Black is back!

Winter Isabelle

Finally some winter, but it was difficult to capture some snow. It started snowing just when we where ready, bummer! It’s been snow on the ground only two week ends this winter, which is really really strange!

It was surprisingly difficult to capture some winter mood, and this isn’t at all what I was looking for, but it turned out as a nice photo imho.

I got some more reflective umbrellas, and used one on each side like below. Remember to use weights on the light stand feet! I broke an umbrella within the first hour of use. A small wind tipped the light stand.

Now after publishing, I discover that the photo isn’t true to her real hair color which is a kind of strange thing to see.

Silver umbrella

I just got hold of a silver umbrella after literally looking over the whole of Europe for one. (Didn’t want to buy a real one this time)

The look is really more crisp, and I really fell in love with my dear umbrella from the first moment. It folds to about one feet, and it shines a very controlled and nice light. The shoot throughs just fill the entire room with light. sort of.

Colored light

Here, I used two lights, a red one in the background (obviously) and actually a very blue one with the snoot on the subject. When compensating for the blue light with white balance, the background turned even more red. (You can see some blue traces on the guitar)
cool huh! And I even got to use the snoot too.

My sister

This is a nice portrait of my little sister. I would have liked to have her not as centered though.

Processing:
• Darkened background
• Removed stray hairs
• Blue sky
• Painted with light, using an overlay layer in stripes on her hair. Also used some saturation
• Sharpen

Testing my new snoot

I just made a “snoot” out of a grid of black straws that I found in a bar a couple of weeks ago. It is good for pointing a spot of light without spreading it. Can (apparently, haven’t tried yet) be used for hair lights or dramatic lighting. -Hard light, look at the harsh shadows that the flower leaves casts.

Creamy processing

This is not my photo, it belongs to: TimTim74

This looks like a very good example of the creamy highlight, blue shadow processing. Sky indicates some processing too. I should try this myself. TimTim74 has many good photos with this processing.

Cross processing

Took some snapshots with available light. Felt like the perfect time to do some processing experimentation. A flickr user asked me how I processed these, (thanks for asking!) so here goes:

Above photo has a kind of cross processing Filter, which I did in Camera Raw with a split toning adding yellow to the highlights and blue to the shadows.

For most photos in the batch, I have used a Camera Raw Camera Calibration setting moving the hue of the blue primary to the lighter blue side. This gives a warmer tone (and a pink cast to faces.) I do think that Nikon cameras (At least the D80 on the table there) does something similar by default.

 The photo below has been edited a bit in photoshop. I’ve lightened the background and added a gradient map adjustment layer over the face as hard light. I also stamped out a brand mark on the hat.

Cheers Karen for your interest.

Masquerade

I shot some portraits at a masquerade the other day. Here I’ve played with camera calibration to add some warmth. Most of these shots where made with one umbrella and a bare light.

I’m really frustrated about the bad focus here:

Wireless dual flash

I found a white umbrella, so just had to go out and play with it, together with my strobe radio links. This one is lit with an umbrella to the left and a slaved strobe between the trees. It looks pretty neat. The middle strobe turned out to be a good hair/rim light and shedding some nice light on the foilage, making them pop a bit.

 

Below: Backlit by sun, umbrella camera left. Added vignetting.