic plain flour. I now have 3 and a half bags of plain flour – which, as it turns out is not much use for baking anything…..
The venue of the flour experiment would be Millwood Photography in Stalybridge. I highly recommend Millwood studio – Paul not only agreed to let me throw flour about in his studio, helped out on the shoot. And the brave volunteer to be covered in flour? Lizzie Bayliss. I’ve shot with Lizzie before and she is one of the best models around.
I keep coming back to this dance theme. There are a number of reasons. Dancers, especially classically trained dancers hold themselves with a certain grace and poise. (well “duh” I hear the rest of the world say, but well, yes it is obvious, however it is a reason why I’m attracted to dancers as subjects). Next is the movement element – showing movement in a still photograph, whether it be a dancer frozen in mid-leap –where it’s obvious they are moving as they had to be to get up there, to showing multiple positions or a constant motion blur in the image to show the path they have taken. I had shot with Gabby before, to produce a multiple flash image showing her path from stage right to stage left. This time I wanted to explore motion freezing, and getting some blur on.
Gabrielle Dams, my subject for this shoot is only 18 years of age, and yet she dances, she sings and teaches a dance class of12-13 year old girls – who all adore her. She’s very hard-working and always turns in a great performance.
Light grey specifically. People used to shoot on a Chroma key green or blue background to make cutting out easier (by selecting everything that is *that* green is was easy to cut out the model for pasting onto something else). It is still popular in video work. For stills though, you don’t need to bother with that, as the selection and matting tools in Photoshop these days are very good. Using these green or blue background also reflects blue and green light onto your subject. You do still need to blend in your model and create shadows, and match the lights and so on.
However! Forget all that because if you shoot on a grey background you can just throw backgrounds on top and blend with overlay. Mask off the model and you’re done.
(Well ok there a few more steps but it’s certainly less tedious than the usual perfection-selection technique)
New 5 hour workshop on lighting techniques with Body Couture Studios in Congleton. Unlike the half and half lighting/photoshop workshop on the 19th Jan (which is now sold out), this is a pure lighting and shooting workshop. Sunday 9th Feb from 11am to 4pm, I’ll be covering from simple, one light portraits up to incorporating movement. From good light, to dramatic light, using gels, fog and fabric; softboxes, reflectors and grids. Places are limited to 8 at £45 so call Becky at the studio quick if you want to reserve a place – the workshop on the 19th Jan is now sold out! (see flyer below for details). Visit http://bodycouturestudios.co.uk/ for location details.
I always like to get a shot of every model using this set-up. Once you set it up, it’s so bullet proof, even I can do it without too much head scratching. Often called “clamshell lighting” as the lights resemble an open clam from the side, there are many variations on this lighting set-up, however they all have one light centred over the top of the model but angled more towards the horizontal, with another light or reflector below. You can then light the background from the front or the back.
Nah….
You can actually buy a thing called a “triflector” from Lastolite that has 3 panels that reflect from the bottom, left and right for a wraparound fill. I don’t use side reflectors – I find it makes the face look fat. In fact, I don’t use a reflector at all – I prefer to use a powered fill light, as I can then position it lower out of the way, and can have as much power in it as I like. I almost always use a small beauty dish directly overhead and centred, sometimes with the diffuser on, sometimes not – depends on how good the subject’s skin is: putting the diffuser on will smooth it out a bit by reducing the micro-shadows around any skin defects. For fill, I will use a softbox on a floor stand angled up just off horizontal – maybe 30 degrees. This is powered up to 1 stop below the main light.
Martin Pawlett and I have been organising these events for the past couple of years now for Holmes Chapel Camera club, and I guess, the first one was why I bought some studio lights in the first place. In past events, we’ve shot whoever turned up, and wanted to do that again. However as we also wanted to demonstrate some lighting, and I wanted to play around with some experimental stuff as well, we also hired some professional models to bolster the line-up. Martin hired Laura Norrey – a fantastic model who specialises in a vintage (40’s) look. I use PurplePort a lot for my model sourcing and it works very well. I put out a casting call for the day asking for “TF” models. “Time For…” or “TF” means models giving their time, in return for images for their portfolio. I got a number of responses, although may didn’t have transport and the venue we use is a little out of the way. Still, we got two models this way – Jade and Emma. I also then hired Bella Bibby via PurplePort for the lighting demos.
As the date approached, we had 3 of our TF models pull out (we didn’t get these via PP) so I looked around for some replacements. Bex at Body Couture did me a great deal and came down with Ellie Anderson making the numbers up to 7 models on the day. I also hired Amanda Hall of Visage-Design who did a great job on the make-up for the beauty shots.
Lower Withington Parish hall is brilliant for this. It is big, has a very high vaulted roof and a stage. It also has a lot of back rooms we can use for make-up and so on. Here’s a 180 degree panorama of the hall with 3 main lighting stages installed:-
Image copyright Chris Davies 2013
That’s me in the middle shooting Emma Halloway in her very cool shiny PVC two-piece. On the left we have Anthony Holloway with Ellie Anderson and Bella is looking a bit forgotten on the right there. I’m sure Martin is just out of shot fixing something …. Continue reading
Ah um so this is another one the great wizard of photons – Mr Joe McNally casually did one afternoon (well that’s what it seemed like when it was edited together with a load of other shots in a Kelby Training video) and I just thought “oh yeah – I could do that” followed by “ah but…” and then “unless you…” and finally “I could do that”.
I’m talking about mixing ambient light with flash in a selective way – either outside, or using continuous lights. Normally, in the studio, I would start off by confirming I’d banished the ambient light so this was going to be interesting. Joe has a phenomenal shot in his portfolio shot in Beijing of a woman in traditional looking Chinese garb with lots of flowing patterned silks streaming out behind her in the wind. As it moves away from her, the fabric becomes more and more blurred from motion. Joe made this happen by lighting only the front of the model with flash, and adjusting the shutter speed to dial in the required amount of blur on the trailing silks that were hidden from the flash light. Continue reading
Been meaning to try out a Joel Grimes style high-key blown-out image for a while. I got a message from a local shooter – John Gannon, who’d recently built a studio – in his back garden, was busy teaching himself to shoot pictures and had a fantastic model – Sarah Rae from Bournemouth, at his studio all day. It just said – you’re local – fancy shooting with Sarah in my studio – just pay Sarah for her time. Well
– how could I refuse? It would seem rude! John’s back yard studio is a good size and he’s equipped it with basic lighting, a lot of backdrops, and even a little make-up station. Sarah showed up right on time with a massive wardrobe packed into 3 cases. She had been on tour in the North West for 3 weeks or so. I only intended to spend a couple of hours there, however Sarah has such a fantastical look – intense impressions, with an overwhelming sense of concentrated attention – and John’s a brilliant bloke – very generous, helpful and dead easy to get on with. I ended up spending 4 hours shooting with Sarah, and we got some great results.
So, first up was the Joel Grimes nuclear detonation light-everywhere shot. Joel uses some really big modifiers to provide fill left and right and a medium/large softbox to provide slightly more directional light from the front and centre. Go watch his videos on “Lit Up” – they’re really useful. I didn’t have 2 really big modifiers, however, the walls of John’s studio are all white, so I pointed both of his small softboxes at the left and right walls/pitched roof which had the perfect angle to reflect that light as a massive soft light source back onto Sarah. Continue reading
A trial of running a studio background in our kitchen. Not ideal, however it worked just fine for head-shots, 3 quarter and we even squeezed in a few full length ideas. I can see a few ways of getting some more room to the sides for the lights for future shoots. First time I’ve ever put out a casting call for “TF” i.e. Time for Images, or doublespeak for a collaboration shoot between model and photographer. I advertised for a model for this shoot on Purple-Port – a marvellous photographer/make up artist/model/studio networking and marketing site. Miss Fahrenheit applied. This all worked very well. I hear stories all the time about how either the model or the photographer didn’t show up and I guess you will get those, however I got a good feeling from the emails that Miss F. was serious, and besides, I was doing this at home, so the risk was minimal as I hadn’t paid out for studio time. Continue reading