Eric Hamilton – Celebrity / DJ / Nightlife Photographer

Posts Tagged ‘model’

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.

Check out this flash photo story:

Full Screen photo story

Note: Click the linked names for more photos of each person mentioned…

Last night I met Neal Hamil, director of Elite Model Management’s North American operations at the groundbreaking ceremony for Elite’s new office, the first major tenant in the $500 million Market Station real estate project in South Salt Lake (which Elite dubbed “SoSaLa”). Market Station is project by Utopia Station Development Corp., directed by Steve Aste.

The celebration featured dj’s, breakdancers, a half-pipe x-sports show, helicopter fly-ins, a base jumper with a golden shovel, a fashion show contest for “Utah’s Next Top Model”, some words from the Mayor of “SoSaLa” and the state governor’s office, performances by Utah’s legendary scratch DJ, Diggabeatz, and his dance crew, and a headlining dj set by DJ Miss Lisa, which kept the enthusiastic crowd’s hands in the air until the party ended at 1:00am. The celebration occupied an entire city block and people were literally dancing in the street until the music was shut off and the crowd started chanting, “One more song! One more song!”

Model recruiting efforts in Utah will be managed by Stacey Eastman, founder of Pulse Management. The company has successfully scouted and placed seven Vogue cover models from Utah. Also in attendance at the event was Elite’s newest runway sensation, Ali Stephens, who was discovered on an outing with her family in Salt Lake City’s Gateway Mall, and made her modeling debut walking for Prada in Milan, quickly followed by shows for Chanel, Miu Miu, Louis Vuitton, and a whole lot more.

The runway show featured jeans by Danny Nappi, and hair / makeup by Vanity Hair Extensions. Liquid refreshment and entertainment booking was provided by the Park City Playground.

I have shot many nightlife events, so I was in my element with the party portion of the event, but I’ll be the first to admit I felt a little out of place shooting the VIPs on the red carpet. I suppose if you work in the fashion and entertainment industries, that sort of thing is unavoidable from time to time. I always enjoy photography, but what really drives me is having a high degree of creative control over the look of the photographs.

I faced a lot of challenges with this show – above and beyond my typical nightlife or fashion gigs. We were shooting outdoors, indoors, in frequently changing lighting conditions, runway, dj performances, skateboarders on a half-pipe, all with a bustling crowd to work around, and several other shooters with flashes going off to contend with.

Several times, another photographer’s flash overpowered the infra red signal on my Nikon CLS system, and I had to re-shoot – a minor inconvenience, but annoying, anyway.

All told, I think the event was a resounding success. I’m sure those who attended will be buzzing about it, and what it means for Utah’s fashion industry. I have a feeling it’s about to get a major shot in the arm – and as a photographer who loves living in Salt Lake City, I couldn’t be happier about that!

Browse the full gallery on Flickr (over 400 photos!).

The calendar girl search continues — test shooting now for a couple different calendars. Same idea, though. A gorgeous, sexy girl for each month. I shot with Brittney a few days ago, but I wanted to see her in something a little more elegant, so I called her back and asked her to bring some fancy dresses. She did. I’m thrilled with the results!

Flickr Set