Natalie & Rob’s Wedding

Last Friday we attended my cousin, Natalie’s, wedding down in Portsmouth. Although I had the pleasure of being a guest, I also took the opportunity to try out some wedding photography for the first time.

I’m very pleased with these shots. It certainly helped that the bride, groom and wedding party all looked fantastic. They also chose to hold the reception in a stunning converted barn in a gorgeous setting. And after days of terrible weather, the sun stayed out all day for them!

The mother of bride with some last minute advice for the groom:

The beautiful chief bridesmaid walks down the aisle:

Gorgeous page boy smiles on cue:

My mum and wife outside the church:

The Rolls arrives at the barn for the reception:

The bride has a chat with mum:

The groom with his new wife and mother-in-law:

The bride’s uncle gives his speech:

The mother of the bride finishes her speech:

The groom’s speech:

The first dance:

A New Perspective

As lovely as Jodie is to photograph, I’m getting a bit bored of the same old shots - crouch to her eye level - done, shoot below her - done… then it came to me - break the rule that has been so prominent in my mind; don’t shoot at her eye level, shoot from my eye level! I know it’s not an original idea, but due to the mantra (”shoot at the subject’s eye level”) I’ve just not done it much. I got a few shots, but I’m particularly pleased with this result:

Iron Shed

Whilst out walking with the dog near Longformacus we stumbled across this lovely, old, rusty iron shed. I’m trying to experiment with B&W and duotones and I thought this was an ideal subject for it.

The shed was also a great subject for some closer shots of the texture and colour.

Family Portraits - Part 3

I’ve been slowly going through the remaining shots from the family portrait shoot I did last month (see previous posts: part 1 and part 2). Here’s the shoot write-up.

I spent a long time setting everything up; it was a challenge because I was in someone else’s house, space was limited and I was finding it difficult to create a setup I was happy with. The background light was causing the most difficulties, but I eventually decided to try using a shoot-through umbrella to give an even coverage and I think it worked really well; certainly a lot better than Jodie’s studio shoot. I don’t think I’m using enough power on the background light as I still need to do a lot of post-processing work to get the background as white as I want it. I think I’m just worried about blowing the background out too much and causing the edges of the subject to be burnt, so I’m not pushing it enough.

The rest of the set up was kept fairly simple; a softbox camera-left, quite low to the ground as many of the shots had the subject(s) seated and a sunfire reflector camera-right to open up the shadows. Below is a diagram showing the set up:

Here are the rest of the photos taken with my Canon 350D and EF 24-70mm f/2.8L @ f/13, 1/200, ISO 100:

As well as trying to improve the background lighting set up, I really need to ensure that I do everything I can during the shoot to limit the amount of post processing time. Making sure the subject is completely in front of the background, for example, saves a lot of time creating complicated masks around hair!

A Reflection

I am currently in the process of updating my mother-in-law’s business website. She runs a colour analysis consultation service and her existing site requires a complete overhaul. One of the weaknesses I noticed is that there are currently no photographs. Images are an extremely important ingredient when trying to successfully communicate with your customers; so I suggested a photo shoot!

I planned to make three pictures:

• A simple head shot so that potential customers can get an idea of who they are dealing with
• A product shot or two of the items the customer will receive
• An overview image that shows the consultation ‘in action’ so the customer knows what to expect on the day

For this shoot write-up I’m going to talk about the last of these images; the ‘consultation in action’ shot. The final image is shown below; please continue to read the article below for an explanation of my set-up.

A few days before the shoot I sketched out a plan for the shot in a note book so that I was properly prepared. The consultation involves the draping of material over the customer whilst they sit in front of a mirror – I planned to capture this process via the reflection in the mirror.

I recently purchased a new Manfrotto short ‘Backlite’ stand (MN 012B) specifically with this shoot in mind – I planned to hide it behind the table to evenly backlight the white background.

My main source of light was from a softbox raised as high as the ceiling allowed (around 8 feet) pointing down and towards the subjects (and camera). This meant that the back and shoulders of the standing subject would be in shadow and therefore not a distraction. To provide even illumination of both subjects’ faces I placed a reflector just out of the frame to the left of the subjects to bounce some of the light back.

Something I had failed to consider when planning the shot prior to the shoot was that the mirror would (of course) reflect the opposite wall (complete with distracting wall covering, picture rail, etc.) I only own one background support system so a kind helper (thanks Kenny!) held my black muslin whilst standing on a step ladder. This resulted in a clean, distraction-free reflection.

I angled the mirror slightly towards the camera, positioned myself just out of view of the reflection and took the shots. An overview of the set-up is shown in the diagram below:

I was quite pleased with the resulting shots and actually chose to combine two images to create the final picture; one that framed the subjects’ backs just as I intended, with one that reflected better expressions on the subjects’ faces!

Family Portraits - Part 2

Lewis asked me to post the photo of Jodie about to lick his face so before I finish editing the others here’s a couple of Lewis and Jodie…

Family Portraits - Part 1

Here are a couple of shots from my latest photo shoot today. Lots more to follow, along with another shoot write-up to explain my set up.

Robert Capa’s Lost Negatives: Recovered

The New York Times has reported that three suitcases containing Robert Capa’s Spanish Civil War negatives, once thought lost, have finally been recovered from a Mexico City film-maker after seven decades.

Photo by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

A slide show of a select few images from the 3,500 negatives can be viewed on The New York Times site.

The negatives, taken by Robert Capa during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, might finally reveal the mystery of whether his famous photograph, “The Falling Soldier” (see image below), was staged or not.

Photo by Robert Capa/I.C.P. Collection

20,000 Photographs to Create Stunning Global Warming Video

Lucas Oleniuk, a photographer based in Toronto, Canada, took 20,000 photographs in 20 days to create a striking video made entirely from still images about the Global Warming issue. The video has a brilliant, atmospheric sound track that fits the stunning images really well and helps convey the important message.

“Airsick” by Lucas Oleniuk is available to watch on TheStar.com website.

Studio Shoot: Jodie’s Antlers

So here’s my first shoot write-up! Although I have spent time getting to grips with my new studio lighting equipment by taking test shots, this was my first half-descent prepared shoot. The motivation for this shoot was to get a shot of our one year old yellow Lab, Jodie, wearing festive antlers (as you do) for my wife, Lynsey, to post on her blog.

I decided to keep the set-up relatively simple, especially as a dog has a tendency to move around a lot. I used the 80×60cm softbox as the main light camera-right at around 45 degrees. I positioned it around 3 feet from the ground pointing down towards the subject. A ’sunfire’ reflector camera-left filled the shadows with a warm light. Below is a diagram (created using an excellent lighting set-up Photoshop file by Kevin Kertz) showing the set-up:

I selected the white paper background (from my wide selection of two backgrounds), which I attempted to light with the second light. I don’t yet own a short lighting stand or a background reflector so I had to make do with the wide angle reflector and the light positioned to the left and pointing towards the background. As you’ll see in some of the photographs, it didn’t exactly provide even lighting coverage of the background (which meant more time spent Photoshopping), which I think could have been better achieved with either a short stand (hide the light behind the subject) or perhaps a boom to raise the light above the background – both ensuring the light is centred to the background.

Here are the photos taken with my Canon 350D and Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L @ f/11 (first one at f/10), 1/200, ISO 100:

Poor Jodie was suffering from a “cold water tail” at the time (if you’re intrigued, read about it on Lynsey’s blog), so she had a few moments of chasing her tail manically.

The goal of the shoot:

Then Lynsey had a go with the camera and I tried to pose Jodie. Between us we managed to get some great shots, below.