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Gym Lighting

I've been meaning for some time to get some lighting diagrams on here to share some of the things we've been doing with our off-camera lighting. Here's my first stab at putting something together to explain my theories...

We were shooting Jordan Elliott's recent senior session in the Pittsburg High School Gymnasium. I was looking for something moody with a Sports Illustrated look. I had the opportunity to pick up a new 3' strip softbox with a grid attachment and was eager to try it out for the first time in the field.

My first thought was to use a high shutter speed and low ISO setting on the camera to kill off any ambient light from the fixtures in the gym. Now my exposure would be 100% from the strobes I had with me. The first setup was pretty straight forward with the stripbox set to the left of Jordan. I had it positioned about a foot over his head to provide a nice falloff of light towards the ground. I also turned Jordan's body away from the light slightly to provide more dimension to his figure. I turned his face back into the light to provide the nice modeling and shadow.

I started by setting the exposure with the main light on Jordan and then worked to light the dragon logo on the floor. I used a Canon 580EX speedlight with a grid attached to concentrate a pool of light on the logo without lighting the entire area. Using the grid focuses all of the light in a tight circle with a nice natural fall-off of light around it. This was positioned about 10 feet in the air on a light stand angled down. To set that exposure I just increased the power until I liked how it looked on the back of the camera's LCD.

I'm shooting from on top of a 4 foot ladder to provide the perspective I was looking for. I had to go with a wide 16-35 mm lens to frame everything while hiding the lights past the edge of the frame. There's a little distortion caused by the lens but I think it works well in the is photo and is not that noticeable. Here's the diagram to help explain:

Of all the images we made during his session this one might be my favorite.

 

Same thought process as before. I wanted to completely knock the ambient light out from the nasty fixtures in the gym and work 100% with flash. We went with the striplight again for the main light on Jordan and removed the grid this time to allow a little more light to reach around to the far side of his face. You can really tell the difference between the two photos with and without the grid to see how hard the transition between the highlight and shadow side of his face is.

This time we brought in a third strobe over his left shoulder as an edge light to prevent him from merging with the black background. It really gives a 3D look to the image and makes him pop out from the screen.

Again, I had Jordan turn his body away from the light source and had him turn his face back into the light. I do this quite a bit to help show some texture and dimension to the clothing people are wearing. A lot of people like to have the subject turned into the light, but then you would loose all of that dimension and the lighting would become far too flat for my tastes.

The third and final light was flying 10 feet in the air at a hard angle shooting almost parallel to the basketball goal in the background. Again I went with a grid to concentrate the light on the bottom portion of the goal around the basket. I think it feels a lot more dramatic with the areas of shadow and highlight versus having the whole goal lit evenly.

I was lying flat on the ground about 30 feet from Jordan. He was standing at half court along the sideline with the goal at the other end of the gym. I went with a telephoto lens shot at around 200mm to provide the compression to make the goal seem much closer in the frame. It was shot at F5.6 to give adequate sharpness to the goal. The lighting really separates Jordan from the background, so I didn't want to go with too shallow of a depth of field. Sometimes I feel like with the background being too out of focus it actually calls more attention to itself than if it was just a touch more subtle.

Here's the diagram:

I hope to have more of these coming soon. Let me know in the comments or email me if you have any specific questions. Thanks!

-Mike   

Quick and Easy High-Key

High-Key photography on a white seamless backdrop is one of the most popular ways to photograph everything from portraits to products. It offers a clean, simple look that brings all of your focus onto the subject. It can be pretty tricky to do right, but here is one approach I use for a quick and easy setup. 

We don't keep any white seamless paper on hand at our studio. 99% of what we shoot on white seamless is only a 3/4 length or tight headshot. It's pretty rare that we do any full-lenght shots with this kind of look. Keeping that in mind, it's pretty easy to use a medium gray (or any color) paper background and over-expose it to produce a clean, white background.

For this particular shot, we were contacted by the lovely Jessica Edwards of Jessica Edwards Photography in Lamar, Missouri to photograph her for an upcoming article in Professional Photographer Magazine. The magazine specifically requested a full-length portrait for their story.

Here's a setup shot showing the position of the lights for the session:

You can see in the shot above we used a three-light setup to make this happen. In the back we used two 3x4 foot soft boxes at a specific angle to cause the lights to overlap in the middle of the frame. Since they are each closer to their side of the paper and then overlapping further away in the middle of the paper it yields a nice, even light. It's metered approximately 1.5 stops over the main (or key) light. In this shot I opted for a 22 inch beauty dish for the main light high and to the left of Jessica. I like this light for it's crisp but soft quality of light. It's a little sharper and more focused than a soft box, and I really wanted a clean commercial look to the final images.

On the floor you'll notice the white 4x8 foot piece of bathroom wall that you can find at any Home Depot store for around $12. You can't really use anything that is not white and overexpose it in the same way we did the background because that would also overexpose our subject by 1.5 stops in the process. I also like this kind of flooring because it makes a nice reflection of the subject. It's very "Apple" in it's look and I think it really works well on high-key shots like this.

Here you can see how this setup works together in this unprocessed out-of-camera shot:

To clean up the edges of the frame where the lights and floor show I just used a new Layer in Photoshop and painted that in with a white brush. For the floor around Jessica's feet and the small portion at the top of the frame that didn't expose pure white I used a Levels Adjustment with a Layer Mask to work it up to white. That method preserved the nice shadow and reflection around here feet and keeps the whole thing looking realistic. You can see the final result at the top of this post. For the tighter shots below none of that extra work was required. The exposure was right-on when we took the shot. We just did some minor post processing and sharpening to get it ready for print.

 That's really all there is to it! Comment on this post or email me with questions if you've got them!

Lightning in a bottle

 

Photographing lightning was one of my earliest draws into the world of photography. I think every guy dreams at one time he'll grow up to be a storm chaser, especially growing up in Kansas. I remember seeing the movie Twister when I was younger and thinking there could not be a cooler job out there. When I was in junior high school my parents bought me my first camera - a very nice Pentax film body that I still have today. I figured what better use could I find for it than to take it outside in the middle of thunderstorms?

I was still too young to drive at the time so my ever frightened and supporting mother would drive me out to a field where there were no trees and I had a good vantage point to see the storms roll in. It's not the safest mother/son activity you'll find, standing in the middle of a field next to a metal fence with a metal camera on a metal tripod waiting for lightning to strike. It's amazing we never got fried! I can still remember my mother screaming "That's enough Michael! Get your ass in the car NOW!"

It took some trial and error to get things right. My father (an amazing photographer in his own right) would give me some basic settings and a long lecture on the history of photography and send me on my way. It wasn't uncommon for me to burn through 10 rolls of 36 exposure film in an evening storm. I'd send it to the lab to wait for it to get developed only to find I had caught nothing on film due to a wrong camera setting.

Now in the world of digital it's so much easier to fine-tune settings as you work to get the perfect exposure. I've been asked before how we're able to catch lightning in a photo, and the first thing people unfamiliar with photography say is "Whoa, you must have been shooting really fast!"

It's actually the exact opposite. Here's all you need to know to take your own lightning photos.

1. Camera

This one is kind of obvious. Most modern cameras will work fine. The most important capability it needs to have is to be able to be set to manual focus and manual exposure. At the very least you need to be able to set it to a longer shutter speed of a few seconds or more.

2. Tripod

The windier it is the more you are going to want a heavy-duty tripod. However, you can make do with a plastic tripod from Wal Mart if that's all you have access to. One thing that can help any tripod is to hang a bag or some kind of weight from the center column between the legs to make it more stable.

3. Shutter Release Cable

This is a luxury but not a necessity. If you're camera has a 'bulb mode' you can connect the cable and manually hold the shutter open until the lightning strikes.

4. Flashlight

You can't beat a little light in the dark to set everything up with. I've rushed out the door without one before and that makes the whole process a little more tricky.

Here's what you do:

Find a good location with an unobstructed view of the lightning storm. It's great to find compositional elements to add to the photo. Tree lines, water, buildings, anything you can use to frame the lightning to make it more interesting. Sometimes nothing is available and you have to just go where the lightning is. I still like to show some of the tree line or ground to give a sense of scale and location.

Mount your camera to the tripod and pick your spot in the sky. Pay attention to where the lightning is striking and where the storm is headed. The storms can move quickly so you have to be repositioning your camera as it moves to keep it in frame.

Set your camera to 'bulb mode' for the shutter speed.  The aperture setting and ISO are pretty dependent on how close and/or bright the lightning is. ISO 400 and F/8 is  a good place to start. Once you catch a bolt you can move the aperture up or down to compensate for the brightness. The final thing is to set your camera or lens to manual focus. Set it to infinity (the sideways 8 on the lens) or try to find something like a radio antenna with lights on it to focus on that's really far away. Now you're ready to rock.

If you have a shutter release cable just press the button to begin the exposure. If you don't have one you can just press the button on the camera and hold it - just don't shake the camera around too much. If your camera doesn't have a 'bulb mode' just set the shutter speed to something like 10 or 15 seconds. As long as the skies are dark and you don't have a lot of light around you, you are able to leave the shutter open for a long time without actually recording any light. Any time lightning strikes during the exposure it will be recorded by the camera. You can catch just one strike at a time or hold the shutter open longer to get multiple strikes in a single frame.

As always, if you have any questions let us know and we'll get them answered for you. Enjoy - and be safe!    

Painting with light

Here's something completely different from what we normally do. This little trick was actually born out of necessity. Travis is a senior graduating in just a few days - we haven't been able to do his senior session yet because the car has been getting worked on and we were pressed for time to get this done just before the deadline for the yearbook photos. We've been booked solid with a session every single night before he graduates. That's great for us but bad for Travis. We figured the only chance we had for getting this shot he wanted so badly for the yearbook was to get him in after one of our other sessions. The trick is it would be completely dark by then. I was trying to think of something really cool to do. I had some ideas in my head with a massive multi-light setup to get the look I wanted for that badass Mustang he's got. Then I thought a little deeper and decided it would be a cool time to try something new. Instead of using the 5 or 6 monolights and 2 portable power supplies we did the whole photo with one Canon Speedlight. 

The setup is pretty simple. I wish we had some behind-the-scenes photos to share plus some video, but it was too dark for any of our point-and-shoots to see anything at all. I had to use my car's highbeams to focus with. I had the camera locked down on one of our heavy-duty tripods throughout the shoot. I opted for my trusty ol' 70-200mm F/2.8 lens but turned the image stabilization OFF and focused manually to make sure nothing changed during the shoot. With everything framed the way I wanted we set Kristina loose with the flash. The car was around 70 feet away from my position with the camera. I had the camera set at F/11, 400 ISO, and a 2 second shutter speed. We did this so that I had time to open the shutter and yell at Kris to push the test button on the flash to fire it so the camera would record the action. If I had more time to plan this I would have brought along a simple Pocket Wizard setup to that it would just fire automatically when I pressed the shutter release. I'll remember that next time...

With everything locked down on the tripod and no settings changing I basically guided Kris around the car and the subject while she aimed and pointed to highlight all of the different angles of the car you see above. Each photo represented just a tiny piece of the whole car. The plan was to assemble all the shots I needed during post production into one finished image. Here are some of the individual shots, straight out of the camera, that were used in the composite:




From those basic shots I was able to mix it all together pretty well. It's definitely a different kind of shot than I'd normally do - but I will say I'll be toying around with this some more in the future. I thought the results were pretty good for a first try. If you have some more questions about this shot hit us up in the comments and I promise we'll get them answered as best we can. Enjoy!     

Bridal Fashion Lighting

Here's a cool setup we came up with at a recent wedding in Kansas City. This is the hallway leading to the room where the bride was getting ready. We walked down the hall and the idea kind of hit me. The cool lights in the repeating pattern were what caught my eye. Having an extra shooter around that day gave me a chance to set up a more complicated lighting setup than I would usually have time for.

Sometimes it helps me to visualize a shot by looking at it from the viewfinder. I asked Kris to step into position before I made my decision about whether or not we'd use this for some of the bride's portraits. Here's what we started with:

I saw that this location definitely had potential. There were two things right off the bat I knew I'd have to fix. There were fluorescent lights in the adjacent hallway that had a nasty color-cast on the back wall. I dug around the brides room and found a table cloth to help with that. I stuck it in the ceiling tiles to block out that offensive light:

The next thing that was bugging me was how to prevent the bride from getting lost in the background and to make the walls a little more interesting. I thought some backlighting would help add some separation and create a tunnel of light to draw the viewer into the photo. I added a gridded speedlight with some barndoors to control spill on the floor at the back of the photo pointed towards the camera position. I planned on placing the bride directly in front to prevent any lens flare.

I was trying to balance the ambient light from the ceiling fixtures with the strobe to make a good exposure. I had to use an iso of 800 with a shutter speed of 1/40th of a second and an aperture setting of f/4 to get the ambient look I wanted. For the main light on the subject I used another gridded speedlight. It's a harsher and more direct light than I would normally go for, but I really wanted to prevent any light from hitting the walls or ceiling around her. By posing her correctly I was still able to get good light modeling on her face. Here's the whole setup from behind the camera position:

I had everything in place and dialed in before the bride stepped into the room. It was definitely a plus to have everything ready to go. We were short on time (as usual) and we could go straight into posing and shooting. Here are two of the final images from that location:

   

Yarn & Ribbon Blanket

I bought my first sewing machine for this project. Yes...me! I couldn't believe it either. Something I thought I had left behind all those years ago in home economics class.

I first went to Wal-Mart to purchase yarn and ribbon. I had no idea how many options there were for yarn, so I was in the store for over an hour trying to visualize which different colors and textures would go well with each other. 

I returned home and my husband thought I was joking when I carried in a sewing machine. Luckily, I didn't let a little teasing and laughing deter me. I started cutting strips of yarn and ribbon and laying it out on a table.

I then bunched up the fabric and slowly pushed it through the sewing machine. I made several passes through the center of the blanket to make sure all of the yarn and ribbon connected together well.

For the finished product, I cushioned the bottom of a basket, laid in my blanket, and added an adorable baby and voilà...

Kris

Fill Lighting

Most photographers are familiar with the technique of 'fill-lighting'. Whenever you're faced with less than perfect lighting the first thing many people will do is pop a flash on top of their camera to kick in some light into the subjects eyes and to fill in some of the harsher shadows.

While that's a perfectly reasonable starting point for beginner lighting - and sometimes the only option you have time and circumstances permitting - in our shooting we'd never settle for that with our portraits. Everything we light involves having directionality to the lighting to create shadows and add depth to the image. There are some ways to use on-axis lighting as well - but that's a more advanced technique we'll touch on in a later post.

One technique we've learned for adding fill light to an image like those featured on this page is to move the lighting off-camera and to light at around a 45 degree angle to the subject. In this case we used a collapsable lasto-lite reflector laying flat on the ground and fired a flash directly into it. This created a sharp light that filled in the nasty shadows caused by the cloudy day and overhead lighting. It also provided some separation for the dress from the wall behind. Here's the shot straight out of the camera with no flash:

It's not a bad start. The exposure is set well for editing in photoshop later and we could do a lot for this image to make it look pretty good. But, we're always trying to make things as good as possible when we take the picture. Here's an example of adding the fill light - it's a pretty dramatic difference even with no processing:

The exposure settings on the camera remained the same. We didn't use the strobe as a main source of light, we just used it to augment the ambient lighting and to dramatically improve the quality of light. Here's the final version with the processing:

    

Balancing Ambient and Strobe

This is one of the most common technical things we run into during any type of session we are photographing. We've put a lot of emphasis on adding lighting to many of our portraits. Sometimes we use it to overcome poor ambient lighting, like on a cloudy day. Other times we use it to finesse otherwise good lighting to add a little more dimension to the photograph. Many times we use it as the dominate light in a photograph to add drama or interest to an otherwise bland scene.

What I'm going to show you today is an example of using flash as the primary light on our subject and balancing it with the existing ambient light in the background.

First, a little about the location. I was looking for someplace that offered good shade for our subject (a high school senior from Wichita). We schedule the session a bit early and the sun was still too strong to make use of the other locations I had scouted ahead of time. Instead, we started under a traffic overpass so that I could better control the lighting on the subject and add an interesting background using the existing light coming from between the two traffic ways.

I really like the strong, dynamic line that the sky was creating as it split the middle of the frame. Also, the alternating pattern that the concrete supports created added more interest to the background.
I chose a relatively low angle to photograph this portrait from to include more of the sky in the photo. The senior is very thin so I didn't have to worry about giving her a double-chin or making her look heavy. The first step in getting this type of shot is to determine the ambient exposure. You have to play games to figure out what your best ISO setting is before selecting an F/Stop that will let you use a shutter speed that works with your flash gear. My ambient exposure for this image (with no flash added yet) was 1/250 sec at f/4 with an ISO of 100. That allowed me to use a relatively narrow depth of field to make the subject pop out of the frame more. I had to use a high shutter speed of 1/250 sec to cut down the ambient enough to use that aperture. My Canon 1D Mark III will let me sync my flash up to 1/300 sec under normal operation, but many cameras will only sync up to 1/125 or somewhere in between. Check your manual for the recommended sync speed your camera will support.

After finding the best exposure for the overall scene, I could focus on lighting the subject. We chose a 2'x2' tripod mounted softbox as the modifier with a Canon 580EX flash as the off-camera lighting. We positioned the light as close as possible to make the softest light and make the best use of the available power from the small light source. I started with my flash on Manual and fired a test shot at 1/2 power. Experience helps me to have a pretty good idea of what power settings the flash will need, but I usually start at around 1/4 power to give me some wiggle room as far as the flash output goes. Here's the resulting image:

I really prefer the light from the softbox as opposed to an umbrella or another modifier for this kind of shot. It allows me to control the light spill on the ground or wall a lot more effectively. 

The shots above were made at 24mm - the one below was done at 200mm. I kind of prefer the compression and smaller depth of field from the telephoto shot, but we'll show both images to the client and let them choose for themselves. You can click on the images for a higher quality image.

 

Come all ye faithful

Welcome to our latest creation - the true behind-the-scenes of fxstudios.

We've toyed with this idea for a while now, but weren't sure how best to present it. We've got our website, blog, and facebook fan page that serve as the 'official voice' of our business but we wanted to have something else that could be more fun. We want something that can be as much about the people and stories behind the studio as it is about the work we produce. This really will be fxstudios: uncensored.

It's for fans of the studio to get to know us a little better and for other professional and aspiring photographers to learn more about our photography. We'll be sharing some random things on here like our favorite music and movies, funny stories that happen at the studio or on the job. We'll also be making it educational as well.  We want anyone trying to learn more about photography to email us ANY question they have about our work, our business, or just photography in general and we'll make a post answering your question. You can even submit your own photos for us to critique and we will in a positive and constructive way. We want to make this as interactive as possible, so make those comments and questions happen!

To help organize the inevitable insanity we've created categories that you can browse at right. Here's the plan:

Behind the Lens - Here's where we will post the random stories and updates that occur at the studio an on location. We'll try to give you some great behind-the-scenes madness that we usually try to hide.

Cool Stuff - This will be pretty random and sometimes unrelated to photography or the studio entirely. Our favorite music, videos, etc. will be here. This might be the most interesting category.

Deconstruction - This is for the photographers in the crowd. Pick any of our images on our blog, website, or facebook and ask us how it was made. Lighting, posing, location, etc. We'll tear down the photo and tell you what we thought when we were taking it. You can also send in your own photos for posting and critique. We get requests all the time to review portfolios - now we have an official place to make that happen!

FAQ - This is our Frequently Asked Questions spot. Any random question you have about us, the studio, or photography will get posted here.

Gear Reviews - We have a lot of the latest gear and computers that we work with each day. If there is anything in particular you want to hear about that we use let us know and we'll tell you what you think of it.

Videos - We've got two of the most talented video guys around. This will be their playground. Behind-the-scenes video and random stuff will end up here.