Eric Packham

Atlanta Photographer Matthew Lane- I had an opportunity to shoot actor Eric Packham again last week. He’s been good to work with. While I mess around with different lighting techniques, he picks out outfits and provides ideas for some of the story telling we look to convey. We did both natural light and some studio work this day. Check out his site at www.ericpackham.com

Kymry!

Atlanta Photographer Matthew Lane- A great friend of ours visited us last week from Norway . She’s an American who had been in Scandinavia for the last year or so and this is her first visit back to the States. I had let her escape without shooting her once and I vowed not to let it happen again. So we schedule a shoot for a Thursday evening at my home studio. Before the shoot, she had requested that our mutual girl friends Erika and Holly be there. I said “Of course”. What I didn’t know was that evening was the first time the girls had seen each other since Kymry had come into to town. I started to doubt where or not we were going to get this shoot in at all. But low and behold we got started about 9:30pm thanks to some encouragement from me and the girls. Kymry is a stunning beauty but you can’t tell her that. She is one of the most self conscience people I’ve met when it comes to body image. With this knowledge I was determined to capture her best. The shoot started off with the girls really goofing around. This is good as you want your models to be loose. Especially if they are not confident and experienced. So we got quite a few hilarious shots from these moments. Eventually during an outfit change the two girls went upstairs, leaving me and Kymry alone. When we commenced shooting, she really came alive. She was moving and posing like she had been doing it all her life. She needed little direction which was good as I was exhausted and doing my best to hang on. See more at my Flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/zazenphoto/ scroll till you see her.

Atlanta Photographer Matthew Lane-

Lighting On Two Planes

As I subscribe to the Strobist site, I often find myself recreating some of the featured exercises. Lighting on two planes was the subject of this post.

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/02/one-minute-lighting-tip-lighting-on-two.html

David(Strobist) highlighted a shot by user Nyonin that lit some Turkish delight sitting on a green surface. The question was how did the shooter shoot the surface green without getting green on the subject. It was such a simple setup that expresses such an important lighting concept. The first plane is the soft light to illuminate the subject. The second plane was a strobe aimed at the background with a green gel. The key is the camera angle. With the camera at the angle in which this shot was taken, the green wall is perfectly reflected onto the surface. This is my setup shot in attempt to recreate the Turkish delight shot.









I places the figure on the reflective plexy-glass and lit it with the large diffused light of a shoot thru umbrella. This was filed with a silver reflector camera right. The green surface was created by lighting the blank wall with a green gel'd strobe. The blank green wall reflect off the surface of the plexy-glass to crate the desired affect. Here is the final shot.




Cool huh?
ML

Atlanta Photographer Matthew Lane-

Assignment Time

Last month I had an opportunity to shoot Debi Blair, the wife of a friend of mine, for her hair stylist business. They are updating her website and needed some good portraits of her in the salon. We met at the salon on a quiet Sunday morning. The salon was setup in the usual shopping center fashion (...although much hipper) that provided a great "garage" light. I was prepared for using strobes but the light was so perfect that they were not needed at all. More on that later. So we put Abbie in the chair as a client model and did some working shots that came out really well. We then put Bill, her husband in the chair in attempt to attract the male clientèle also. Even though Abbie appeals to men much more than Bill does. After the chair sessions' we did some more environmental portraits of Debi in the salon. I was really happy with the shoot. I was quick, even though we all chatted quite a bit, and the client was very pleased. And I got paid which is always great.



See her site for more shots at www.debiblair.com ***Under Construction at the moment.***

To light or not to light? This was the first time I had been confronted with that question. Over the last year I had really become adept that lighting objects well thanks to David Hobbie and his Strobist blog. For this shoot, the ambient light was so good that artificial light was not a necessity. Strobes could be used with great success but it was not needed. For a split second, didn't know what to do. In the crunch of having to make decision during the shoot, I decided to do the simplest thing and shoot the ambient light. After some meditation on this, I decided that this was the best thing to do and I will use this philosophy on future shoots. (..unless for a Strobist assignment of course) Here's why. If the ambient is already great, there is no reason to not work with it. Using strobes takes time. Setup and exposure all have to be just right for the great shot. If he ambient is great, the work has been done for you already. So shoot it! used to consider my self a Strobist but after this shot I know that will always be more than that. Strobes are a tool. If they are needed they will be used. If they are not needed, they will stay in the case.

For now,
ML

Stritcly Business

Atlanta Photographer Matthew Lane-

Abbie and I attended a wonderful conference last weekend concerning the business of photography called Sticky Business 2. It was held by industry trade organization the American Society of Media Photographers or ASMP. We couldn't have been more pleased and surprised at the insight that this conference was able to dish out. As we start this business adventure, so many questions arise concerning the best way to go about things or what we need to do a all. I feel like after this weekend that there is a clear path for us to follow. Clear enough that once we are finished with our huge list of to do's generated by our conference notes, the focus can really be on creating dynamic images. Everything from copyright and marketing to search engine optimization and even paperwork.
I heard about the conference from Chase Jarvis' blog which I do my best to keep up with. Now that subscribe to blogs via RSS, I've been able to keep track of all I need to be reading. This should allow for more of keeping up with writing my own blog. Which was of course stressed in the ASMP conference. So a special thanks all the contributors and the attending folks I had the pleasure of talking to at ASMP. Cheers!

For more information concerning ASMP see www.asmp.org
Chase Jarvis' gracious blog of insight is at www.chasejarvis.com/blog/

Oh and yes I am a member of ASMP now.

Balancing Ambient Light

For the first exercise discussion, we will go over balancing flash with ambient light. Basically the concept is to pop a subject with the flash while at the same time preserving some of the pleasant ambient. So how do we do this? Well you know that a properly exposed photograph consists of the appropriate values of aperture, shutter speed and ISO. In a pure flash environment we usually set our shutter speed to the full sync speed, either 1/250th or 1/500th and adjust our aperture to allow the right amount of flash in. Why is flash only concerned with the aperture? Think of how a flash works. It is a pulse of light. No matter how fast you set your shutter speed this pulse of light will hit the camera sensor fully. So we adjust the aperture to determine how much of that light pulse gets to the sensor. As you can imagine, the larger the f-stop the more light hits the sensor.
So now we want to get some of the surrounding non flash constant light involved in our exposure. Well this is simple. Slow down the shutter speed to the point that the ambient light has time to affect the exposure. Let's take a look at a set of pictures I took of the venerable Buddha.



The first shot is without flash. Notice the room is completely dark. The next shot near full sync speed of 1/250th. Note that the subject is properly exposed and the background is dark. Only some of the flash spill can be seen on the back wall. We will learn how to control light spill in a later exercise. As I take the next few shots I slow down the shutter speed to gradually bring in the bright sunshine coming in though the windows. The exposure of the subject stays the same the whole time, no matter what the shutter speed value is. That's the key. The world changes but Buddha stays the same.
Now lets take a look at what we can do with this. This shot of Abbie(the wife, see, you remember) was taken on a very bright day with the Sun behind her.


The subject is normally exposed but I decided to underexpose the background a bit to separate her from it. Cool affect huh? For this I metered off the light behind her and increased the shutter speed to until the ambient was underexposed to my liking. This calls on the old adage that the correct exposure is up to you. Another great use of this feature is shooting a subject in front of a sunset. Sunsets are so beautiful, so of course you would want to include that in your shot.
Play with this a bit and you'll find the possibilities endless and inspiring.

Take care!
ML

Back for More

Whew, been away for a while. Let's catch up. So one of the reasons it has been difficult to update this blog is that we have put our house up for sale. This has moved the PC to the basement on a coffee table. This is about as un-ergonomic as you can get. It is a back killer so I have prioritized my time there to Photoshop and other post processing only. So why have we put the house up for sale? There are quite a few reasons. The first and most important was to lower our cost of living. At some point I will become a professional photographer and that will reduce my income significantly, for a while at least. Right now I have the cushy job in IT paying plenty. When you have been making plenty for a while, you start to acquire things that have a significant recurring cost. So in a sense, one is enslaved to things one has acquired. The challenge is to shed these financial responsibilities to allow for enough freedom in life to move about. For example, changing careers. I found it pretty easy to do so. I surprised my self. I guess once you have a goal in life or found something you really love to do, the superficial things you once held dear take on such less significance.
Ok so that’s one good reason. Another is a chance to move to a more interesting neighborhood. Our current location is a pseudo suburb just north of Atlanta. It’s not bad but it’s not exceptional either. Our neighbors are typically way older than us. We can relate on a person level but they are at such different point in their lives that it doesn’t go much further than quick pleasantries. These people could never be our good friends. So we look for a neighborhood of like minded individuals with great places to eat and especially drink. Nothing like a good neighborhood pub.
Unfortunately with all this great planning and effort comes the worst selling market in a long time. At least it gives up a chance to meditate on what we really want and what would be best for us. The discussion now is whether we want a bungalow or loft. Well for the photog career, loft wins. Abbie (the wife, so you know and I don’t have to say, “the wife” anymore) is quite the champion of the loft life. She has surprised me. As she always does. So we wait. We wait for the house to sell for less than we wanted so we can buy another dwelling for less than the seller wanted.
On to the photography career goals. Some really great stuff is happening. I’ve developed some direction in which I want my career to go. The idea is that you are to specialize in something in order to be successful and known for something. The problem with that is that I love to shoot everything. After some meditation on the subject, I determined that I love headshots and some kind of commercial photography. These seem to be the most dynamic. You get to meet tons of people and go to some great places, all the while the creativity is in your hands. I’m not trying to force anything yet but guide with a light hand in the direction that’s pulling me the most. Also, I love the Strobist stuff. That will definitely be a big part of the picture. So with that said, I had my first paying job last weekend. Whoo Hoo! I did a commercial headshot for a friend who is a local actor. It was fun and I learned a ton about some of the headshot variants like commercial and theatrical and how to get someone to smile big without looking insane. Even though every ad featuring a human has them smiling so large they look crazy. Advertisers sell happiness so I guess this is what it looks like. The other big news is that I have a legit website now at zazenphoto.com. My good friend Alex hooked it up and it looks great. It also links to this blog so we’ll see if we get some readers. Other than you of course. ; )

Ok that’s plenty for now. Hopefully my writing will improve with my photography. The following weeks will consist of the Strobist exercises that I’ve been messing with. Stay tuned!

ML