Lighting excercise - High Key

So, I ll be writing two articles in the same week.. with my schedule, thats a first :). One reason I love studio work (although its my small living room and lights are just speed lights) is because I am a control freak.. :) In a good way that is. What I meant by that is that I am very picky about highlights and shadows, the mood of lighting, the pose etc...

The living area in my apartment is pretty small and hence doing low key is hard. So, I decided to try out some high key stuff first. Of course I did go to low key in the same shoot.. But that s for another post :D

Whats used in this set up were mainly cheap umbrellas as modifiers. My ever supporting Wife volunteered as the model for these experiments...  So got her ready for the shot and took these two high key shots (in two separate sittings to be honest). 

1. Lights - A simple one light setup. Location - A small bedroom. Type - Wraparound light. Gaze - into the camera. * White balance is a little off (towards yellow)

2. Lights - A simple two light setup. Location - A small living room. Type - Wraparound light. Background - Light colored wall. Gaze - Off camera

What both shots have in common and something I do always look at are "well lit eyes!". If you want a very pleasant shot, you need to have the eyes lit very well. Dark eyes usually gives out a grim look and is extremely unflattering to specially female subjects. The two shots above are different in where the eyes are looking towards... but they both give a pleasant feeling due to good light.

Would love to hear what you think about these.. and a big thank to my Wife for volunteering and helping me out as always. 


Please consider that all copyrights are reserved for all material on this blog and cannot be reproduced without a written consent from the author. 

Thanks
Akila. 

When do I resort to some post processing...

Lets get something straight first.. We all do some sharpening, contrast adjustments etc for at least most of our images.  So when I mean post processing here, I mean things that you have to resort to something like Photoshop to sort out properly. I myself is no more than a beginner in post processing compared to some of my fellow photographers. Part of the reason is that I believe highly on getting (or trying to get) things right in the camera itself. This had turned out very well for me over the years and enjoyed finishing my work with minimal time in front of the computer. Just like Zack used to say, "During a shoot if you think that you ll correct that later.... just slap yourself hard!".. Although I don't go that extreme, I rarely leave something for post work rather than getting it in camera.. (except for HDR, which I do very little of).

So needless to say, I v been using post processing for either correcting for foreseen situations or things I v missed during a shoot. Given below are some cases like that where I had to resort to those software to get the job done.

Example 1 - Happened during the shoot for the Western Software Eng brochure shoot. Even though we knew about what kind of a shot is needed, we had no specific requirements for what the model should be wearing. But after the shoot had been done and dusted, the lack of university colors (Purple) came up as an issue and had to fix this within a very short period of time by changing the color of her sweater...

Example 2 - This was more of an mistake I did during the boxing look lighting exercise. I thought I had all the details nailed during the shoot in the camera... But it was only after I posted it that someone replied "Your hands are too clean for you to be that sweaty" :(.... I was so shocked when I realized my mistake.. that I forgot to rub it against some food coloring or dirt (and make it B&W) to have solved this. The post processing fix I used it a very basic one.. but the fact I had to do something like that in post was a grim reminder of what we miss when we look through the view finder.

(Due to some formatting issues I had to make them small. Please click on them to bring the larger version up)

Would be great to hear when you had to resort to Photoshop in similar situations. Let me know if anyone needs to know the techniques used to get these things sorted out.

Please consider that all copyrights are reserved for all material on this blog and cannot be reproduced without a written consent from the author.

Btw, Seasonal greetings to all of you out there......

Thanks
Akila.

Catching something Cold for a change....

Its that time of the year when everything is covered in snow... Was driving one day and realized that the crystals are gorgeously formed in that particular snow fall. So came home, grabbed my gear and went out to catch a flake or two. Ended up doing exactly that in which I only caught two flakes on my gloves and shot them closeup.

Used a technique that can be categorized as light painting to get this one. Also had to make it a very short shoot as I hate the cold + One of my hands was freezing without the glove :)  One thing to note was that the structures were not perfect and had I stayed outside for much longer, I would have most probably caught a better crystal than this one... But my hate towards cold temperatures overcame the photographer in me as predicted :)... The biggest problem with these pics are that you need to be fast in shooting these. Therefore, I had my camera settings all figured out while I was still indoors and was able to shoot this as soon as the flake landed (almost). When I looked back on the series of shots I took of this, I could clearly see it melting away fast...

This below is the result of that 5 minute shoot.

Please consider that all copyrights are reserved for all material on this blog and cannot be reproduced without a written consent from the author.

Btw, Seasonal greetings to all my viewers...

Thanks
Akila.

Dramatic lighting excercise - Trying to make a normal guy look like a boxer

Not that I am into boxing or anything violent for that matter, but wanted to learn the art of creating/changing a personality with moody lighting.  So was incubating this idea for a while and when I told one of my colleagues, he suggested to make someone ordinary into a boxer. So, I basically took it in as a challenge and change myself into a boxer. This one was particularly harder since I had to be in front of the camera as opposed to behind it. Focusing was the hardest, since I had to physically move around to change the setup (and also had no reliable way of precisely standing at the same point), I left the camera on autofocus and used the flip lcd screen (live view) to position myself. Then used a cheap remote I bought through e-bay (for less than $10) to shoot the picture with a 2 sec delay. Pointing the remote without making the camera focus on my hands was a challenge at first though. But what took most time was getting the setup and angles right. One of the most important things to learn in a lighting setup is to set one light at a time. Even though I knew this, many times (including this time) I found myself over excited and getting messed up. Once that happens, simply turn off all the lights and start from a scratch.

Ones the setup was complete, I changed the outlook using simple day to day stuff to bring out a tough looking boxer :). Didn't really know technical poses for this sport, so went with a general one that easily can deliver a determined look. Had to play with the camera angle as well to get a leaning pose. What I learned about light in this whole excercise can be put into this following sentence -

"Whats important is not where the light hits.. but where it misses... "

Here s the result.. You can be the judge on whether this try was successful or not. Please let me know..

Please consider that all content are copyrighted and cannot be used without a written consent. 

Thanks
Akila.

Photo shoot for CRICKET Western

Few weeks ago a dear friend who s the president of CRICKET Western asked me if I would like to take some cool photos for the club. I took that quite literally while emphasizing on the "Cool" part. First of all, the shoot was to be done in an indoor gym, preferably at night (less ambient coming through the skylights) and mostly within a limited time frame.

What I really want to emphasize on this (in terms of practicality) is the importance of having a "shot list"!. I made one with 6 different types of shots in my mind. Since I had a very good working understanding of the game cricket, I knew how dynamic and reflexive its movements can be (for those who are not familiar with this sport please read this first). This understanding is a must for making an effective shot list which will be easier to execute as well as easier to instruct to the players. Furthermore, it makes you think about each type of shot beforehand and thus makes the shoot easier and much more smoother. The shots in this case were selected to reflect some of the physical attributes of the game as well as to dramatize some parts of the game.

Unfortunately on the day of the shoot, due to a delay of some players, the whole shoot was cut down to about 45 mins. Therefore I had to pick/prioritize my shot list and thus decided to go with 3 shot types. One that would take a little time to do and two others which will take less time and effort (relatively). Here, I did encounter some technical difficulties during the process but was able to avoid them and move forward. The guys who showed up for the shoot were amazing to work with and were prepared to perform over and over again with unbelievable enthusiasm. I hope the end results will be a just reward to them for their efforts.

Below are a sample of the results of this shoot. Please do note that all the pictures here are copyrighted. Please feel free to comment and share your thought about the pictures and also to share this post with anyone interested in Photography.

Thanks a lot.

Akila Mike.

Selective Color Experiment.

Let me start out by saying that I was not a fan of selective color (or Color popping).  But so was my opinion about HDR until I figured out the right way to do it. So, thought to give this a try as well to figure out where and when it would work best.

So, I went through some of my previous work to see which ones do work. One thing I do wanna stress is that these are my personal opinion based on my limited experience. Rather than discussing what doesn't work, I will show few examples that do work. Then we can see the underlying principle in those images. These are pics I shot during the Annual 2012 slut-walk in London Ontario.

Example (1)

Example (2)

Example (3) 

One main factor in these 3 examples are the fact that the color is used as a tool to guide and hold the viewer attention on the subject. This is specially useful when the background is busy/not completely blown/blurred out. In my view, all 3 examples work for these images in different ways. So, one thing to keep in mind is to never apply this technique to all pictures you take. It is certainly not a method to make a boring picture interesting (same problem with many HDR work I see out there).... but more of a tool to control where the viewer gaze at. So for an example, in a picture of a car, if we color pop a telephone booth in the background, we will fail at achieving our main objective.. which is to engage the viewer with the subject (the car in this example).

One really important thing to remember not to over saturate the colored areas in the picture. In all the above examples, I simply De-saturated the surrounding area and left the colored region in tact for the most part.

So hope this will guide you to do better selective color images in the future. Would love to hear any comments on counter arguments etc. 

Please note that all pics are copyrighted and are not to be used without the author's written consent. 

Thank you!
Akila.

Shooting the Software Engineering brochure cover for Western Engineering

A little while ago I had the opportunity and the privilege of shooting the brochure cover for Western Engineering (Software Eng program). The requirement of the shot was predetermined and was to comprise of a young student working (writing) on a transparent board. The shot was supposed to be taken through the transparent board from the opposite side. My good friend and colleague Duane was instrumental for this shoot and wanna thank him specially for that. Andrea (an Engineering student from the program) was contacted to participate as the model.

 I would try and walk you through the shoot as it happened and try to lay out the thinking process behind it. The biggest challenge of this shoot was with lighting the set, which was a conference room in the department. I had to shoot from the other side of the transparent surface while the lights and the subject remains on the other side of it. The ambient light, which was fluorescent light (horrible for photographers) would not easily mix with the speedlights added to the set. Therefore, I adjusted camera settings to take as little ambient light as possible. This was shot with 50mm f1.8 lens (on a Canon 70D) and this particular lens was excellent for the shot we had in mind. The set was lit with two lights; one key light on the subject and one light for the background. The main challenge was to avoid reflections as much as possible while lighting the room sufficiently with the low power output of the speedlights. Apart from a small problem with the dress color (matching with the university colors), Andrea was amazingly comfortable and supportive during the shoot and had a great memorable experience. This would soon feature in the brochure (which is under revision at the moment) and will post that link once its available.

A fair amount of post processing was required to re-touch the portrait and it was a learning experience for me since it was my first attempt at re-touching. Will provide a step by step explanation of this process given sufficient spare time. This has already grown up to a long article :).. Here s the end result of the shoot.

Please note that this picture is copyrighted and should not be used for any purpose without a written consent. Also the logo is used only to provide context and reserve no copyright on the use of it.

Leave out a comment... would love to see what you think about this outcome. 

A special note of thanks to Dr. Samarabandu, Duane and Andrea for making this shoot a success.

LINK TO THE BROCHURE

Akila. 

Copyright statement for all material in this blog

Updated - Oct 14 - 2013

The author hereby retains all copyrights for the material presented in this blog as well as any other social media or web site. The use of any pictures in this blog without a written consent of the author is illegal and will be considered as a copyright infringement.

Thank you!
Akila Subasinghe...

Skateboarding and Biking tricks with a cool bunch of guys

Was out at a community event when I saw a small section made out of concrete specifically for people to horn their skills and tricks with bikes and skateboards. It felt weird to approach them and ask to shoot them, but the the photographer inside of me was aching so much to shoot it, I simply gave in :) Went there with my camera and spoke to a couple of them first and turned out, they were some of the most friendly and cool people I have met so far. Specially Matthew and Chris.. They were both pretty amazing.. The 70D did come through here but was scary as there were lots of guys skating around as I was shooting..

Hoping to get another shoot with these guys before it gets cold here... Specially heard of a move called the "Superman"!!! Really wanna catch that :)

Here's Matthew Marosati showing his stuff... (over and over again for me to get it right.. Thanks)

Here's Chris Oates rocking his bike with amazing mid air turns (He kept on pushing himself higher and higher... )

 
Please note that all pictures are copyrighted and could not be used without the author's consent.

Comments are welcomed as always.

Keep on shooting.

Akila Mike. 

Western Rugby team beat McMaster in grand style

I was invited by a good friend of mine to tag alone and shoot a Mustangs rugby match against McMaster university. Thought this was a great chance to test the burst rate of my new Canon 70D and agreed to do the shoot. The weather was completely against us from the day before.. it was raining like crazy and our chances were looking very bleak. But then just hours before the game, the rain let up. But the sky was completely overcast. Therefore, going into the shoot, we both new that our shots are gonna suffer in details and that we would have to shoot with a relatively higher ISO to keep everything from blurring. The Canon 70D (unlike my 600D/T3i) shone in this situation with almost no noise at high ISO values (I used ISO 800 for the whole shoot). At the end, Western beat McMaster very comfortably and I grew a liking to this game after seeing the intensity through the lens. Here are some results (Picture heavy, I must warn you on that). Btw, I almost forgot to mention that the Canon 70D is an awesome camera to shoot with.

Comments are welcomed and please note that all copyrights are reserved for these pictures.

Thank you!
Go Mustangs.
Akila.  

Few Macros from Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is a world renowned paradise for tourists and explorers.. but something even I haven't realized or appreciated is how amazing it is for macro work. There s vegetation all around and with no winter season, you only have to avoid rain. Some shots for which I would travel miles in Canada, I was making them in my backyard. These are a taste of some of those sample shots I have taken during my stay. I will keep on these sort of pics here and there.. specially since its starting to get cold here :)

Please do note that all pictures here are copyrighted. You cannot publish or use these images without the author's consent.

Thank you!
Akila.