Shedding Illumination: The Video June 17, 2009
Posted by Leonard Low in Assignment, Contains Images, Portraiture, Post-Production.Tags: animoto, multimedia, presentation, video
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As part of our assessment, we’re required to do a presentation of our images that may include a slideshow or multimedia presentation. I decided to use Animoto to compile my visuals for my presentation, to be followed by high-quality copies of my images. Animoto won the Webby Award this year, as well as the People’s Voice award for Best Service & Application website, so I thought this would be an appropriate best-of-breed way to put together my presentation. So… without further ado… here it is!
That was the “low quality” version of the video, which can be produced in any length for free if you’re an educator or student under Animoto’s “free for education” program. I paid US$5 to download a high-quality version of the video for the actual presentation, as well as an ISO which can be burned to DVD.
An Awesome Mask! :D June 11, 2009
Posted by Leonard Low in Assignment, Contains Images, Portraiture, Post-Production, Studio.Tags: composite, hair, mask, masking, portrait, serene
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Last night I completed the penultimate (second-last!) image in my “Earth Hour” set. This background is rather more serene and less dramatic than the previous images, but I decided on a gentle, pink-toned backdrop to complement the subject’s pretty pink outfit.
The big breakthrough with this image was that I’ve finally mastered hair masking after having serious issues with hair masking in the first images of this series (which I may go back and redo now that I have the technique mastered 
). If you zoom in on the hair in this image, you’ll see that every strand has been flawlessly masked onto the new background using the tutorial I previously linked to. 
Exposure Data
Exposure: 1/125 sec.
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 50 mm (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens)
ISO Speed: 400
Lighting: Flat light/beauty portrait setup. Tungsten studio light on left diffused through large diffusion panel for full-length diffuse light. Tungsten studio light through tall, rectangular softbox high on right for full-length light from right, but mostly illuminating face.
Four down. Two to go. June 9, 2009
Posted by Leonard Low in Assignment, Contains Images, Portraiture, Post-Production, Studio.Tags: autumn, candle, flame, portrait, river
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Over the weekend I was kept busy competing in the NSW Ceroc & Modern Jive Championships, but yesterday afternoon/last night (in spite of being totally knackered by aforementioned dance comp) I managed to finish one more image. The model’s choice of clothing, the background, and the candle combine to create a painterly and almost-fantasy feel to this image.
I think having a foreground element – like the rock on the left of this image, or the park bench behind the subject in “I Forgot…” – makes a big difference in reducing the appearance that the models have been Photoshopped onto a background. I’m thinking of adding a railing behind the image with a view over the Blue Mountains; and some other forground element behind the forest image, to see if these (compositionally) tie the last two images together more.
Exposure Data
Exposure: 1/40 sec.
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 50 mm (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens)
ISO Speed: 800
Lighting: Subject was lit by candle; a tall, diffuse soft box was used on the right for fill so that the light from the candle wouldn’t seem to harsh on the subject’s face. The original capture colours were tweaked a little during post-processing to reduce the difference in light temperatures between the candle flame and the tungsten fill light.
I Vote Earth. June 5, 2009
Posted by Leonard Low in Assignment, Contains Images, Portraiture, Post-Production, Studio.1 comment so far
Completed two more composite images. The first image I created, “I Forgot…” is going to be a hard act to follow, because it was dramatically lit and made for a dramatic final image. My original idea was that these other images would be attractively presented people holding *unlit* light bulbs as a visual representation of their participation in Earth Hour.
Unfortunately, “attractive” is not so very far from “common” – we’re bombarded with images of attractive people all the time, and often they’re lit with diffuse “beauty” lighting, just the same as the way I’ve shot my models. So it’ll be a challenge to see if I can make any of the remaining images as interesting as my first one.
The first of the “beautiful” images was hand-masked. I can’t tell you what a horrible time I had hand-masking the hair on this one, but it’s still not perfect and I’ll try to revisit it to polish it up before I have to submit it next week. I actually did this image twice – the first one I did was on a very serene and, well, boring background and couldn’t display next to “I Forgot…” without looking like a poor effort. So I recomposited it on a more dramatic nature background:
The model has been positioned with her head in front of the brightest part of the sky, and I’ve added a lens flare behind her head so that it appears that there’s a bright light source behind her, forming a “halo” around her and achieving the goal I set out in my project proposal, to make my subjects look like sources of light.
Exposure Data
Exposure: 1/125 sec.
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 50 mm (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens)
ISO Speed: 400
Lighting: Flat light/beauty portrait setup. Tungsten studio light on left diffused through large diffusion panel for full-length diffuse light. Tungsten studio light through tall, rectangular softbox high on right for full-length light from right, but mostly illuminating face.
After that horrific time with the hair in that last shot, however, I realised that there had to be an easier way to mask hair. I mean, you see it in magazines all the time for goodness sake – so I did a search on the web. The best and most popular method involves shooting the model on a high-key (white) background, then using an Overlay brush on a copy of the image to get a near-perfect mask, even with fine detail like hair. It certainly seems to work a lot better (and possibly faster) than hand-masking.:
I’ve also hand-shaded the model’s clothing so that it looks almost like she’s standing in a pool of light coming through the trees, with the upper part of her body and her head in the light. In a dim, cool forest, a lens flare would be out of place, so positioning her head in front of the brightest part of the background image creates a very subtle suggestion of a “halo” around her.
Exposure Data
Exposure: 1/60 sec.
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 50 mm (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens)
ISO Speed: 200
Lighting: Flat light/beauty portrait setup. Tungsten studio light on left diffused through large diffusion panel for full-length diffuse light. Tungsten studio light through tall, rectangular softbox high on right for full-length light from right, but mostly illuminating face.
I Forgot… June 4, 2009
Posted by Leonard Low in Assignment, Available Light, Contains Images, Night, Portraiture, Post-Production, Strobist.2 comments
Last night I completed the first of my “Earth Hour” assignment images. It’s a composite image that uses a studio portrait originally shot against a neutral background with two Creative Commons licensed (royalty free) images. It is the most critical of my assignment images, as it may turn out to be the only one I do with a “lit” bulb in it, and therefore the critical image to contrast with all of the other images I produce (which will probably feature attractively portrayed people holding unlit bulbs).
It’s titled “I Forgot…” and it features the subject holding a lit bulb, while behind him an image of a bleak and lifeless cityscape illustrates the possible consequences of carelessness…
Click the image to go through to its Flickr page to view it in high resolution.
Composition notes:
I’ve placed the subject off-center in accordance with the Rule of Thirds, balanced by the background light in the opposite third quadrant. The subject is looking into the middle of the image which looks more correct than if he were on the right of the image looking out of it. The grey park bench adds to the feeling of urban starkness, which carries into the bleak cityscape in the background.
Composite elements:
Park Bench (CC BY SA): www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/2549132011/
Background (CC BY): www.flickr.com/photos/sailorganymede/2795285309/
Exposure Data
Exposure: 0.04 sec (1/25)
Aperture: f/1.4
Focal Length: 50 mm (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens)
ISO Speed: 1600
Lighting: Low-light shot: could only use a single light to give the effect that the light bulb in the hand was the only light source in the image foreground. 1x Tungsten studio light with snoot from left of camera directed onto bulb. Intentionally no fill light on right as a harshly lit effect was desired.
Wowing: The Thousand Portraits Project May 28, 2009
Posted by Leonard Low in Portraiture, Reading.add a comment
Just a quick one. The 1000 Portraits Project was an awesome experiment done in the UK where a couple of photographers asked everyone who they passed (no exceptions) if they could take their photo. So many of these images are beautifully natural, and real; and as a whole, these candid, spontaneous images convey to me a sense of humanity. I won’t include any of the individual images here, because the proper impressions are best conveyed by their sets:
Portrait Post-Production May 27, 2009
Posted by Leonard Low in Post-Production.Tags: 800 images, finishing, fussing over each little pixel, no life, photoshop, portrait, portraits, Post-Production
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Okay. I haven’t written an update on my portrait shoot for a few days, and you might be one of the people who have been asking me what’s happening with them, or alternatively, why I’m not dancing/socialising/sleeping as much as I usually do.
The simple answer to all of the above is: I’m doing “post-production” of all of the images from the portrait shoot: selecting the best images, adjusting the colour in each photo by changing settings in the RAW (”digital negative”) files, composing and cropping each image so that it looks its best, and “Photoshopping” each portrait so that each model looks flawless. A recount of my photos puts the total at just under 800 images altogether.. and this translates into a LOT of work!
So bear with me while I go through this lengthy and gruelling post-production phase. This is, really, the critical stage that turns good photos into extraordinary ones; and having put so much work into taking the photos, I’m determined to do the very best job I can at finishing them properly.
Tired but Happy. :) May 22, 2009
Posted by Leonard Low in Assignment, Contains Images, Portraiture, Studio, Studio Lights.Tags: beauty, drama, dramatic, hair, make-up, models, portrait, portraits, Portraiture, stylists, thank you, thanks, yaay
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Months of learning, weeks of planning, and days of preparation came together last night in a portrait photo shoot that (successfully!) yielded both my assignment photos, and a large stack of portfolio/professional-quality images. Some stats:
- 8 models (6 girls, 2 guys)
- 1 hour to set up
- 2.5 hours to shoot
- 2 separate sets:
- a high-key set with two diffuse modelling lights, primarily geared for “beauty” shots; and
- a low-key studio flash key light/back light set, primarily geared for “dramatic” photos.
- Hair by Sheryn from Hair in the City; Make-up by Kim Balaga.
- Took over 500 photos, in 22 megapixel RAW and low-res JPEG.
- That’s over 18GB of image files.
Un-Photoshopped image taken on the “dramatic” set.
I’d like to recommend my hair and make-up professionals to anyone looking for awesome stylists. They were promptly on time, treated my models (who are my friends, so this was important!) well by all accounts, and did a fantastic job. Thank you, Sheryn and Kim!
Un-Photoshopped image taken on the “beauty” set.
And thank-you to my models -my friends-, who volunteered for this to help me with my assignment and were awesome sports, even when I ran out of time (and memory cards! 
) towards the end of the shoot and couldn’t photograph them in as many outfits as I would have liked.
Next step is to comb through the images, cropping, processing, and editing! To achieve the results I’d like for my assignment, I’ll need to photo-composite a few of my best studio shots onto various backgrounds. I did one for fun in about 10 minutes this morning.
So the work’s not finished yet – but at least this next stage should be a lot less pressure, and quite a bit of fun.
Finally, extra thanks to Red and Judy for easing my post-shoot nerves with a couple of first-class scotches. You guys always seem to know just how to make everything better.
Thinking About: The Shot List May 20, 2009
Posted by Leonard Low in Assignment, General Comments, Portraiture.Tags: Assignment, here we go, nervous, omg, photo shoot, portrait
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Tonight I’ll be writing up my final Shot List for tomorrow’s portrait shoot. While I’m going to have to be quite spontaneous and creative with the individual portraits, I have a fair idea of the shots I want for my assignment. In both cases, however, I’m going to change some of my techniques considerably from how I did my first portrait session:
- I’m going to shoot from further away from my models, whenever I can. This is for two reasons: firstly, it will give my photos a flatter, more flattering (no pun intended) perspective; and secondly, it will allow a more forgiving depth of field. This handy Depth-Of-Field calculator shows that using a 50mm lens at f/1.4, from a distance of 2m, gives me only 13cm of acceptably sharp depth of field (much of which will be slightly blurred and out of focus). These are the settings, and the distance, at which I’ve been shooting most of my previous portraits, so no wonder I’ve had trouble getting the eyes in focus! At a range of 3m, the acceptable DOF more than doubles to 30cm, making it possible to focus close to the eyes and get them sharply in focus in the shot.
- I’m going to be shooting with a narrower aperture – NO WIDER THAN f/2.8. Again, this is for two reasons. Firstly, an aperture of f/1.4 contributes to the unforgivingly tight depth-of-field mentioned above. Shooting two stops narrower (f/2.8) at a distance of 3m gives me an acceptable depth-of-field of 60cm – which should give me nice, sharp facial details. Should I desire a blurrier background, I can always add extra blur in Photoshop later; but I cannot bring back detail lost due to shots being out of focus. Secondly, although the lens I’m using, a 50mm f/1.4 prime, is optically excellent, it suffers from some documented sharpness and flare issues between f/1.4 – f/2.2. So shooting with the aperture narrower than f/2.8 will avoid those optical limitations and result in sharper images.
- I must remember to remove my protective filter this time. Although it has no explicit optical effect, it is another piece of glass for light to pass through, and has caused flaring and ghosting with some night shots in the past. Removing the filter removes a potential cause of problems.
- Attention to detail! If there’s one thing my first portrait session taught me, it is that every tiny detail shows up in these photos. The smallest hair or shadow out of place can ruin the portrait! So I’ll be much more careful with composing and taking my shots this time around.
- More creative lighting and posing. I was very, very conservative with my lighting in my first photo shoot (where I basically stuck with a Hollywood/on-axis formula), but subsequent sessions have taught me to be more creative, and that experimentation can yield some fascinating results.
- Shoot in RAW. It’s better than JPEG. ‘Nuff said.
There’s a truckload of stuff to do tonight:
- Make sure all my batteries are charged, my memory cards are clear, and all my equipment is working perfectly (e.g. lens, viewfinder and menu screen clean!).
- Make sure all my equipment is packed, ready to go (including battery chargers – just in case).
- Write up my final shot list, keeping all my “lessons learned” in mind!
- Make up some platters of food to keep my models fed and occupied while I’m shooting.
- Keep reading through the portrait photography books and magazine articles I’ve been collecting, so that hopefully some of the advice will seep through into my subconscious.
I am nervous as all heck. Keep those fingers crossed for me!!!!
Reading: Viewpoint in Portraiture May 20, 2009
Posted by Leonard Low in Contains Images, Portraiture, Reading.Tags: dominant, passive, portrait, Portraiture, power, relationship, submissive, viewpoint
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It makes a lot of sense: the vertical angle at which you take portrait photographs conveys subconscious messages about the relationship between the viewer/photographer and the the subject/model.
- Straight on: an equal relationship between the viewer and the subject
- Slightly above: can make pleasing shots, as the eyes appear larger. The sitter can appear passive or (with extreme use) submissive.
- Slightly below: subject appears dominant, important, or confident. Needs to be used with care, though – it can also make the subject look scary!
