People

You cant plan a shot like this ( unless you have a huge studio and a printer that will let you make a backdrop this size ! ) I was just in the right place at the right time. This is Ivinghoe in the south east of England. The photo itself was easy to take, I just exposed for the sky, not the person in the photo and then I underexposed again very slightly. I used the " Rule of thirds " Which basically means cutting the photo into 3 pieces and using either the left or right piece to frame your subject in. In editing I bumped up the contrast to make the sky burn out a little more and used the sharpen tool once the give the outline more definition.

This is the amazingly talented Grace Billings. She tours the world with a group of equally talented people called " Flame Oz " and if you're a photographer ( or not ! ) I cant even put into words how great their shows are ! As for the photo I set my ISO until I could get a shutter speed that didnt leave trails of fire but wouldnt over or underexpose. I wanted a static shot so 1/1250th nailed it ( Youtube their show and you'll see how fast they move ! ) I used her eyes as a focus point and F2.8 because I needed the fastest possible speed in this low light and it was the easiest part to get a focal lock on.

This is shot in my room. I'm lighting it using a single bowens espirit gemini strobe in bulb mode ( no flash firing, just a constant light ). The bulb is positioned above me about 8ft high ( 2ft above me ) and is aimed down and across so I'm basically leaning into the spotlight created by it. You can see the strength and weakness from this single light source and I liked the way the light falls off at the sides. I used a 24mm-70mm lens at 24mm on a tripod which is set below me and aimed up at a slight angle. I wore a white shirt to make the body more visible and set my apeture to F7.1 to get everything in focus. The shot is triggered with a remote shutter cable activated by my foot ! It may not be the most conventional method and am sure professionals will chuckle, but remote shutter cables are great things. With the self timer mode you're limited to the focal lock you set and have to wait 5, 10 or however many second countdown your camera supports. If you hear the beep to confirm the camera has locked even with a little guesswork you can still nail shots like this yourself. Check your previews in the LCD of your DSLR and see if you're in the right place and make adjustments if you need to until you get what you're looking for.

Once again, the right place at the right time. I just saw something I liked, set the camera to AV mode and that was it. The original shot was in colour and after editing I thought it was look better in black and white so I converted it to greyscale. I liked it's soft appearance so I didnt sharpen it or boost the constrast. Apart from a crop and converting to black and white I didnt edit this image much. That's one thing I love about zoom lenses. You can hunt around and see things you wouldnt normally see ( or look for ! ) So with that freedom you can pretty much look 360o and focus on the first thing which you find interesting. In this instance a hand. F2.8 and full zoom used to pull it out the of the frame.

This is my lovely little Nephew, Josh. I opted for black and white because it has a timeless feel to it. This is probably the easiest photo I have taken. I set the camera to AV mode, underexposed 1 stop and set the 580 EX II speedlight to E-TTL II mode and put a white diffuser on the flash unit which was pointed almost straight up ( 1 click forwards ) and bounced off a white ceiling. I used F1.2 because I was far enough back to make it keep the facial features not only in focus but nice and sharp too. As with shooting at low F numbers, always make sure you back up a little because you can always crop - if you're too close, especially at F1.2 then noses / 1 eye / ears and many other things will be missed. Focal point was set to the eyes. And it helps to lay on your tummy too so you're not up and shooting down or down and shooting up !

Depth of field ( no pun intended ;) ) played an important part in this shot. The F1.2 isolates the subject nicely in this field of oil seed rape. The yellow and blue make a nice surreal touch to an otherwise very basic photograph. Rule of 3rd's is also effective ( where you take a photo using your subject off center to the left / right of the shot ) As for editing, the sharpening tool was used once as was the sharpen edges tool just to give a little more definition to the things in the thin depth of field. Border added, saved, done !







For those strobists out there on a budget I can strongly recommend the Bowens Espirit Gemini 500's. I got mine both 2nd hand on ebay and saved a fortune on what they'd have cost me new ! They are built like a tank, great recycle speed, nice bright spotlights and very powerful strobes too. This setup is simple. The strobe in front of me is just behind and above the camera angled down about 3ft in front of me. The other is 3ft to the right of me 1ft above me and aiming down. Both are firing 50% power and the camera is on a tripod and operated using a remote trigger. Behind me is a white sheet of cotton which when flashed by both strobes whites out and makes a nice dream-like background. I set my white balance to 4200 and used F11 to get everything nice and sharp. Simple editing in Photoshop CS3. Curves, contrast, sharpen and sharpen edges.




F1.2 isnt just for blurring out backgrounds. You can use it to bring attention facial features too. Here I've kept my latest model Josh's eyes and nose in focus but everything else kept soft to highlight the expression on his face. Also to show you dont always need a powerful strobe unit either. Am using a 580EX II speedlight here which still packs plenty of power indoors. I had to stop it down to 1/300th sec or it would have blown out too much. My preferred method for this type of portrait is to point the flash at the ceiling and 1 click forward to get a nice bounce light effect. I also set the expoure to -1 step which still gives enough detail to light up the hair and eyes but because the light is bounced off the ceiling and not fired directly at him it doesnt white out his nose ! As for editing, as usual just sharpened the eyes and then applied a sharpen to the rest of the image using Adobe Photoshop CS3.