I recently wrote an article about night time portrait photography with, and without, a flash. Since that shoot, I have returned to the idea and have some updates and suggestions that might be helpful for those struggling with this technique, as I have. I generally scout out locations for shoots but this is especially important for night time portraiture as you need to know ahead of time where to find nice lights for the background. Instead of returning to the location I used previously, I looked around my neighborhood and found a few decent spots. I ran across an incredibly awesome location but was asked by security to leave the property AND delete all my photos of the building (we’ll discuss your rights as a photographer in an upcoming post as I found his request both amusing and infuriating). After location scouting, all I needed was a model. Mattie was the first model that came to mind for this idea. Mattie has a very elegant and classic, girl-next-door, type of beauty that works perfect for portraits, IMHO. After pestering her to help me out, she agreed. Click on an image for a larger view. And on a side note – I’m willing to bet Mattie doesn’t realize her own beauty. I find that most people and models don’t. We are all so quick to focus in on our own flaws and imperfections that we rarely take the time to look beyond our self-critical glasses and really appreciate ourselves, myself included. And yes, you can realize your own beauty without being vain or overly confident. I know for a fact that I have never taken a picture of someone that isn’t beautiful but I’m also willing to bet most, if not all of the people I have photographed would disagree with that statement when looking at images of themselves. So incredibly sad. Celebrate your beauty! Anyway, for this second round of night time portrait photography, I changed my approach a bit. With the prior shoot, I was simply trying to get night time portraits with mainly available ambient light. Only on an occasion did I resort to a flash when the surrounding light just wasn’t bright enough. This time around, I exposed specifically for a dark background and the background lights first, and then used a speedlight with a relatively large softbox to illuminate the model for every shot. I did not rely on ambient light to light my model at all. If your try this method at night, you will quickly learn that the overall color of the light at night is much warmer (oranger, if that makes sense) than the light you get from your flash which can appear quite cold (bluer). This is something I discovered on my first shoot. To correct this problem for this shoot, I used an orange gel (CTO) to help balance the color temperatures. It worked great! For a few of the shots, I probably could have used a stronger gel or maybe even two gels to get the look I was after. Much like my original outing, I wanted to get a decent amount of bokeh from the background lights so I shot as wide open as I could. I used mainly two different lenses (50mm f/1.8 and the 24-70mm f/2.8) for the shoot. Shooting this wide open aids the camera collecting light from lights in the scene. It also helps create amazing bokeh but with one significant drawback – speedlights produce a lot of light, even on the lowest power setting. There were several times I needed to move the softbox further back to reduce its power. Even on its lowest setting inside of the softbox with two layers of internal diffusers, the flash was simply still too bright. In the future I will bring an additional diffuser I can place over the flash head to help reduce its power in addition. I did not want to raise my f stop and lose the bokehlicious background and my ISO was already at its lowest. The only option left was to move the light further from the subject (which in turn made it a harder light which I didn’t necessarily want either – just can’t win). We made a night of going from location to location – one of which was a parking lot outside of a police station. At one point, a police cruiser watched our activity for a bit but eventually tired of our antics and left. As always, Mattie brought several different outfits to keep the images looking fresh. I experimented as much as possible with different settings because this type of photography is not something I feel competent at…yet. Upon review of the images, some I liked and some not so much. But that’s okay! It just means I get to try it again and build on my experiences. I never tire of failing. It’s when I learn the most! So as usual, pick up your gear, find an idea you’ve never done before, and go mess it up as best you can! Special thanks to Mattie for helping out when I’m sure she had a plethora of other more appealing options that Friday night. Much appreciated!
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"Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time." ~ George Bernard Shaw I am far from where I want to be as a photographer and I have far more failures than successes when it comes to my work. But with each failure, comes an opportunity to learn and grow. Many photographers believe that you should only post the best of your best work online, especially if you are attempting to attract new potential customers and to some degree this is a sensible statement. However, my sites are geared towards sharing my experience as a photographer and to pass along knowledge that might help someone else. To that end, I have several images that taunt me EVERY SINGLE TIME I look at them. I both love and hate this image - beautiful model and creative idea, but poorly executed! The lesson I learned from this image is to slow down! To create this image, you set up a camera on a tripod and take two pictures of the same scene; one picture with the model and frame in the scene and a second picture without the model and frame. However, before you take that second picture, make sure you have switched your camera to manual focus!!! On my first shot, I focused on the model’s eyes (which is where you should focus for most images with people). Then I had the model move out of the scene and took a second shot of just the street. However, my focus point (which was on the eye previously) was now over a section of the road fairly far away. As any good automatic focusing system will do, the camera made sure that point was in focus – shifting focus back making the area where the model was sitting previously slightly out of focus. You can notice this by looking at the street inside the lower part of the frame. It is much more out of focus than the surrounding street outside of the frame. I didn’t catch this mistake until I got home and started to blend the images together. Once I noticed it, I knew exactly what I had done wrong and my heart nearly stopped. I honestly contemplated not posting the image at all. I have done this idea several times since and have corrected my mistake! Oddly enough, as a colorblind individual I find colorful images very cool and as a result I love creating images with bright and bold colors. This paint toss shoot I did many years ago was my first attempt at such an idea. Although most people probably do not see anything technically wrong with the images, I DO! Again, it wasn’t until after I got home and reviewed the images that I discovered my error. All of the images were taken at ISO 1000! This may mean nothing to the average casual observer, but to pixel peepers like myself, I saw far more noise and grain in the images than I wanted, liked, or preferred. I’m not sure what I was taking pictures of prior to this shoot, but I forgot to reset my camera after that shoot (or before this one) to my base settings – which would have resulted in far less grain and image noise. I fixed the issue as much as I could in post processing but I prefer to get the image as near as perfect in camera. As a result of this error, I ROUTINELY reset my camera and check my settings before each and every shoot. A lot of photographers make fun of those that ‘chimp’. Chimping is when you take a picture and review it on the back of the camera before taking the next picture. Because of this next mistake, I have no qualms with chimping and chimping the ENTIRE image. With this macro shot, I set everything up, had my camera on a tripod, and had two flashes on either side of the glass for lighting. I was so concerned with trying to capture the actual splash and milk drop that I neglected to look at the entire image as a whole. As a result, I missed the fact that I had forgotten to turn on the left hand side flash – evident in the final image. This error cannot be fixed in post processing. Again, not an error I think most would notice or ascertain from the final image, but I KNOW! I now review my entire image not only focusing on the subject of the shot, but the background, highlights, shadows, and just about anything and everything else. I will chimp all day long if it means getting the proper image. And perhaps my biggest mistake...the Venus transit. An event that will never happen again in my lifetime and I failed to preserve it the best I could. I spent months learning how to connect my camera to a telescope. I purchased special equipment to mount the camera, a solar film to cover the telescope, and I even purchased a barlow lens to magnify the image. What I failed to do, however, was learn how my camera worked. I got tons of images and was very pleased with them for several months until I learned what shooting in 'raw' meant. All of the images I took were simple jpgs. Again, probably not a big deal to most but I missed the opportunity to grab ALL of the digital data from the shots to be able to edit the images to their fullest. And although you can edit jpg images to some degree, it's no where close to what you can do with a raw image. Sad, sad moment... These are only a few of the images that remind me this hobby is a process and that I am far from immune to making mistakes. These images are also milepost markers as to where I have been and where I am today in regards to my changing skillsets. Although I wish every image I took was award-winning, I don’t get nearly as upset now when I have a failure or two (or several). It just means I get to try it over again and that means making more creative images! Win win! So if your images are falling short of your expectations or if you made a straight up mistake, the worst thing you can do is give up. Rather, try the idea over again and attempt to correct the issue. The more you do anything, the better you will get at it.
What could be more fun than putting a model into a straitjacket for a photo shoot? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Can you sense I had fun with this idea? This idea was born about a year ago when I was trying to find a fun shoot ideas to do that I hadn’t seen replicated online a dozen or more times. Although coming up with a completely original idea for a shoot is nearly impossible, with a little digging around I discovered very few images related to my idea and even fewer videos. Woohoo! – made it over the first hurdle.
The second hurdle is finding a willing model. My good friend Alecia commented on a picture I posted that she wanted to do a themed shoot. Silly rabbit! She should know better than to tempt me. I contacted her and ran a few ideas I had in mind for shoots and we settled on the straitjacket idea (with a little persuasive begging from me). I knew the idea had the potential for varying degrees of emotional expression from the model. I also knew Alecia would be a perfect fit for this idea. She is an incredibly creative person herself and can get into character very easily and convincingly. Woohoo! - second hurdle down.
Click on thumbnail for larger image.
The third hurdle is finding appropriate costumes and props. A genuine straitjacket is prohibitively expensive to purchase for one simple photo shoot. I think the lowest priced genuine jacket was a little over $200. Plan B, take to social media and see if I can get lucky! Who knows, maybe one of my friends actually has one (…and as an aside, a friend of mine corrected my request on social media for a straight jacket. Indeed, it is spelled ‘straitjacket’ and is one word. Thank you Paul!) . No traction with plan B. Plan C, costume straitjacket. My go-to costume store didn’t carry anything close to resembling a straitjacket. Most of the costume straitjackets I saw online were so obviously ‘costumes’ that I didn’t think they would be very convincing. I did, however, find a decent looking jacket on Wish that turned out to be about as good as I was going to get for the price. Since I wanted the images to look realistic, I needed to either find or make a padded room. I decided to make a room, or at least a corner of a room.
For the construction of the room, I purchased two 4 feet by 8 feet composite boards and also purchased some wall insulation. After placing the insulation on the boards, I covered the insulation and boards with plain white king-size flat sheets for the walls of the room. I placed a comforter on the ground and covered that with another white sheet for the floor of the room. All in all, I think the cost for this shoot was somewhere around $60 or $70 (closer to $100 if you include the jacket). Since I purchased several pieces for the shoot over the span of several months, I honestly lost track of the final cost, but compared to most of my other ideas, this one was on the pricier side.
Click on thumbnail for larger image.
Once everything was set up inside of a garage, all that was left was taking images and playing with different poses and ideas. For most of the images, I simply flooded the scene with lights from just about every angle. I wanted the look of a room that was so bright with no relief that the feeling of the room itself would drive someone crazy. An overhead bare flash with no modifier worked perfectly to simulate a ceiling light. The fact that we only created a corner of a room with no ceiling left open the option of some other creative use of lighting and camera angles. Despite being bound-up for the majority of the shoot (which I probably couldn’t have done) Alecia did her thing and played the part to perfection.
Despite this shoot costing more than my normal shoots, it was well worth it! This idea was also fun because I got to work with my hands and build a corner of a room. I enjoyed that just as much as the actual shoot. Plus, I’m not a drinker and I rarely gamble so photography seems like a decent vice to spend money on. Although I’m not quite sure what I can do with all of the insulation leftover from the shoot, the wooden boards have come in handy for other ideas – like aluminum foil. Lots of aluminum foil.
As always, get out of your comfort zone, build some props for an idea, and have fun. If you don’t find a way to express your creativity, you may just go insane!
It’s amazing what you can do with a little light and a camera capable of taking long exposures. Well, maybe there is a little more to it than that, but not much. For photographers into light painting, ‘tube painting’ has become a bit of a trend lately. I originally ran across the idea of making illuminated circle behind models when I saw Wien-Jié Yang’s video several years ago. More recently, Eric Paré and his model Kim Henry have refined the process using very specific items to create amazing images. If you are not familiar with either of their work, please take a moment and check them out. Once I saw the resulting images, I had to give it a try.
In essence, you want to create a long tube of light you can move around your subject. By placing a flashlight at the end of a clear tube, you can create this effect. You will need a flashlight, T12 tubes, white tracing paper, and colored film for this shoot. For the flashlight, Eric Paré uses a very specific and bright flashlight for his work. The flashlight, however, isn’t cheap (~$70) and if you want a strobe effect in the resulting images, you’ll need at least two of them. Always trying to keep my shoots as cheap as possible, I simply modified one of my brighter flashlights instead of purchasing the more expensive flashlights. The T12 tubes are clear plastic tubes that are placed around T12 fluorescent light bulbs to protect them. These tubes also come in smaller sizes such as a T8. The tubes come in 4 and 8 foot lengths and can be found at most local hardware stores for about $4 and $8 respectively.
At this point if you simply place the flashlight in the tube and turn it on, the tube will not light up enough to be visible in camera. You need to find a way to disperse, diffract, and bounce the light around inside the tube to make it brighter. I experimented with sanding the outside of the tube to create more areas for the light to bounce and reflect through, but this process was not nearly as successful as simply putting a piece of white tracing paper inside the tube. The white paper really does help diffuse and spread the light more evenly throughout the tube. I then purchased several different colors of cellophane ‘basket wrap’ from a local hobby store and cut the cellophane to fit inside the tube as well. At first, I put the colored cellophane on the inside of paper but found it worked better putting the colored film on the outside of the paper. I also found if I doubled up the colored film, I could get more saturated colors. If you are lucky enough to find them, some T12 tubes come in different colors therefore eliminating the need for the colored cellophane. I did not find colored tubes locally and was only able to find them online so I decided to try the colored cellophane.
Find a bright flashlight that will fit inside the tube, or can be easily modified to fit inside a tube. A flashlight that allows you to focus the beam can be helpful in getting the light to more evenly reach the other end of the tube as well. I used my strongest LED flashlight, unscrewed the housing around the light, and found a PVC adapter that fit both the end of the flashlight and the end of the tube nearly perfectly.
After having created the tubes and modifying my flashlight to fit inside the end of the tubes, I spent several nights trying to find the best camera settings for the effect I was after. This was probably the hardest part of the process. Each night of practice would yield different results given the different ambient light. It is impossible for me to advise anyone on the ‘correct’ settings as it drastically depends on so many different variables. For the most part I shot around f/5 or lower (wider) with ISOs anywhere from 100 to 500. Again, it really depends on the strength of the light from the flashlight, whether or not you want some detail in your model, the ambient light, etc.
I triggered the camera with a radio trigger. I do have an infrared trigger for my camera but it simply is not the best choice for this type of shoot. First, you will be relatively far from the camera and infrared triggers become less reliable the further away you are from the camera; much more so than radio triggers. Second, you need to be behind your model to prevent your body from being visible and infrared triggers require line-of-sight. If you do not own radio triggers for your camera, there are several options available and many of the cheaper ones work just as well as the more expensive ones.
This also brings up the issue of hiding yourself from being exposed in the images. Have your model wear clothing that fans out and covers a lot of the area at and around the ground and the model’s feet. You should be directly behind the model. Any part of you that is not in constant motion will be visible. In other words, the dress acts as a cover for your legs and feet. Next, always wear black or darker colored clothing when light painting. Lastly, keep in motion. Anyone that has experimented with long exposure knows that static objects will appear and fast moving objects generally will not – or at least not as much as the static objects. That being said, make sure your model holds as still as possible during the exposure as you move around rather quickly.
I once asked a photographer friend to join me one night for shooting and he asked if we were just going to go out and ‘mess around with light’ (in a very ‘that’s kind of ridiculous’ tone) but light painting can yield some incredibly amazing results. Maybe it just wasn’t his thing but I love trying different light sources and methods for creating long exposure images. If you try this idea, I’d love to see your results and if you don’t get the results you were looking for the first few times, keep trying! My first few practice attempts were laughable (and I think I did actually laugh). Even the edited images from this shoot could benefit from some more attempts and refining the process. I believe there are no absolutely perfect images and that’s okay. The joy comes from the pursuit of trying to obtain them! As always, step outside of your comfort zone and give this a try!
And a HUGE THANK YOU to my wonderful model (and photographer herself), Alecia!
I have always had a fascination with light painting and photography. Some of the images I have seen online simply blow me away. Hopefully after reading this blog and watching the video, you too will be inspired to take a stab at this incredibly creative art form.
Light Painting with Steel Wool
Steel wool is cheap, can be found at just about any hardware store, and makes for some incredible light painting images. When purchasing steel wool, make sure you get steel wool with a very fine texture or grade. I get steel wool with a grade of #0000. Although you tend to get more sparks from this grade, experiment around with other grades as they can give you different effects. Find a metal container to hold the steel wool as it melts (burns) away. A metal whisk works out perfectly. I was lucky enough to find metal whisks with a metal loop at the end of the handle. Next, find something to attach to the whisk that will allow you to spin the whisk around. I used a short length of chain and a quick connector. Once you are set up and ready to go, take a pad of steel wool, fluff it out a bit, and place it inside of the whisk. Light the steel wool with a match, lighter, or even a 9 volt battery. After lighting the steel wool, swing it around. The faster you swing it, the further the sparks will fly! A friend of mine swung the steel wool while I manned the camera in the video and images. A word of caution: you are working with molten metal. Keep this in mind. Do this in an area where the risk of setting the surrounding area on fire is minimal. If using a model, be extremely cautious. These sparks can, and will, burn you! And as I learned on this shoot, it’s not a bad idea to have a fire extinguisher handy as well.
Camera settings. All you need is a camera that is capable of long exposures (with bulb mode if possible) and a steady tripod. In this case, we parked the car in front of a small puddle to get a reflection. My camera was set approximately 30 feet in front of the car. Since we did this shoot at night, I used a powerful flashlight to illuminate the model and car enough to be able to lock focus. Once I had focus locked, I switched to manual focus so that the camera did not hunt for focus before each shot (which it probably would have never found). I was using my Tamron 24-70mm on a crop sensor camera (D7100) closer to the 24 mm end of the lens. I set my ISO to its lowest, 100, and set my f-stop to f/9 but feel free to play around with your settings. We had a bright full moon out that night which provided additional light. I set my camera to bulb mode and began the exposure as soon as the sparks started to fly and ended the exposure as soon as they died off. Each shot was different but if I had to guess, the average shutter length was around 15 to 20 seconds long and bulb mode allowed me to start and stop exactly when I wanted.
The first couple of attempts were nice but the car remained in shadow, more or less. In an attempt to light up the front side of the vehicle facing the camera, I placed two flashes on the ground aimed at the model and vehicle. I set the flashes to rear curtain so they went off at the end of the exposure, that way, the person twirling the steel wool and the model knew exactly when the exposure was complete. Both flashes were set to ½ power. If I do a shoot like this again, I will put colored gels over the speed lights to get a better match in color on the car and model as compared to the sparks and the background color in general. I did adjust the hue and color balance on the car slightly in post, but getting it right in camera is always the better practice.
Light Painting with Fire
I got this idea from Zach Alan of Zach Alan Photography. The principle is very similar to the steel wool idea (or any light painting idea). You simply paint with fire behind your model. I used a ¾” wooden dowel that was 48” long. I then wrapped cotton around the top foot and a half of the dowel and secured the fabric in place with industrial staples. I also think wrapping the top portion of the dowel with natural fiber rope (like in my firewall tutorial) would work just as well. I then soaked the cotton in Coleman fuel (white gas) and lit on fire. We got decent light from the fire for about one minute then it started to slowly burn off and die out. Simply smother out the remaining fire with a damp towel and re-soak for more images. Make sure the fire and sparks are COMPLETELY out before pouring more gas on it. Since I was the individual light painting with the fire, I had my camera set to a two second exposure and had another individual trigger my camera. Some of the resulting images I had to edit and fix in post either because the camera stopped too soon or too late. In the future I think I will try triggering the shutter with radio triggers so I can precisely control when the camera starts and stops. I think this should be possible even while being the one light painting.
Camera settings – other than bulb mode, the settings were exactly the same. We did not use the flashes for the images with just the model.
Overall I am pleased with the results but would do things a little differently for both ideas should I revisit them in the future (which I most definitely will). Anyway, get out there and try some light painting with steel wool and fire, but be safe! No image is worth a visit by the local fire department or a trip to the emergency room! Well, most images, at least.
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