Lighting Essentials Workshop in San Diego

I’ve got some pretty cool news for all the photographers in the Southern California area! Don Giannatti is bringing his Lighting Essentials workshop to town on February 6th and 7th, 2010! If you have always wanted to learn about lighting, are just starting out, or even if you have a good bit of experience working with lighting you will benefit greatly by attending!

The workshop is two days long, with the first day shooting in the studio and the second day working on location. And when I say, “shooting” I really mean it. There is not a lot of show and tell to be had, it’s more like shoot and shoot!

The lighting topics will range from reflectors to studio flashes, and not to worry… there will be plenty of gear to go around. Even if you’ve never put your hands on an actual studio flash before, you will feel pretty well-versed by the time you finish with the workshop.

On the second day, you will be out shooting on location. Here’s where small flash really comes into play. They are so easy and portable that they are a go-to light for lots of location shooters. This part of the workshop will bring you out of the dark, and into the light (pun completely intended).

I’ve spent all this time talking about shooting and by now you’re probably wondering who you’re going to be shooting? Models. Real, live, models. The other benefit of this workshop is learning how to interact with your subjects and provide direction in order to achieve your vision.

As great as I’ve made this workshop sound, it’s got to be expensive right? Wrong. The price tag is $450.00 and that’s less than half of what some other people charge for a workshop of this caliber. I’m here to tell you that this is a small investment for what you will gain. There are only a few spots left, so be sure to head on over and sign up! I’ll be there myself, so I hope to see you there!

Screenshot above courtesy of Lighting Essentials Workshops.

Simple Product Shots

Photographers often buy and sell goods online. No matter whether it’s eBay, Craigslist, or any other type of online auction or sales site you want to have good images to represent the product that you’re selling. I can’t tell you how many times that I have been searching either of the sites I mentioned above and found photographers (amateur or pro isn’t relevant) and the images associated with their item are well… less than what you would expect from a photographer.

It comes down to one of two things: laziness or lack of knowledge. The first one I can’t do anything about.

Setting Up
Getting great product shots in your living room, garage, dining room, bedroom, or wherever isn’t all that hard. You really don’t need anything fancy either.

If you’re shooting something really small, you can use white copy paper if you need to. I recommend that you use white foam core boards that you can pick up from your favorite office supply store. They are sometimes referred to as ‘presentation board’. If you’ve only got one flash or strobe, then you’ll need a minimum of three pieces. One to put your subject on, one to use as a background, and the third to use as a reflector for fill light.

If you’re shooting something that is very reflective, like the perfume bottle above, then you’re going to want to get your lights in nice and close. If you don’t have an umbrella or a softbox, you can use a white bed sheet to give yourself a bigger and softer light source. Remember to take into account the angle of incidence/angle of reflection because you don’t want to reflect light directly into your lens, causing lens flare. It also puts a really nasty specular highlight on your product. In most product shots, side light works really well.

Lola
In the shot above, I used two lights. I used an SB800 through a 45″ shoot through umbrella on camera left at 1/4 power and then a Lastolight TriGrip 1-Stop Diffuser on camera right with an SB80DX set to 1/32nd power. Most of the perfume bottle was lit with my umbrella light and the fill came from the Lastolite panel which also provided the pop for the logo.

So for about $20.00 or so you can have a pretty cool product shooting setup. There’s no real need to buy an expensive product table or anything extravagant in order to get professional looking results for products you’re selling online, or even if it’s just for fun.

Rockin’ The White Background

The white seamless background is one of the most useful tools in a studio photographers arsenal. For about $40.00, you’ve got a white, gray, and even a black background for shooting studio work. How is that possible? Because by controlling your lighting and your exposure you can make that background go from all white to gray to black. Seems easy right? Well, sometimes.

Probably the hardest look to pull off well is a completely white background. The reason we photogs fight the white is because it takes a lot of light to make that white background really “white” and evenly lit. Not to mention that you still have to light your subject. To be effective, you’re gonna need three lights.

For this setup, I used some tips and tricks from Zack Arias’ tutorial but I added a few twists. I shot these in my garage, so being able to get my son far enough away from the white background to prevent it from lighting him was going to be a little tough. Also, I cut up and made V-Cards from insulation panels rather than the doors that Zack talks about.

Here’s a little setup shot:

Each panel of the V-Card is 24″ wide. I placed them so that I could help reflect light from each flash that was going to light my background, back onto it. This also prevents a lot of light from spilling onto my subject. In the corner of each of the V-Cards I had an SB80DX speedlight with diffusion dome on a stand at 1/4 power. At my shooting distance, I didn’t need much more power than that.

I rolled out my paper from my background stand and taped it off on the concrete floor. I then laid a piece of white tileboard over the seam and Daniel stood on that. The white tileboard gives a great reflection without having to add one in Photoshop if you’re shooting full length, your subject is sitting, etc.

I used an SB800 through at 24″ x 24″ Lastolite Ezybox for my key light. I really love that thing. The light is so soft and smooth… it’s like heaven coming from such a small light source. I positioned it camera right and up a little high. I shot at f 5.6 @ 1/200th of a second. My SB800 power was set to 1/16th. The light reflecting off of the white seamless gave me a little bit of a separation light on my subject which was very nice. Not exactly what I was going for, but when I saw it on my D90′s LCD I was really diggin’ it.

So that’s how to properly shoot a portrait on a white background and make sure that the white is REALLY white. If you’re using paper on location, you can throw a lot of light at it and pray but you’re likely going to end up with a washed out subject and an unevenly lit background.

That’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed the info and I’ll see you back here for next week. Got a busy weekend of shooting ahead! Have a great day!

My Basic Lightroom Workflow: A Video

Ok, so as promised here is the Lightroom workflow video that I promised you. Sorry for the delay, but there were a couple of unseen technical issues that caused a little hangup with getting the video ready for yesterday’s post.

Spare yourself the typing, I know the audio is less than stellar. I was using my MacBook Pro with the built-in microphone. You can still hear everything very clearly, but there is a fair amount of background noise that I find really annoying. Maybe you won’t, but I sure do.

Enjoy the video and let me know what you think in the comments. As long as there is a demand, I’ll be glad to post some more tips, tricks, and processing tutorials via video.

Have a great Tuesday and I’m declaring today as “Back Your Photos Up” Tuesday, so go do it!

A Few Words About NAPP & Kelby Training Live

As most of you probably already know, I’m a NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) member, and have been for 2 years now. I can’t tell you in this blog post (because it would be too long) how valuable membership is, but I’ll do my best to keep it short and sweet. In a nutshell, I almost feel bad that I only pay $99.00 per year for my membership because what I get out of it is worth WAY more than that.

First of all, a NAPP membership automatically gets you a subscription to Photoshop User magazine, which is $9.99 at the cover price. You get 8 issues per year, so with just that your membership almost pays for itself. All I have to do is add in the fact that I don’t pay for shipping on my camera gear when I buy it from my favorite store in New York, and my membership has already paid for itself and does so each year.

Second, the resources available to NAPP members are incredible and the amount of training that comes with your membership via the member’s website and forums is incredible. I’ve got a one-stop resource for anything that I want to know about Photoshop and Lightroom.

Third (and last I’ll mention today), is the discounts available for NAPP members to any of the Kelby Training Live events. For most seminars, you can save $20.00 off of the already low price. And conveniently, this brings me to my next point.

Yesterday I attended my first Kelby Training Live seminar, the Adobe CS4 Unleashed Seminar and it was incredible. It was a full 5 hours worth of extremely helpful and valuable information on the entire Creative Suite. Dave Cross and Rafael “RC” Concepcion covered InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Flash. The price of the seminar was $39.00 (because I’m a NAPP member, $49.00 for everyone else) and again I felt like I wasn’t paying enough for what I was getting. Everyone who walked through the door received a copy of Layers or Photoshop User magazine as well as the CS4 Suite Integration DVD by Dave Cross, valued at $70.00. So right when you walk through the door you’re $30.00 ahead.

One of the other great things I liked about the event was that even though there were books and DVDs available for purchase, it was all soft-sell. By this I mean that every time you walked past their table at lunch or on a break someone was there to help answer your questions and you could make purchases, but there was no pressure at all to buy. At several seminars I have been to, companies want to sell as much product as they can and they push their people hard to do so. Definitely not the case at Kelby Training Live events.

The day before, I brought Dave and RC out to the ship to give them a tour and we did a little shooting. More on that on Monday! Dave and RC are a couple of really great guys and I enjoyed dinner with them and a few of the NAPP folks after the seminar last night.

If you’re not already a member of NAPP and you’re use Photoshop, Lightroom, or any of Adobe’s products I highly recommend that you join. You’ll certainly be glad that you did! See you guys on Monday for some rockin’ photos and some details behind ‘em!

One Light for Portraits: You Can Do It!

When you’re shooting people on location, you have to be able to work fast and move quickly. I work without an assistant and that means that I need to be able to do everything myself. This almost forces me to use a single light for most of my sessions so I’m not spending all of my time running around and positioning lights, adjusting them, and so on.

As the King of OneLight shooting Mr. Zack Arias has proven so well, you can make excellent photographs with just one light. Execution is far more important than size and power, so that’s why I shoot with hot shoe flashes (speedlights) instead of an AC powered moonlight like the Alien Bees B800.

I prefer speedlights over moonlights for a couple of reasons. Their lighter, require less gear, and I can still get a lot of light out of them without having to lug around a heavy light and an even heavier power pack.

So how do I do it? It’s pretty easy actually. My current favorite light modifier combo for lighting my environment and shooting large groups is my Westcott 60” reversible umbrella and my Lastolite TriFlash. I put three hot shoe flashes on the TriFlash and shoot them through the umbrella. I can get quite a bit of light and fast recycle times without having to wait until nearly sunset to do so.

For the shot above, I shot at f 5.6, 1/200th of a second, and ISO 100 with my D90. I had my SB800 and (2) SB80DX flashes all set at ½ power. I also left the diffusion domes on the flashes to further soften the light. I use the umbrella as a shoot-through because it gives a nice falloff of light without casting a shadow, as it would do when using it reflectively. I placed the light on camera right, slightly above my subjects. Another trick when shooting groups is point the center of the umbrella toward the far end of your group. This will feather the light a bit and your group will be lit more evenly.

So there’s a quick, easy lesson in how to light a large group of people with only one light, and pull it off! I would much rather haul around a few speedlights and a heavy moonlight and power pack, so this really works to my advantage. Remember, if you execute well, it doesn’t matter what kind of gear you’re using.

Have a great week!

Tuesday Updates

Here’s a little news and what I’m up to this week:

• My Zenfolio Review has attracted quite a few readers, and so I thought I would put up a link (image above) for you to save $5.00 of a new Zenfolio account. Just click the link above to check it out!
• Last night I ordered a Lastolite Ezybox 24″x24″ softbox from B&H Photo to use with my Nikon Speedlights. I should have it in a couple of days and after I put some time in shooting with it, I’ll post up a full review!
• I’ll soon be offering a cool little gel kit for sale. I’ll give you the ins and outs soon, but you’ll be able to pick these things up for $15.00 and it will contain a quick strap and 10 gels. This system will work with any flash, so no need to worry there. More details to come!
• I’m now offering individual Mentoring Sessions for photographers and anyone who wants to get into photography here in San Diego. All the details are right here.

That’s it for me today. I hope you guys have a great day and I’ll see you back here soon!

Photo Recipe: How To Get This Shot

This was a shot that I had been wanting to get for awhile, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it. This sign is a icon in the San Diego area. It’s “The Boulevard”, which is the “gateway to mid-city”.

It’s neon, so shooting it at night is certainly appropriate and makes for a much more interesting photo than what you would get during daylight hours. A tripod is going to be essential to the success of a shot like this.

I shot it with my D90, 50mm f1.8 lens, and I used the self-timer set at 5 seconds. This reduces the chance of camera shake significantly. Aperture was at f/22 and the shutter speed was set to 3 seconds. I needed this long of an exposure to get the light trails from the cars passing by. I was of course in Manual mode and at ISO 200.

One thing to keep in mind here is when you’re shooting around stoplights that if you catch a light changing from red to green it will show up in your photo. If it does, it makes your image a lot less believable. Of course, it could possibly fixed in post later on as well.

Monday’s here again and it’s the start of a new week. I’ve got a busy week this week and I’ve also got a Mentor Session scheduled for Saturday morning. More on that later.

Have a great week!

Stephen

People Photography 101: Interacting With Your Subjects

I am often asked how it is that I get such great candid shots and portraits. So today I’m going to spill the beans and give you my secret to getting those great shots. Ok, it’s not really a secret but it’s something that many don’t think about. If we want want the people we’re photographing to look natural they have to feel it too.

So how to we do that as photographers? Simple. Act naturally. Interact with your subject and carry on a conversation. It will put them at ease and it will bring out their true personality. Not everyone likes to be photographed, but they will like it a whole lot more if they are comfortable with you. Keep your subject involved with what you’re doing and show them a few shots from time to time. It will help them feel connected to you.

Now for the “what not to do” part of this post. Don’t ever, under any circumstances do the “1… 2… 3… snap” trick. That’s the shortest route to a boring and stiff photo. I can’t stress enough that you should never ever use this technique.

So there you have it, a simple yet effective way to make your people shots better.

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!