A few loose ends (i)

Have been reviewing my Flickr collection for this module and have spotted a few examples of shots I took with the an exercise in mind which I subsequently didn’t use or comment on. As they clearly felt worthwhile at the time I thought I would do them some justice and post them here.

One thing I have learned in the course of this module is the joys of black and white, and in particular how well it works (for me at least) when dealing with shots in extremely low lighting conditions, allowing te creation of very definite moods. In truth any number of these might be used to develop the ideas of Exercise 3: Experimenting with Light – the shot of my wife in the Northumbria set, for example – but for this post I wanted to show another candle-lit shot, taken on my daughters 17th birthday and uploaded to Flickr back in the March of this year.

The original was already quite dark and after conversion to black and white I lit the face a little more by brightening the orange/yellow channels and deepened the blacks further to produce this version. As I noted when I posted it originally this creates a ghostly effect which seems to hint at the memories of childhood slowly fading.

Naomi's Prom

Took these of my daughter in her prom dress in the middle of the year. I had intended to add them to the blog - but I clearly forgot. better late than never I guess.

They were all taken using a ring flash, which I was trying out as a light source - and because it gave the shots a bit of a 'fashion' feel which I thought would appeal to my youngest (I was right)

Could perhaps have used a bit more separation from the subject and a slightly longer lens for some of the shots, but there are a limited number of places I can shoot these types of shot indoors. Similarly I think a full height backdrop would have been a handy thing to have to lose the skirting boards in one of the shots.

My favourite shot is the first - with the deeper coloured background and the vignetting - which used a Lightroom pre-set called 'PH in the City' which I downloaded from somewhere. The shots follow the suggestion of my tutor to keep one of the eyes on the centre line – which was a rule I’d not encountered before but does seem to create a pleasing balance to a portrait.

Photographing a family party–some reflections in the light of the course material

Was invited to my niece’s 18th birthday party last weekend, and as usual had a great time photographing the celebrations – the output is here on Facebook for anyone who’s signed up. I had hoped to get lots of material for future exercises, but it was not to be. That said, there are a few observations it’s worth recording here.
Lighting
The party was in a small club/bar so lighting was very low, making flash essential. As the place had a low ceiling I chose to bounce the flash straight up. There is a small diffuser built into the flash that pulls out and flips over the light  (it’s intended to help diffuse the light for wide angle shots). If it is not fully extended it protrudes from the top of the flash and helpfully reflects a bit of light forward. This works pretty well, but give the size of the room I was also able, in some areas, to fire the flash backwards over my head, so the subject was lit by reflection from the wall rather than the ceiling. The three different lighting effects can be seen in these photos:

In the shot above the bounced light from the ceiling has given a broad overall light, while the protruding diffuser has reflected some light forward to fill the shadows. Careful inspection of the highlights in my sister-in-laws eyes show both the pool of light on the ceiling and the highlight from the diffuser.

For reasons which elude me I didn’t use the diffuser/bounce in this shot, simply a vertical bounce from the ceiling which has resulted in deep shadows which take the edge off an otherwise pleasing shot. The following result, with flash bounced from the walls is much more pleasing, although it could perhaps be faulted for being a little flat

Eye contact
It was a party so people were expecting to be photographed – and even though most of the guests didn’t know me, it was clear that I was with the family. As a result getting eye contact with people was no problem – and given the amount going on it was also easy to get shots without. The two shots of my niece below clearly have very different feels to them, in spite of the fact that they were taken no more than a few seconds apart.

Expression and gesture
Similarly expression and hand gesture can change the meaning of a very similar overall pose in a matter of moments.
 
This pair in particular lend some weight to my growing feeling that you can tell essentially nothing about someone from a portrait beyond a rough estimate of age, health and possible social status (based on clothing and jewellery). My wife’s mood did not change significantly between these shots – albeit they were taken 15 minutes apart – and they provide no meaningful insight into her character – I just happened to luck out with the expressions. This is why I struggle with photographs such as Richard Avedon’s The Family which seem to be regarded as providing special insight into the rich and powerful. As far as I can see Avedon’s technique meant he could choose to take a photo that illustrated his particular agenda, and that any chance of objectivity is missing, so the photos probably say more about his agenda than they do the individuals.
I’ll finish on a slightly different tack with a couple of shots of one of my nephews.
  
What is happening in the first shot? At first sight it looks like kung fu – the concentrating stare, the odd arm positions, but further investigation shows the arm of the young lady he was dancing with and some loud speakers, so a dance is a more likely outcome – actually it was the Macarena. The second shot is much more intense, and this is emphasised by the way the hand frames one of the eyes. Without the context it is much more difficult to work out what is happening, and I think it is a very effective portrait despite the fact that his hand obscures much of his face.
In summary
Most of the issues raised in this first module were encountered during the evening – even the impact of focal length (I just didn’t keep the odd distortions). Even in near spontaneous photography situations it pays to keep an eye on lighting, and given the vast number of opportunities my advice would be ‘keep pressing the shutter’. Tucked away among the standard shots there will be some really good ones.

PnP1: Ex 3: Thinking about lighting (ii) - some more ideas

The first part featured indoor lighting so though I’d step outside for this second part using the sand dune location I found in Exercise 2.

First off direct sunlight:

This was taken with low morning sun which provides very hard shadows, and has caused me to squint a little. There may well be craggy, character-filled faces that work well in this light – particularly in monochrome – but I don’t think I’m one of them.

Next I moved into relatively deep shade behind one of the dunes, so that I was only lit by light from the blue sky. After correcting the colour balance this was the result:

The lighting is much softer and the hard shadows are gone. However the overall effect is a bit flat, with the bright background being a bit too dominant. This leads to the third shot, which is the same as above, but with some fill flash from the on-camera flash. Colour balance was tricky here – if I took more of the red from the face the grass in the shadow began to look a bit unhealthy.

There is also a bit of a problem from flash reflected in my glasses, but overall I think this is the most pleasing of the three shots.

One final outdoor shot – this one was intended as a bit of fun and has already been referenced in the previous part of this exercise – it’s a mix of moon and torchlight with a long exposure and some light trails for good measure. Am tempted to call this ‘Portrait of the Photographer as a Ghostless Head’.

And to finish a couple more examples of different lighting conditions that can be used for effective portraits depending on the effect required.

     

The first was taken in totally flat, overcast lighting in the shade of the house, which helped manage the blacks, and saturated the colour of my daughters hair to good effect. the second is taken under dappled shade in an outdoor cafe in Fuerteventura – the lighting adds to the feeling of relaxation and overall ‘summeriness’. The final shot is one of my son’s friends in action with their band at the local beer festival – the mixed colours of the lighting add to the overall concert effect – which would have been ruined by the use of flash.

PnP1: Ex 3: Thinking about lighting (i)

The aim of this exercise seems to be to consider the effect of various lighting schemes on a portrait. May have to complete this in batches as the weather is not being particularly kind.
As noted in the previous entry, I’ve decided to go with a series of self-portraits in this exercise.
First up is a shot which follows on from this experiment on my personal blog:

It is lit by torchlight from below and the colour balance adjusted in Lightroom to remove the pronounced orange cast. As expected it has a sort of ‘Hammer House of Horror’ feel to it. The rather focussed light casts dramatic, but unflattering shadows from a strange angle, and there is a spot which is nearly burned out under the chin. The overall effect is unsettling and less than flattering.
By contrast – this version is lit with a relatively large light source from the side. This time I used the light from the lcd monitor on the household computer:

The strong side-lighting produces deep shadows on the unlit side of the face, but the bright highlight in the dark eye draws attention to the eyes, and together with the light on the cheekbone provides enough detail to allow us to see the whole face. The photo has a late-night feel to it – perhaps even a sense of mystery. Edit: EileenR on Flickr suggested I should try this as a B/W, which I have done here
The next shot from this group uses an on-camera flashgun bounced from the ceiling:

The illumination is much more even in this photo but the overhead lighting has placed quite deep shadows in the eye sockets and under the facial details This, coupled with my rather sombre expression creates a rather down-beat image which to my mind lacks the visual impact of the previous two, even though the lighting produces a more accurate likeness of my features.
The final shot in this group uses on-camera flash in the same position, but this time angled upwards and away from the subject to bounce from the wall and ceiling on the right of the photo:

This shot needed lightening in Lightroom, perhaps because of the relatively low power of the flash. The lighting is much more uniform, with reasonable detail in the eyes and far fewer unflattering shadows than the previous version. Must remember to look as though I’m enjoying myself though. To be honest this seems the most boring of the indoor shots presented here, lacking in sparkle or interest.
The rest of this exercise and the conclusions will be uploaded in a separate post.