My Panera-Straw Grid on 550EX

I’m at the point in a lighting class at MU, Advanced Techniques in Photojournalism, where it is time to leave the studio and venture forth into the world with one (or two, if Canon ever repairs my other 550EX), small speedlight.  I have become enamored with hard light sources in the studio; softboxes have their place, but I thought that grids, snoots, and barndoors were my favorite to work with.  I remembered reading at Strobist a couple of years ago about making a grid out of black straws (easily sourced from your local Panera…).

Mine is not pretty: in fact, I’m already planning on making a second one with a more refined technique of stacking and gluing rather than lining up in a row and sandwiching with gaffer’s tape.  For now I’m attaching it with gaff tape, but will make a little cardboard housing for it soon so that it can be slid into place on the head of the strobe.

But what its present incarnation lacks in aesthetics, it makes up for in performance.  I will admit that I have not perfected the art of aiming the speedlight with this grid, but I love the effect.  It makes for a very circular, “spotlight” effect, and the light fall-off is rapid and dramatic.

Portrait of Meg Wiegand, Heidelberg Restaurant, Columbia, Mo.

How dramatic?  I took the flash with me to a get-together of friends at a bar last week and did some experiments with it.  I only brought my TTL cord; next time I’ll just take the wireless transmitter, as its far less cumbersome.  (Nothing scares your friends more than a zipline of TTL cord randomly roaming a table with the potential to knock over their beer.) More after the jump…
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Tags: DIY, grids, light, light modifiers, lighting, lit
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Patron Tequila - Bright Field Lighting - "Plan B"

Last weekend I went into the studio with a bottle of Patrón tequila and one clear idea of how to light it, only to scrap it and move on to plan b.  But then I decided that plan c–one that I had not even considered–was really going to be the best route.

My idea was to have the lime resting against the bottle on a sheet of glass with a dark background.  On another day, with different materials (like a giant sheet of black, glossy acrylic), it could be a piece of cake.  Instead, I ran into problems from the start: the dark cloth I had taped to the softbox kept falling off (Light, Science and Magic suggest making the dark background the size of the frame, and then butting that right up against the light source).

I threw out that idea and switched to bright field illumination (giving the glass black lines for definition).  It’s easier, but it doesn’t have the same oomph as something lit via dark field patterns.  I could have quit with this image, because it’s passable, but it’s also incredibly dull.  I don’t think even Crate and Barrel would want to use an image like this one in their catalogs.

My bank of ideas was dry, but a good friend of mine, Mito Habe-Evans, suggested making a “beach” for the tequila and lime out of some sand made for models and dioramas that was in the studio.  Combined with some blue gel, the result was actually pretty good. More after the jump…
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Tags: Advanced Techniques, alcohol, glass, light, lighting, lit, Patron, studio, tequila
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So, this is not a great, in-depth interview, but it is rather a practice run at setting up constant light sources, positioning the interview subject, and finally recording, capturing, and editing the result.

I asked Jarrad Henderson, the subject of my earlier portrait studio work, what constitutes the most exotic food he’s had in his lifetime.

Shot on a Canon HV20 with a Sennheiser wireless microphone running through a BeachTek mini to XLR box. Lit with LitePanels LED floods.

Tags: Advanced Techniques, Canon, interview, light, lighting, lit, video
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This past weekend I photographed Jarrad Henderson, a fellow photojournalism masters student at MU. It was a class assignment to make a portrait first with a single strobe, and then with multiple lights. That’s where the fun really began. The only problem is that I have two images that I like, so it’s hard to choose!
Ultimately, I believe this first image is the more successful of the two:

Canon 5D Mark II and 24-70mm f/2.8L Lens @ 70mm. Exposed 1/125 sec. @ f/16, ISO 100

More after the jump.
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Tags: Advanced Techniques, light, lighting, lit, portraits, strobes, studio
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In my Advanced Techniques class, I was asked to find two images where either the use of light enhanced the mood of the image, or where I couldn’t deconstruct how the studio lighting was achieved.  Note that I made copies of these two photographs on a copy stand.  I didn’t notice all of the dust on the glass cover until I was back home in front of my computer.  C’est la vie. More after the jump…

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Tags: light, lighting, lit, photographs, studio
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The concept of the “beauty dish” came up today in my Advanced Techniques class at MU.  Two examples that immediately jumped to mind, both linked from David Hobby’s Strobist blog.

The first was a People magazine photo spread from 2007 that featured ten celebrities without the use of retouching–digital or otherwise.  Instead, studio techniques were employed to ensure that these celebrities would not look like mere mortals.  Just the same, I’d rather see clever studio work to get the result “in camera” than to see a photograph in a magazine that features only a few “original” pixels.  Strobist points to a PopPhoto blog that (roughly) explains how the images were created.

Secondly, I thought of a portrait of a Navy SEAL by photographer Morgan Silk.  The setup for the photograph was a beauty dish, a reflector, and two smaller lights for some rim lighting in back.  It’s explained at F Stop, with some really nice diagrams.  Ironically, and unfortunately, I think just as much post-production retouching went into the photo as would normally have happened with the photos of the ten celebs.  Funny old world.  The addition of the sky is just overkill, but the lighting on the face, especially, is interesting (and simple).

Finally, if you want to make your own beauty dish, there is a tutorial at Light and Pixels.

Tags: Advanced Techniques, beauty dish, lighting, portraits, Strobist
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