Tools of the Trade: A Test Shoot

While I was out at sea for the past three weeks, I had several projects that I was working on for the ship.  One of which is a cruise book for their upcoming deployment.  Cruise books are typically filled with lots of photojournalistic-style shots and traditional portraits of each member of the crew.  For this book, I want to create some incredible photography that will help the book sell and also display the impressiveness of the entire crew for their friends and families.

I had an idea to create very cool environmental portraits for each division on the ship.  In order to do this, I would want to capture each division in their element – with the tools of their trades.  To test my idea I decided to do a test shoot on our recent trip to sea.  The shot above is a little rough, but it will project the idea of what I want to try and do for each division.

As you can see from the diagram above, I didn’t have a whole lot of room to work with.  I had about 10 feet from the bench I was up against to the curtain, which would be our backdrop.  I set up the 24″ x 24″ Lastolite Ezybox at camera right with an SB800 at 1/2 power.  This was my key light.  I then set up an SB80DX at 1/16th power with a 43″ Westcott shoot-through umbrella for some on-axis fill.  As steep as the angle was between my key light and my subjects, there was no doubt that I would need some fill to pull it off.  I set up a third flash (another SB80DX) at 1/16th power hanging from pipe hangar with a Justin Clamp.  I gelled it blue to give some separation from the curtain and add some color.

I ran into a few problems that I will need to work out for the final version.  There is a bad reflection from the Ezybox in the safety glasses of the gentleman at far camera right.  There are also reflections of both my key and fill in the firefighter’s helmet.  The reflection in the SCBA mask needs to be taken care of as well.  The good news is that they will be fairly simple to fix with some small adjustments to their position and the position of the lights.  Could I fix them in Photoshop?  Sure I could.  But I would rather get it right in the camera.

The guys in the photo are Hull Technicians – responsible for things like the ship’s plumbing, firefighting, hull repair, damage control, welding and manufacturing.  You can think of them as the “handymen” of the ship because of their diversity in work.  What made it even more fun is that they were more than willing to get all dressed up in their gear in order for me to do a test shoot.

As you can see, there are often many challenges that must be faced when shooting on location.  Space constraints, time constraints, and general photographic problems are bound to rear their ugly head at some point or another.  It’s our job to combat them with patience, technique, and vision in order to make a great picture.  This test shoot was another learning experience for me and I look forward to getting the final frame for the book.

Poster Contest Print and Giving Thanks

Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (MCPON) while he presented my suicide prevention poster team with prints for our winning poster entry. It was a great honor just to be selected as the winner and know that our message will soon be distributed throughout the U.S. Navy Fleet to aid in the prevention of suicides. The prints were incredible and Matt Poling and Chuck Long each received a print too, as well as one for the ship.

It was pretty surreal being recognized for something that isn’t my normal job in the Navy. Although I volunteer as the ship’s photographer, I usually don’t do it on a daily basis. Among the competition for the poster were several folks who happen to work in the mass communications field and they shoot photos and work in Photoshop every single day. It’s their job.

However, good photography and knowledge of Photoshop only played a small part in our team’s success. Since the three of us had lost a Shipmate to suicide and have had first-hand experience, our desire to send a powerful message was the real driving force behind our work.

In light of all of this, I would like to send out a few “thank you” notes to some people who gave me the tools that helped put our entry on top:

• First of all, thanks to my wife Kelie and my kids who stand behind me and support me in all that I do. Thanks for letting me take your picture, try different lighting setups, and carry a camera with me everywhere we go. I love you guys more than anything in the world!
• Next, to my Mom, Dad, Ryan, Chris, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, my whole entire family, Chain of Command and friends who support me, encourage me, and believe in me. Thank you!
• To Scott Kelby and all the folks at theNational Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) for all the great training, resources, and insight you provide. I’ve learned so much more about Photoshop by being a member!
• To David Hobby, THE Strobist, for providing the best resources on lighting available on the Web. I have a learned a TON about lighting from reading his blog and having discussions with other Strobist readers.
• And last but not least, to all the photographers (hobbyist, amateur, and pro) that have inspired me. We have a great community of people and I’m glad to be a small part of it. Thanks to you all!

With that, I’ll wrap up this post. I’m up to my ears in post processing from events over the past week so I’ll be busy this weekend! I hope you have a great weekend and I’ll see you back here on Monday with some news and who knows what else I’ll come up with! See you then!

(Photo above by IC3 Billie Jean Pruiett.)

Speedlight Gels (and kits) Are Here!

I’ve talked about getting these together for quite some time now and I’ve finally got them available for you! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, let me just break it down for you. Until now, I’ve used the infamous Roscolux swatchbook gels in order to color correct my flash, for color effects, and the like. However, there was a problem with those little 1-cent wonders: you had to tape them to your flashes. Gaffer’s tape works well, but doesn’t stick that great in cold weather (unless you’re using a ton of it). If you leave it on there for too long (several days), you’ll get a nasty residue on your flashes. Same thing with velcro. No fun.

There are some pretty cool, commercially available solutions out there, but frankly I think they’re overpriced. $30.00 for 10 gels is a little too steep for a small piece of gel and some velcro. Now, if I were a full-time pro making lots of cash I probably wouldn’t see it this way. I’d see them as a bargain. But I’m not and I’m guessing that you’re probably not either. Maybe so.

I’m a DIY kind of guy so I decided to come up with a little DIY FlashStrap and a Gel Kit. What’s great about them is the gels are large enough to fit over a Diffusion Dome or Sto-Fen and can be cut to size if need be.

The FlashStrap is make of rubber from bicycle inner tubes, using velcro on one side for the gels or other attachments to fasten to. The FlashStrap goes around your flash and fastens to itself via the velcro. No mess, no fuss.

The Gel Kit includes 10 of the most frequently used gels. You get: Full CTO, 3/4 CTO, 1/2 CTO, 1/4 CTO, 1/2 PlusGreen, 1/4 PlusGreen, 1/4 CTB, Light Red, Primary Blue, and Moss Green.

So if you’re not the DIY-type, I’ve made these Gel Kits, FlashStraps, and gels available to you on the cheap. No fancy manufacturing here: just me, a rotary cutter, gels, velcro, and bicycle inner tubes baby. The gels may even come with a fingerprint from the manufacturing process… I’m just sayin’.

Pricing:

• FlashStrap – $5.00
  
• Gel Kit – $10.00 (Includes 10 gels)
  
• FlashStrap + Gel Kit – $15.00
  
• Individual Gels – $1.50 each

Here’s the link to my Store where you can find out more info and even order your own. The FlashStrap and Gel Kits will be shipped via USPS Priority Mail and Individual Gels will be sent via First Class Mail. This is the easiest and most cost effective way to ship these babies. If you need them faster than that, just contact me and we can work out other arrangements.

As always, if you have questions, hit me up in the comments section below. I hope you all have a great week and I’ve got some cool stuff on the way for ya!

Have a great week!

Stephen

Using Nikon Creative Lighting System: a.k.a “McNally-style”

If you have read my blog for any length of time you’ll know that I’m a big manual lighting kind of guy and I’m not much of the TTL, Creative Lighting System (CLS) type of Nikon shooter. I like the control I get with manual. Sure, it has it’s annoyances and may add a little extra time to your shoot but it puts the photographer in 100% control.

I’ve been reading Joe McNally’s new book “The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light From Small Flashes” and he talks an awful lot about CLS. And I mean an AWEFUL lot. So after reading it again and again, I decided to play around with it a bit.

CLS is great if you need to work fast and are running and gunning on a shoot. Why? Because you can shoot in Aperture Priority and the camera will meter the scene and tell your flashes what they need to output to get a proper exposure. You can further control your foreground to background ratio using exposure compensation. It’s also really convenient because if you’ve got a D70, D80, D90, D300, or D700 you don’t need to have a hot shoe flash as a Commander as you can use your pop-up flash.

CLS also has it’s limitations. The one that bothers me the most is the fact that the signal is line-of-sight (LOS) so your Commander unit has to be able to see your Remote flashes. Now, if you’re in a room with white walls the signal will bounce around a little, but not all that much. This is where radio triggers really shine because RF isn’t limited so much by LOS as infrared is.

In the shot above I put my SB800 on a lightstand with only the diffusion dome on. It was still pretty bright outside, so I beat down the California sun and got some saturation back in the sky my dialing in -1 EV (Exposure Compensation) and changing my camera’s white balance to Tungsten. This gave me a deep blue sky, but it makes EVERYTHING blue. So I put a full cut of CTO gel on my SB800 so it would warm up the light hitting my subject. Skin tones are nice and warm and my problem is solved. This was shot with my D90 at f8 1/100th ISO 200 @ 50mm with a Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens.

I call working this way “McNally Style” because it’s how he works with speedlights. It’s on a very rare occasion that he will shoot in Manual. He puts a lot of faith in Nikon CLS and rightfully so because he gets great results.

You can read more about Nikon CLS right here.

Using Flash to Knock Down the Sun

Good morning everybody! I hope you’ve had a great week and are read to head into the weekend. I’m going to wrap up the week with some info on how to knock down the sun with your flash and get good exposure with both your subject and background.

First off, this is an impossible task without some kind of flash. If you’ve read my blog for any length of time you know that I HATE on-camera pop-up flash. In this case, if it’s all you have you have to use it. I used an SB800 on camera and I highly recommend a hot shoe flash in any case.

Here’s what has to happen: you have to get a proper background exposure and bring up our subject with flash. Seems simple, right? In the shot above, the sun was behind my subject which means that if I had shot it with no flash one of two things would have happened. Either my subject would have been properly exposed and my background would be blown out (overexposed) or my background would have been properly exposed and my subject would have been very dark and underexposed.

Because my D90′s max flash sync speed is 1/200th of a second, that’s what I set my shutter speed at in Manual mode. I set my aperture at f11, which gave me a proper background exposure with my ISO at 200.

I set my SB800 to TTL-BL mode (TTL Balanced) which lets the flash get exposure information from the camera and when the flash fires, it pops in just enough light to properly expose your subject while keeping your background exposure where it’s at. Basically it tries not to overpower the ambient light in the scene. I use this technique on the street when I’m grabbing quick shots and I don’t have time to mess with manual power settings on my flash.

So there you have it, a quick and easy way to knock down the power of the sun with flash. Remember that on bright sunny days like it was yesterday, you won’t be able to get shots like this at wide apertures like f2.8, f4, f5.6 and so on. At least not with using the method I described above. There’s another method you can use, but that’s another post for another day!

Have a great weekend!

Digital WakeUp Call Reminder – You Just Gotta Go!

David Ziser’s Digital WakeUp Call 2009 Tour is off and running and has been a huge success. The reviews he is receiving are incredible! If you are only able to attend one photography workshop this year, I wouldn’t miss this one!

For those of you out there who don’t know David Ziser, he is an amazing instructor and photographer with the accolades to back it up. He teaches each year at Photoshop World and is a world-renowned wedding and portrait photographer.

“Wait, but I don’t shoot weddings!” Hold on, don’t click away yet! Even if you don’t shoot weddings there is no doubt in my mind that you will benefit from this workshop. Athletes cross-train right? Well, so can photographers! And you won’t believe what a difference it can make in your images, lighting, and work in general! If I haven’t sold you yet, keep reading because I’m going to show you a way to save $20.00 on your registration fee!

David is teaching DWC in 58 cities across the country. More than likely he’ll be heading somewhere close to you too. Here’s the schedule and registration page. I’ll be at the San Diego event on May 21st. If you happen to see me there, come up and say hello.

David made a special offer for Stephen Zeller Photography readers. Enter code ZSZDWC09 to get in for $59 – a savings of $20. That’s an incredible deal considering that you’ll go home with materials worth $250 more than you paid to get in:

* Tour Handbook: includes program notes, photography, marketing & more
* 2 Hour DVD with extended program content
* $100 Rebate from American Color Imaging
* 1 year membership to WPPI and Rangefinder magazine, a $99 value
* FREE 3 month membership to DigitalProTalkPlus.com, a $45 value
* FREE 3 month subscription to PPA Magazine, a $15 value
* FREE PPA Indemnification (no-fault) insurance for all new PPA members
* Over $2,500 in door prizes awarded each evening
* And a chance to win 1 of 4 Grand Prizes worth over $5,000

Bonus For Canon Shooters: David is a Canon shooter too. His demos are based on Canon gear.

I just wanted to give all my readers a friendly reminder about this awesome seminar! I really can’t express enough how much you will gain by attending. Again, if you’re attending the San Diego seminar I’ll see you there!

My Report On My DSLR Photography for Beginners Workshop

Last weekend was my first time teaching a photography workshop. I wasn’t nervous about getting up in front of people as I have done that quite a bit in my Navy career. There were a couple of other things I was nervous about though.

My primary concern was having enough material to fill up a whole day. When I developed my course outline, I thought for sure I’d have some extra time to spare… boy was I wrong! I ended up concluding the class at 7:30PM that night and we started at 10:00AM that morning. I spent a LOT more time on lighting (natural, on camera, and off camera) than I thought I would. The attendees were really into it though, which was cool for me and made it that much more fun.

My second concern was being able to hold everyone’s attention all day long. But I didn’t seem to have a problem there either. No matter how many times you go over your material, there’s really no way to know if you’re going to be interesting or not. You just have to wing it and see how things go.

One thing I focused on at the end of the day was working on location portraits and lighting them without making them look, well… lit. I shot the image above of Adrian, a workshop participant, while we were on location at Balboa Park here in San Diego. The flowers and greenery made for a nice background and I shot at a wide enough aperture to throw them out of focus and prevent them from being so distracting.

I lit Adrian with a single SB800 with only the diffusion dome on the speedlight. I triggered it with CLS, but in manual. I wanted to control how much light I was throwing into the image. This type of lighting style allows me to use the shutter speed to control the background exposure while using my aperture to control my foreground exposure.

Overall everyone seemed thrilled with the workshop and were looking forward to more. They also commented on their desire for me to offer more topic-specific workshops as well. That’s in the works for the near future.

Photoshop For Fun: Magazine Cover

My good friend Chuck took this picture of his daughter for her 1-Year pictures the other night in my studio. He’s recently gotten into photography and wanted to do some cool high key shots and needed more lights and the white seamless background.

I helped him with the lighting setup, which included 3 Nikon Speedlights total, 1-SB800 and 2-SB80DX units. The SB800 was used in a soft silver reflective umbrella at 1/4 power to light his daughter. I put the two SB80DXs on Justin Clamps and up high to light the background. They were set to 1/2 power. The SB800 was to his daughter’s right about 4 feet away and aiming down at about a 45 degree angle. He shot it with D40 with a Nikon 55-200mm lens and the lights were triggered with CyberSyncs.

I popped his memory card into my MacBook Pro to check out what he had captured. I really liked the feel of this image, so I processed it completely in Lightroom and then moved over to Photoshop to take care of the “magazine cover” aspect of the image. I e-mailed it to him and his wife last night and they loved it.

There are lots of creative things that you can do with Photoshop besides just process images. It’s also great for graphic design and just plain ‘ole puttin’ a smile on somebody’s face… my favorite thing to do with my photography.

Photo by Chuck Long. Disclaimer: This image is the sole work of Chuck Long and Stephen J. Zeller and is in no way affiliated with American Baby magazine.

Swing Away

Working of the inspiration from my golf hobby, I decided to shoot something that would be a little harder… a golf club. Why would that be harder? Because it’s metal and shiny… which can be a potential nightmare if it’s your first time trying to light something so reflective. My hats off to all the jewelry photographers in the world.

For this setup, I wanted a little harder light than I usually use so I used a an SB80DX and an SB800 with only the diffusion domes. I used another SB80DX with a Rosco 80 blue gel on the black seamless paper background. I triggered the lights with CyberSyncs and SU-4 mode on my SB80DXs. I had the CST on the D90 and a CSRB on the SB800. The SB800 fired the SB80DXs which were using their built-in optical slaves (SU-4 mode).

Here’s the setup shot:

For my camera setup, my D90 was in Manual, f8, 1/125th, ISO 200, Flash WB. I used the Nikon 16-85mm VR lens @ 85mm. I had the camera on my tripod to ensure extra stability. The reason I used the Flash WB preset was because I knew I would need a warmer WB setting while shooting something metal with no finish on it. A cooler WB setting would have left the image feeling a lot more cool than what I would have wanted. Since I shot RAW, I could have fixed it in post… but why do that when you can do it in camera?

I had to move my lights around quite a bit to get the exact look I was going for. I tried to think about where my light was coming from and where I would get reflections and really hot specular highlights. The two speedlights that were lighting the golf club were set on VERY low power. The SB800 was at 1/32 and the SB80DX was set to 1/64. The background SB80DX was at 1/4.

This was a fun, yet challenging subject and I had a good time working out the problems I encountered. Each day, we should challenge ourselves as photographers. It’s another way we can sharpen our skills and grow as artists. So what are you waiting for? CHALLENGE YOURSELF!

Golf Anyone?

You know, I’ve never really been into product photography but for some reason or another I keep finding myself shooting product lately. Following the advice to Joe McNally who says, “Shoot what you love,” I always look for subjects that I’m interested in. I really love the game of golf and I’ve played it since I was a little kid. So for this little tutorial I thought I’d go with a familiar subject.

When thinking out my lighting scheme, I wanted a light that would sculpt the ball and not just totally blow it out and lose the details. I also wanted to quickly draw the viewers eye to the subject so I used another light with a red gel, raking the light up the black seamless background. Now for the gritty setup details.

For the main light, I used an SB800 through a shoot-through umbrella directly above the golf ball. It was set to 1/8th power. The soft light coming directly above the golf ball would help to carve out the dimples and provide some detail to the shot. It also plays very interestingly with the text as well. For the background I used a black seamless paper background. I put an SB80DX on the floor with an 8″ homemade snoot and a red gel. It was also fired at 1/8th power. The red light raked up the background to draw the viewer’s attention to the ball. I triggered the lights with my CyberSyncs. My D90 was set up in Manual mode at f5.6, 1/125th, ISO 200, with my Nikon 16-85mm lens. I shot on a tripod to ensure the shot was tack sharp.

Check out the setup shot:

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Simple little setups like this can produce some really great shots. You don’t have to have big expensive studio gear to get great results, although it doesn’t hurt.