Feb 06, 2010
I have always been meaning to do more with the MORE, but until I come up with a new plan, I thought I'd at least update it for 2010!
If you find your way here, then you must want to know more. So I thought I'd tell you more about the Victorian Storm session.
This was an idea I had had for some time. Since I lived in Brighton, England for 4 years, I have quite a few photos of the town, the seafront, and all it's attractions and architecture. All of the photos I took with an old compact camera, and while they aren't of the greatest quality, I thought, hey, they're more than good enough as backgrounds!
So, with Lina's help (a big thanks to the Pom Pom Parlour for loaning us the clothes and accessories!) we turned Magda into a Victorian beauty. Then it was up to Magda to dispaly her acting skills - I told her the story of a young girl who goes for an afternoon stroll on the Victorian seafront, when the weather suddenly turns foul (ahh, how I DON'T miss the sideways rain and wind of the English south coast!).
After doing my normal model retouch, I started on the background. I took my old Brighton photos (the Royal Pavillion, the background to the first photo, actually pre-dates the Victorian era, but the arcitecture in the other photos are all Victorian.)
I then enlarged these photos, desaturated them and added them as an Overlay layer in Photoshop. Then using a layer mask, I painted away the parts covering Magda. After that I blurred the background before adding an "Old B&W Photo" filter to add a specific type of film grain to the background. (Some images contain stock/borrowed elements, such as the horse and carriage and the Victorian people.)
Finally, for the photos in the second half of the session, I added rain (a separate layer, filled with black, added noise, adjusted levels to get only small white pin pricks, added motion blur and then changed the layer to Screen). Finally, for the last two photo, I added some lightning for a dramatic finish! (And yes, that water on Magda was real - as if the super tight corsett wasn't enough, I sprayed her with water and turned my mega fan on full blast!)
So, know you know MORE about Victorian Storm!
Jan 18, 2009
I decided to post a new lighting set-up for an all-white background shoot. Unfortunately that means I had to take the old one down.
So, the "totally white background" look which is still popular and modern looking is in reality not that hard to achieve. You can here see that I had
- two strobes (in my case the trusty old Vivitar 285HVs) pointed at a white background, each with a gobo/bounce card to prevent flare and keep the lighting off the subject.
- one more in a 28x28" softbox on a boom for the main light.
Keeping the softbox high and angled down provides enough light to light the whole subject and results in a nice clean, soft shadow on the floor.
Oct 26, 2008
I thought it was about time I started doing something "more" with the MORE page. So here's my first attempt.
I am not sure how much this interests the average viewer, but on some of the online photography sites I frequent, users often ask about and post lighting setups. Most budding, or even established, photgraphers are interested in learning about how others created their images. So here's a look at what I did for some photos recently.
The background I used was a 9 ft (ca 2.75 meters) wide roll of "Shadow Gray" seamless paper. In my case it hangs from my ceiling - I don't use stands as in the image.
I used 3 flashes for several of shots:
- A Vivitar 285HV, set to full power, in a homemade beauty dish on a boom is the main light, aimed at the model's face and upper body and occassionally at the chair.
- Another flash on 1/16 power, shot thru a 60" umbrella provides some fill and lights up what would otherwise have been a very dark image.
- Finally, on some shots I used an orange-gelled flash in a medium softbox as a rim light, providing subtle highlights, like the glow of a nearby fire I hoped, down the right or left side of the model.
