Now here are some of the photos of Gaby taken earlier using flash. See how more of the photo is in focus especially the brick background. Personally I find the background sharpness pulling the viewers focus away from the main subject and sort of distracting. Selective blurring and sharpening in Photoshop didn’t help much either. Note the intentionally hard shadow cast under her arm. Let me know if the flash or natural lighting photos are preferred!
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The last couple of studio sessions with loads of studio lighting equipment have really burnt me out. I am sick and tired of large depth of focus shots where everything (EVERYTHING!) is totally in focus. I almost completely forgot about taking photos using natural lighting and large apertures. I was pleasantly surprised when late into a photo shoot last night I remembered the joys of opening up the aperture and just using natural light. Here are a couple keepers from that night:
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To begin this article let me list several popular Stock Photo Agencies:
www.dreamstime.com
www.fotolia.com
www.bigstockphoto.com
www.istockphoto.com
www.shutterstock.com
One often neglected aspect of photography has been Stock Photography. See that poster with an attractive looking girl next door? Or that magazine article with a young successfull business executive? Or see a photo of two people shaking hands? The basic idea is that the marketing teams, who design these ads, don’t have the time or money to take photos of these ideas but instead purchase these photos in bulk, and quite cheaply I might add, from Stock Photography websites.
There are dozens of Stock Photography websites on the internet that cater photos that often convey an emotion, depict a setting, or of just good looking people in everyday environments. Unlike normal photography, Stock Photography has a lot more restrictions that may limit an artists’ creative ability. Photos really have to be thought out carefully and questions that a photographer would need to ask are:
Also the photos that you take have to be technically perfect or they will be rejected. One of my top reasons for rejection based on image noise and grain. Although I personally sometimes cannot notice the noise, Stock Photography Agencies are very peculiar about the images that they sell (for good reason as these photos may be used for commercial advertisements).
The way it works is you sign up to one of the Stock Photo Agencies and businesses will than be able to purchase some of your work for $0.50, $1, $5, etc. and a percentage of that money goes into your account. At first this money may not seem like much but it adds up when multiple businesses decide to purchase your image. Soon you will have a steady pay cheque (hopefully) based on the photos that have just been sitting on your hard drive and otherwise collecting digital dust.
Headshots. One of the simplest and more boring aspects of photography! Normally one can be done in a simple 30 seconds using direct flash or outdoor natural lighting. But that would be boring and no fun for the photographer. However with a little bit more time, creative posing, and some nice lights headshots can actually become a lot more interesting! Here are a couple headshots taken for the Vogue Charity Fashion Show 2007-2008. The subjects here vary from being models, dancers, choreographers, and clothing designers so they come with various levels of posing experience.
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Background
To accomplish this studio-like look we first have to understand where we were shooting and with what equipment. This 4-hour photo session took place in the gymnasium of Macgillivery-Brown Hall on the Queen’s University Campus. The white backdrop was created using two 15-feet lengths of white fabric bought at a local Fabricland ($50). We were then able to drape (and duct tape) the fabric over a wall of the gymnasium. By using two lengths of fabric we were able to make the background wide enough to take photos of larger groups of people that just wouldn’t be possible with a smaller background. Even in our current setup photographing 4-5 people is pushing our equipment to the limits and creativePhotoShop’ing is required to complete the background.
Lighting
The lighting setup was pretty simple. Basically to create an illusion of a fully white back drop the “white”, but very dirty fabric had to be blasted with light. This was done by positioning two AlienBee B400 portable studio strobes (thanks YCS!) with umbrellas on either side of the background and flashing it at almost 1/1 full power.
The key light, or the light that actually is used to light the subjects, was done using a single Nikon SB800 external flash positioned off camera using a lightstand and umbrella. The most important aspect of this setup is to remember to place the the key light off to the extreme left or right of the photo in order to create more dramatic shadows, also known as ‘modeling’, on the various subjects face, clothes, and bodies. The effect of the light seemingly surrounding the subject (look at the edges of the models) is created from the background light from the B400’s bleeding off the background and actually hitting the subject. If this effect was to be lessened you can position the subject further away from the background or lessen the power of the background lighting (at the expense of background whiteness).
Here is how one of the photos looks before editing in Adobe Photoshop:
Here is the same photo after a brief editing session in Adobe Photoshop:
If anyone is interested I will post a tutorial later on how to use Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop to achieve the same post processing effects! Stay tuned.
