pocket wizard

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Single light source portrait.

Here is a portrait done with a single light. Since the light source was relatively large compared to her and it was not far, I was able to get the look I was after without the need of additional lights or bounce cards.

The strove was an Einstein from Paul Buff fitted with a 35″ octabox. I attached a grid to the Octa to direct and guide the light more precisely. That “on my opinion” makes the light a bit punchier adding a touch more contrast and also it kept the light from spilling over to the background.

The portrait was shot with a Canon 5D MrkIII and a Canon ef 70-200mm f 2.8 is L. A Pocket wizard Mini TT1 and Pocket Wizard power MC2 were transmitting and receiving to power the strove.

And that is how I shot this portrait with a single light source.

Here is a diagram with the light set up.

Natalie's

Natalie's Portrait

 

This last portrait here shares the same lighting concept of the first one with the exeption of … You guess right, a rim light coming from camera right behind the subject. “In relation to the subject the light was positioned at about 2PM”

Since he was not rearing a cute fuzzy white hat like she was. I wanted a bit of separation between the dark background and his dark hair, and that light did exactly that.

Dani's Portrait

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A dash of color.

I recently took some pictures of Kassandra. Las night I revisit some of the images and decided to try something different. Since she often change her hair color and look, I decides to add a DASH OF COLOR to it and I came up with this image.

The original image was taken  with a Canon 5D Mrk III set at ISO 100 and speed of 200. White balance was manually set at 5600K. The lens is Canon EF 70-200 f2.8 IS L set a f9. The light is from a Paul Buff Einstein E640 and a 36″ Octa with a grid positioned very close to her face at 90 Deg and as a rim light I used a Canon EXII 430 set to manual mode. Black background and everything was triggered with pocket wizards.

Nothing extraordinary or new in concept, but fun and different. I did this playing around with layers and blending modes on Photoshop.  When I can’t sleep, I find it therapeutical to do some edits or watch  tutorials that will teach me some new photoshop tricks and techniques.

Adding a DASH OF COLOR to an image every now and then could be fun. I like the result. I will keep on playing with this idea and see if I can come up with something else along the lines.

#dash of color

Touch of Color

Dash of Color

 

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Picture of the day. The new iPad III pictures

For Christmas 2011 My dear wife got me an iPad that I have been enjoying  a lot. Now that her birthday it’s coming, it is time to get even and I got the new iPad for her.

The  original lighting setting for this pictures was done with one Travelite 750 set to 1 o clock with a 11″ reflector and a 30Deg grid. I used a flag beneath the reflector to block the light a bit on the white background behind the box. At 7  o clock I position a white bounce card to open up the shadow on the front left side of the box. After a few shots I decided to add a second light to color the background and that was done with a Canon 580 EXII with two cuts of blue gel. All the lights were triggered with a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and Flex TT5.

The Camera I used is a Canon 5D Mark III with a Canon EF 24-70 f2.8 L. White balance I think it was set at 6000K,  iso 100  F14  speed 200th.

Here is the original shot I took

Click on it to enlarge.

I kind of like the first picture but I wanted to incorporate the actual iPad to the image.

 Click on it to enlarge.

Then I decided to be creative and start playing with colors and that is when the Canon 580EXII came in. Also I turned on the iPad so it would look cool with a picture on the screen.

Click on it to enlarge

When saw that third image I did not care for it.  The exposure was not nearly enough to record the screen (IT WAS ON FOR THIS PICTURE)  and I think the crop did not look right at all, it was like a black square in front of the box. Then I recomposed the image and started trying to light the display with a third light in such way that it would show the image. Needless to say it did not matter what I did or where I positioned the light, the darn display was too dark or I ended up reflecting light into it or got a bunch of glare on a black screen. That is when I did something I don’t do often… Think. The answer pop right into my head.

The exposure for everything but the screen was already done with the flash, the camera was steady on a tripod. The flash duration is quite fast, therefore it did not mater the shutter speed being at 200 when nothing is moving. Now are you thinking what I’m thinking? You’re right. Turn of the ambient light and work on total darkness, take a picture for 30″ and see what happens. Bingo, the box and background are exposed by the flash and the screen it exposed using it’s own light. (I had to play with the exposure time to get it right, it ended up being 5″or 10″) and that is it.

Click on it to enlarge.

By the way, the picture on the display is my wife reading my iPad. I took that picture a few months ago and I thought it was going to be cool to use that image for this one.

If you have any comments or thoughts I would certainly appreciate if you leave some feed back.

Regards to all.

PS: If you made it all the way to the end here is a bonus picture of the settings.

Click on it to enlarge.

iPad setting

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Pandora’s Box. Portrait and lighting technique

Lately I have being playing with light a bit more than usual. After spending some time reading the Strobist blog http://strobist.blogspot.com/  I came up with the urge to make a different kind of photo using some found knowledge and an old idea I had running on my head for a while.

I wanted to have the light to come from an unusual place like in this picture here

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=7397779&size=lg

but I wanted a bit more of ambient light around like in this image here

keeping up with the concept and making some lighting modifications I came up with this image here.

Click on image to enlarge

Pandora's box

On this picture, I got just enough ambient light to show around the room but not so much to detract from the the main idea of a mystery box. It took a bit of playing around with the position and power of the lights (3 of them) and some reflections  until I got what I considered a decent balance of ambient light and flash light. So this is how I created this picture.

The camera was a Canon 7D with a 24-70mm f2.8L set at 30mm and f5.6, Speed 60th, ISO 125. The flashes were triggered with Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and the AC3 controller and 3 Pocket wizards Flex TT5 one on each zone A,B,C for fine control.

The first test picture I took was with the accent lampt by itself to determine the ambient light, color temp and exposure I needed for that side of the frame. Then I set up a Canon 580 EX @ 1/64 power with a snoot to shoot a controlled beam of light over the boxes on the side table ( I ended up gelling the flash with 3/4 CTO to compensate with the existing light from the lamp) and then set the camera withe balance to 4600K. The next step was to power Pandora’s box. There I put a Canon 430EXII @ 1/16 of its power with a 1/2 cut CTO and covered it with a paper towel to diffuse the light, also I lined the back of the lid box with foil to reflect light into her face from the front since the single light coming from the box was giving me some weird spooky shadows that I did not care for. With those two lights I ended up getting something like this picture bellow and that was the look I was trying to avoid. To dark around her.

Click on image to enlarge.

That is when the third light comes in to the rescue and made all the difference. Another Canon 580EXII at 1/16 power, set at 50mm and gelled with a 3/4 CTO cut . The placement of this light is the trickiest one since is the one that is doing a double duty (I learned this one at the strobist site on the lighting 102 files) this is the light that opened up the shadows on the left side to the frame (primary function) but it also created the reflection (specular light) on the headboard that defined and separated her head from an otherwise black background. The tricky part about this light is that it has to hit the headboard to create the reflection behind your models head and  that reflection is what creates the separation we are looking for.  Therefore the angle of the light and the one from the camera have to coincide in the right place and that is when the fine tuning part comes in. I will write a post about that but make sure you check the strobist site to get more details about it.

The one last thing that helped me wrap this image was the reflection of the lamp on the lid (I really like that) I have a few without it and  I did not liked them as much, the lid looked to dark and flat. Small details like that make a big difference at the end.

Here is a quick image that shows up the set up I used to get this image done.

Click on image to enlarge.

Thanks for stooping by and as usual I’d appreciate any comments or questions. I also welcome ideas for new topics.

Regards

Alex Elias

PS: A bigger and special thanks to my wife that put up with my ideas when coming tired from work.

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Photo of the day. Carved pumpkin picture.

Tonight when I walked into the house I noticed the carved pumpkin glowing on the table. I like the low light mood and decided to grave the camera and try to capture the scene the way I was looking at it. After trying a few different approaches, this is how I ended up doing it.

Canon 7D and Canon Ef 24-70 F2.8L on tripod. ISO 100 F5.6 and 1 second of exposure, and the color balance was set to tungsten.  To camera left I used a Canon 580EX with a full cut of CTO with a Pocket Wizard Flex TT5 on a 2’x2′ Lastolite Ezy box, that was triggered with a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and a an AC3 Pocket wizard module in manual mode dialed down to minus 3. The idea was to capture the overall scene with the ambient light and use the flash to show a bit around it.

Thanks for stopping by.

Alex Elias.

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Newborn. Baby girl Pictures.

I just finished doing a shoot for a newborn baby girl. The session went great since the little one literately slept like a baby.

The set up was quite simple, I used a photography posing table to set the basket with the baby, that made it easy for moving and positioning. The lighting was done with 2 Travelites 750 one with a 11″ reflector set with a 30Deg grid  for the background and the other one with a larger Photoflex softbox that was placed very close to the baby on camera’s right. On the left side of the camera as a fill light I used a Canon 580EXII with a 2×2 Lastolite softbox . All lights were triggered with Pocket Wizards Flex TT5 and a Pocket Wizard mini TT1 with the AC3 controller on the camera as the master. The camera was a Canon 7D and the two lenses for this shoot were a Canon Ef 100 macro F2.8 and as Canon Ef 24-70 f2.8L. I used the 100 macro 90% of the time for the session. I set it at  f5.6 since I was looking for a rather shallower DOP.

For the post work I used Adobe Bridge to organize and tag the files with colors and stars. From there I migrated the raw files to ACR to do some  adjustments and then open in Photoshop CS5 to do the last part. Here I did a few different styles in terms of post work from color, to black and white, duo tones and playing with vibrance  and saturation tools.

Thanks for looking.

I welcome questions and suggestions.

Alex Elias

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Picture of the day. Close up and still Photography.

My dear friend Jeff got my this fabulous flower arrangement. When I first saw it I got amazed by the looks and attention to details not to mention the fragrance was just incredible as well. Since flower look great for so long I decided I wanted to make them the subject of a photo shoot. My first thought was to take a few pictures of it but the few pictures turn out to be over 100 pictures and a bit over 3 hours. I started shooting the base only and then I got inspired and started to shoot individual flowers, different lenses angles and lighting scenarios.

Equipment used

The pictures were taken with a Canon 7D set at ISO  160 speed at 250 F8 and white balance fixed at 5800K for most images. Later during the shot I started using F16 for the close ups so I switched to ISO 200 and 250. I mostly used a Canon EF 24-70 2.8L and Canon EF 100Macro 2.8 also some pictures were done using a Canon EF-S 10-22 to get some different perspectives. As far as lighting this time I did not use strobes. I took all the pictures with a Canon 580EXII and a Lastolite easy box 2×2 and a white reflector to bounce some fill light on the opposite side. Later during the shoot I added a Canon 430EXII with an umbrella. I controlled the lights with a Pocket wizard mini TT1 and the AC3 controller (both lights were in manual mode on independent groups)

Thanks for looking and don’t hesitate to ask should you have any questions.

Regards,

Alex Elias

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Indoor family pictures.

Last week’s  family shoot went out very nice nicely. Everyone was ready and very willing to make this work, specially the 6-year-old that  turned out to be a star. She sure had a blast modeling and working the camera. She tried a few different looks and also did her own make up, which by the way I think she did pretty good for 6 years of age; For sure better than I would have done.

The equipment I took with me for the shoot was my Canon 7D and although I took about 5 lenses the Canon EF 24-70 2.8 L was the one that I used all the time. Lighting was done with 2 Travelites 750 triggered via pocket wizards Mini and Flex and I fitted the lights with one 48×60 photoflex Softbox for the main, and an umbrella using the bouncing side as a fill. I shot everything at F9.0 and a few at F11 for good depth of field and ISO set at 200. The one thing I must confess is that I left the white balance on auto, I forgot to lock it and now I’ll have to spend a bit of extra time in CS5 with the color correction.

Overall it was a great day and I enjoyed the session a lot.

 

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Outdoor Family portraits

I haven’t posted for a while. Life has kept me busy with good things plus I was practicing a bit on my procrastination.

Here are some pictures I just I took at the park. I could not have asked for a better day and and nicer family to work with, the kids were awesome and everything went just right.

The equipment I used:

Camera was a  Canon 7D. The main lens was a Canon EF 24-70 2.8L  follow by Canon EF 70-200 2.8  IS L  and I took a few using a Canon EF-S 10-22 . As far as lighting I took two Canon Speedlite a 580EX II and 430 EXII with 1/4 CTO on each one 1 2×2 loastolite Easybox  and a 5’x3′ reflector/difuser. The flashes were triggered with one Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and an AC3 controller and 2 Flex TT5. Using the AC3 controller is nothing short of great, I had one light in group A the other one in group B and controlled each one at will from power up and down to turning on and off or go from E-TTl to manual. They are pricey but they are great.

 

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Outdoor Portraits.

Recently I went to visit my family and the place where they live features a great outdoor fireplace. Focal points like this make up for a great backdrop so I took my lights and shoot some pictures.

The camera was a Canon 7D outfited with a Canon EF 24-70 2.8L I used a Travelite 750 with a 36×48 Photoflex softbox to the right of the  people as the main light source, as a fill light I used a second Travelite 750 fitted with a shoot through umbrella to the left of the camera, the lights were triggered by a Pocket Wizard Mini and 2 Flex TT5. The ratio between the lights was about 1:3.