Eric Hamilton – Celebrity / DJ / Nightlife Photographer

Archive for May, 2009

More portrait tips. I’m going to keep these coming as I work up curriculum for the upcoming Southern Utah Location Portrait Workshop and the University of Utah Life Long Learning Flash Photography course I’m teaching in the fall.

Aside from being a beautiful model, Ruth is a promising young photographer who interned with me for a semester. She is building a studio in her house. One of the questions she had for me was how to prevent wrinkles in the black sheets she uses from ruining her photos. You don’t have to have a fancy studio seamless setup to get beautiful black backgrounds. Any dark colored fabric, paper, or wall will do. The less reflective the material is, the less you’ll have to worry about wrinkles or other imperfections showing up in your photo.

It’s all about light control. What you want to do is get the light on your subject, and not on the background. There are many ways to do just that. In these examples, I used a bounce umbrella with a black backing, tilted away from the background, towards the camera. This creates a narrow pool of soft light for the model, so light placement becomes even more critical than it usually is (and it’s always important).

Every lighting setup has a sweet spot where the model should stand – all the lights are directed to make sure that whatever is in that sweet spot looks its best. The more controlled your lighting is, the smaller that sweet spot becomes. Keep that in mind and remember to direct the model accordingly.

Point the light where you want it, away from where you don’t. – If you want a dark background, you don’t want to be pointing a light at it. This sounds obvious, but it’s easy to forget.

Mind reflections – During our shoot Ruth wanted to look in a mirror to help her pose. Without thinking I agreed. Of course, the mirror reflected the light back and destroyed the test shot. Make sure you’re aware of anything that might reflect light back where you don’t want it to be. It’s easy to forget that wearing a white shirt can fill shadows that you really want black if there’s light aimed towards the camera position.

Use a snoot – In these shots I used a snooted strobe to create highlights without casting light on the background. A snoot is any conical shaped tunnel to confine the light beam for a narrow point of focus. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I use the velcro pocket separators from my camera bag. I know photographers who use cardboard cereal boxes to make DIY snoots.

Use grids and honeycombs – Grids and honeycombs are another method to control the directionality of your light.

Hang a flag – I often use strips of fabric to cast shadows and prevent light from spilling to where I don’t want it.

Use a cookie – A cookie refers to anything intentionally placed between the flash and the subject to cast shadows. I’ve used house plants, blinds, grids, etc… You can focus or blur the edges of the shadows by moving the cookie closer to or farther from the light source.

Control light colors – In the reclining shots above, I used a low-powered flash to fill shadows on the left of the frame with a red glow by shooting the flash through transparent red fabric. You can use strips of plastic called gels for the same purpose.

Strobist Info (First shot only) – SB-600 bounced off small black-backed umbrella camera right, positioned just behind model and aimed away from background to control light spill. SB-600, snooted, behind and above model, for edge highlights and fabric definition. SB-600 gelled using transparent red fabric, camera left, slightly behind model, for red glow effect, doubles as the light source for the background.

Click through the photos to see additional strobist info and EXIF data on Flickr. I recently started including Adobe Lightroom development settings in the EXIF. Feel free to take a look.

I’m prepping discussion topics for the location portrait workshop I’m teaching in Southern Utah June 11th – 14th. Here are some tips from today’s session:

Mix light colors – In the strobist world, you frequently hear about how to balance your flash color to ambient light using gels and the color temperature setting on your camera, but light color doesn’t always have to be matchy-matchy. In these shots I mixed the gold color from a reflector with flash and hints of direct and indirect sunlight.

Create contrast by overpowering the sun – I used a combination of open shade and a relatively fast shutter speed (1/640th) to dial back the sunlight and let the flash take the key light role in these photos. In direct sun, you’ll need a shutter speed in the thousands, but it’s still doable with the right equipment. I have successfully over-powered sunlight shooting at 1/4000th using ordinary SB-600′s. Using this technique, it’s possible to dial back the ambient light enough to create dramatic contrasts and bold color saturation.

Soften the light – I used a small shoot-through umbrella to soften the key light. When you’re shooting outside with an umbrella, it’s wise to weight the light stand so that it won’t go tipping over at the slightest gust of wind. I have a hanging counterweight for my boom stand that I fasten to the light stand in these situations. In nature, there’s usually one hard light source (the sun), and everything else is soft, reflected light.

Use a long focal length I shot all of these photos with the 50mm f/1.8, but if I had an 80mm lens handy, I probably would have used it. Outside, you have plenty of space to get farther back from the model. Take advantage of it to minimize perspective distortion. Think 50-120mm. I know a portrait photographer who always shoots at 200mm, but in my experience, 120mm is about the upper edge of the sweet spot. Once you go beyond that, you generally need a tripod to minimize blur from camera shake, and it gets more difficult to define the image with a shallow DoF effect.

Take lots of photos! – There are a lot of things you need to get right in a photo. Light, pose, expression, composition – it takes a lot of practice to master the art of tuning in to get the shot. So get practicing. Shooting digital, there’s no reason not to take as many photos as you want. Your model will love the attention, and you’ll love the result.

Speaking of models, Lydia is my sister-in-law. This was her second second time shooting with a professional photographer. She did a great job. Thanks, Lydia!

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Due to unforeseen circumstances, this workshop has been canceled. I am very sorry for the inconvenience. Watch this space for a make-up workshop in Salt Lake City. Everybody who registered for the Southern Utah Workshop will be admitted free of charge.

If you did not register for the Southern Utah Workshop, and you still want to attend, the registration will be $20.

- Eric