Free digital photography seminar to all in London, Ontario

Dear all,

Thought I am busy finishing up my academic work, I will come out and do a seminar on digital photography.. mainly on what you can do when you get out of the auto mode. Its been organized and hosted by London public library, Masonville branch, on the 25th of March.  Will mainly consist of a 45 minute talk followed by a lots of questions and a good chat. A special thank should go out to the manager at Masonville branch (Mrs. Lisa Manax) for the unbelievable passion and energy shown in promoting this free seminar.

Seats are limited and needs to be reserved in advance.

Here s the link to do that.

http://tinyurl.com/digitalphotolibrary

See you there.
Akila.

A slight hold up in posts....

Dear readers,

Please note that due to some pressing academic commitments, I may not be updating this blog until end of May-June, 2014. I am extremely sorry for this delay and will be posting regularly after my PhD defense is completed. In the meantime,  please do check back from time to time as I will try to  post something at least once a month.

Thank you.
Akila.

Sculpting light with a simple scarf

Using props to create interest is a common tactic used in studio work throughout the world. I thought about studying/experimenting with the effects of sculpting light using these props. My wife volunteered to help me with this exercise as always in my life.

I decided to start with flat lighting and then change the highlights/shadows + drama + feel using this simple scarf. A simple one light setup was used to get somewhat flat light, but also can be easily setup and that doesn't require a lot of incremental changes to finalize. So the light was set up almost behind the camera and shot into the subject with a very tight frame (Crops in this are pretty much as was framed during the shot).

Here s the picture we started with -

As you can see in this picture, the lighting was soft and beautiful.. but wasn't creating interest through any cast shadows. Then I introduced a simple scarf used in the winter and wallah... ! I got the following shot. Of course it needed some posing, tight framing etc....

It not only creates interest, it also added different emotions into the shot... While helping to capture and retain the viewers eyes in the middle of the frame. I did went a bit extreme with this scarf during this shoot and that result will be posted here in the near future. (something to look forward to :D )

Would love to hear your thoughts on this...


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.  

Candid shots at a sports event - GNCTR 2014

Related to my previous post.....

There was a lot of idle time between each participant of the race, so there was a lot of time to shoot candid shots. It was certainly better than painfully waiting for another toboggan to come down the hill which can mean a long wait. With the natural overcast conditions, and the fun costumes and amazingly high saturated colors in the set as well as in props, this meant for an exciting set of results. The varying levels of snow fall also added an interesting effect to the portraits. Shots included of head shots, group shots, and even some parts of their clothing... When ever something contrasty, colorful, or emotional showed up, you should be ready to grab them as a photographer. The venue for this might be something cold and outdoors in the winter, but the people certainly did made the atmosphere warmer...

Here are some of the results -

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.  

Shooting the Toboggan race - GNCTR 2014 - Action shots

So on a Saturday morning, got up and head out to the snow mountain with a good friend of mine to shoot the GNCTR 2014 event. Though it wasn't as cold as the weekends before, staying outside that long with my steel-toed-boots was a challenge :)... For those interested with the background of this event, you can gather information from this link. The whole race was filled with fun, excitement, cheers and chants. On top of all these, engineering students from many universities in Canada competed to see who had the better design.

From an action point of view, the event had toboggans racing downhill and access was limited due to safety reasons. Also not to forget the big snow barrier that covered most of the toboggans as they passed by. As for the light, since it was a snowy day, the ambient was very low and gloomy.. yet way better than indoor fluorescent light :)... Also used a basic rain cover to protect gear during the shoot since the snow was pretty wet.

I tried two kinds of shots for action mainly... One was to freeze the motion and the other was to pan with the motion and therefore effectively blur out the trees behind the sledge. Both had their pros and cons, so trying out both was helpful. Freezing the motion helped to see the splashing of snow from the sledge and is in general easier to keep things crisp. Panning on the other hand would blur the snow splashes, and harder to keep things crisp... but if done good, they would give a lot of feel about the speed and motion.


Here are some of the results -

Frozen action shots - 

 

Panned shots - 

 

And finally the human Toboggan - :)

 

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.