Concept Images

Playing with lights

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The essence of dance. A composite of several shots
The essence of dance. A composite of several shots

Some time ago i saw some amazing images where a photographer had attached led lights to a canoeist paddles and recorded the movement. I knew that I wanted to the same but instead wanted to attach them to a dancers body and record the movement of the dance.

I bought a 5 meter string of lights at the end of last year but it has taken quite some time to find a dancer willing to take part. Margarita is a model as well as a champion ballroom dancer, so when she agreed to help out I was really happened.

The lights were wired to be powered from the mains, which was never going to work so I got a battery pack that could be connected to them. My daughter helped my by sewing some together some fabric into a belt containing a pocket for the batteries.

We has intended to use double-sided tape to attach the lights but this did not work to well so ended up trying them on with lengths of string.

We shot in a dance studio that has the advantage of a full length mirror. I set the camera on a tripod at f22 and shot 10 second exposures.Dancer-31 Dancer-20 Dancer-15 Dancer-1

At the end of the shot Margarita partner Erik joined and we changed the lights so they went around both of them.

Margarita & Erik
Margarita & Erik

I have now have other ideas to do in the future so stay tuned.

Exhibitions

Peoples Choice (NSFW)

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I found out today that my image “Naked Art Class” which I entered into a recent exhibition at the Odlin Gallery in Lower Hutt won the “peoples choice” award. Doesn’t actually come with any prizes or anything tangible, but just the knowledge that the public appreciated the work.

The Naked Art Class
The Naked Art Class

 

 

People

Maternity Shoot (NSFW)

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Kylie was one of the models on my “naked art class” and is currently 8 months pregnant. She is helping me on another project that will be finished in another two months time. In return for this I promised to do a more traditional maternity shoot with her.

She has created a pinterest board to show me what she was looking for, which ended up having such a wide range of images in it that is was of little use. We settled on her wanting a high key and a silhouette. Such shots involve a lot of back lighting so rather than reply of studio strobes solely I used a large north facing window and natural light.

LR-Kylie-5In order to fill in some of the feature I ended up using a large softbox set camera right and at very low power.

LR-Kylie-1

Kylie suffers from eczema and during her period it has flared up worst. I eliminated the effects of this using the healing brush and skin shooting techniques in photoshop. Turning the image into black & white also helps.

Kylie loves the images which really all that matters.

Lighting

Practise makes perfect

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I have often found that you only need to know a little bit more about a subject, and be able to deliver that information with confidence, then other people will regard you experience in that matter.

In this regard I firmly believe that if you are involving other people in your photographic ventures then it pays to practise what you are going to attempt to shoot before actually taking up their time. That way no one sees the mucking around that you have done and all they see is a confident photographer who comes in, sets up lights and nails the shot quickly.

A case in point was a recent entry for selection in the Wellington interclub on the topic “lets make music”.

The submitted image
The submitted image

I knew that I wanted to shoot a cello, and for the lighting to be dramatic. Fortunately a friend of one of work colleagues plays in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and was willing to pose for me at her home.

I had a pretty good idea what the light placement would be but I also wanted to pursue other options. I just did not want to waste Sally’s time as I worked through them. So the night before the shoot I enlisted the assistant of my daughter Samantha and dragged out an old guitar as a substitute cello and set up the lights.

I firstly tried a small reflector with a honeycomb grid and orange gell CelloPractise-1

It produced a very interesting light but was definitely not what I was looking for. I then  fitted my large strip box with a grid and positioned it as a rim light and then moved it around until I ended up with something like I was after.

CelloPractise-2

The practise session lasted around a hour but it was time well spent because it meant that the whole shoot with Sally took about 15 minutes. Other images from the shoot are shown below.

LR-Cello-2 LR-Cello-4 LR-Cello-5 LR-Cello-6 LR-Cello-7

Finally for those who need an image to visualise things  the lighting diagram. The strip box was actually vertical rather than the implied horizontal in the diagram.

CelloLighting-Diagrams-G-1.2-final

I would like to say that the image was selected. It made it through to the final selection round but was then beaten by one vote from an image showing a rock band in concert.

 

Lighting, Models, Workshops

Natural Light Session at Palmer Head

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A couple of weeks ago we had a speaker at the Hutt Camera Club, who blew eveyne away with his portraits that were taken with the bare minimum amount of gear. He had a series of low key images that were actually taken using only natural light.

Kat-11Now generally you associate low light low key images with those shot in studio, where you can control the light, but these were all shot using natural light. He mentioned that they had been shot at one of my favourite locations Palmer Head.

I thought this was a great opportunity to try something new and decided to turn it intp a workshop inviting other members of Hutt Camera club to tag along.

Kat agreed to be one model and my daughter Samantha as the other. I had been approached by a new makeup artist Wendy who wanted to add to her portfolio, so we went with a glamour look on Kat and a simple look on Samantha.

Kat-15As it typical at this time of year the sky was grey and the wind quite strong, but that did not affect us much as we were shooting inside. We based ourselves in the most sheltered location so that Wendy could work her magic.

The trick to achieving the look is to place the model by a window, then doing a meter reading of the brightest element of the highlight and then dialling in 2 stops of exposure compensation.

Samantha-2Once people has mastered that technique we then moved to another part of the structure that had larger openings and therefore more light. Here the group practises more high key images.

Despite the conditions everyone seemed to have fun.PHWS-1

Exhibitions, Nudes

Hanging on the wall

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20150725Every two years the life drawing group of the Hutt Art Society holds an exhibition of their nudes. Two years ago it was expanded to include photos, and the current exhibition opened last Tuesday.

I had been preparing for this exhibition for a while and my image “Naked Art Class” was specifically shot for it. You can read all about that image on this blog post. In addition to that image I have three other images entered, with each demonstrating different styles and techniques.

It has been really good observing the reactions of people as they see “Naked Art Class”. Quite a few have big smiles on their faces which is exactly what I was trying to achieve.

The exhibition is open until Sunday 2 August at the Odlin Gallery, which is found at the corner of Huia Street and Mrytle Street in Lower Hutt.

Competition Entries

Representing New Zealand

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This week i got some great news. I had submitted an image for consideration of being selected to represent the Photographic Society of New Zealand (PSNZ) in an international competition run by the Federation of International Photographic Art (FIAP).

PSNZ was entering an “Open Colour” section and had chosen to base a set on “Autumn Colours”. It needed to select 20 images. I anticipated that most people were going to submit landscapes so I submitted a portrait of Kat amongst the leaves.

Kat_FIAPAs I understand it there was a very high number of entries and so I was really pleased to be selected amongst them.

The shot was taken over a year ago and you can read the full story behind it on this post.

Awards, Competition Entries

Success in first Club competition of 2015

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I was pleased with my results in the first judging of the Hutt Camera Club 2015 Ladder competition receiving a Merit and a Commended. This post is about the Merit image that I had entitled “Mummy”

Mummy
Mummy

When the topic of “The Street” was announced I decided that I wanted to do an image of a small child on a large street to show lowliness. I wanted to shoot it against a street that had large buildings on each side which would have further emphasised how small the child was. However in order to be safe I intended to shoot the street and the child separately and then composite the two together.

I took some shots in Featherston Street Wellington one morning while trying to ensure that I dodged the traffic. Around where the old General Motors plant was in Upper Hutt there is a new industrial area that has all of the roads laid out but as they have never sold any of the sections is blocked off so there is no traffic

The little girl is named Aubrey and she is the daughter of Ali, a model I have shot on a number of occasions. I met her just before Christmas and found her to be a very smart and articulate 2 year old, so I had figured that she would be great for the shoot.

Now there is an old adage that you should never work with either children or animals and this certainly came into play.

Aubrey woke up from her afternoon nap in a bad mood and by the time she arrived at the location it had not improved much. Unfortunately when we arrived we also found 5 police dog cars at the gate as they were using the area for dog training. While they were all under control and well away from where we were shooting Aubrey did not like the look of them at all.

I decided to shoot anyway so Ali carried her down the road, put her down and then quickly walked away. The shots were taken in a single set as by this stage Aubrey was heading towards the sort of tantrum that only 2 year olds can throw.

I ended up not putting the composite together as I thought that the image was strong enough without it, and given that it got a Merit then the judge agreed.

Concept Images

Putting on your face

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Putting on your face - the final image
Putting on your face – the final image

Each year the Heretaunga Rotary Club runs a major book sale and my wife is one of the volunteers that help sort the donated books as they come in. A number of weeks ago she brought home a collection of photographic magazines for me to look through. They were mainly out of date, however I do like looking for images that may provide inspiration for shots.

I came across an image is an old issue of Photo Review Australia in a section called “Emerging Talent” by Samantha Everton that I really liked.

Charade - Samantha Everton (www.samanthaeverton.com)
Charade – Samantha Everton (www.samanthaeverton.com)

The expression “Putting on your face” immediately sprang to mind and so when I was doing the Getting Ready image in the model series I asked Sian would she like to help me create something.

BTS-PuttingOnFace-1

I set up a small area of my studio to resemble a makeup area and has Sian sit an pretend to put makeup on. I had purchased three paper mache masks and attached them to a length of dowel that was sitting on a stand uses for needlework. The camera was mounted on a tripod so that all of the angles would stay consistent to make the compositing a little easier.

BTS-PuttingOnFace-2

We tried a number of angles and poses to see which one would work before finally settling on one.

I then moved the masks out of the way and Sian positioned herself roughly where each had been and did a different facial expression at the three positions. Shooting in this way meant that the lighting was consistent across the whole image.BTS-PuttingOnFace-3

Lighting for the image was two soft boxes. The main one was set camera left and up high. (You can just see the edge of it is the top lefthand corner). The second light was camera right and lower down to add some fill. This light had to be carefully placed to ensure that it did not appear in the mirror.

The composite in Photoshop was fairly simple although given that Sian’s face and the masks are different I did have to use the liquify tool a bit.

 

Awards, Competition Entries

North Shore Salon Success

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The North shore Salon is a major national competition run each. This is the second year that I have submitted images and I was super stoked when I received the news this afternoon that my image “Breaking dawn” had been given a “Highly Commended” Award in the Open Colour Section. I also received an acceptance for my “Role of the Model” in the same category.

Breaking Dawn
Breaking Dawn
Role of the Model
Role of the Model

A photographic journey