7/29/09 - Fashion Focus Show

The following images were taken for the Fashion Focus Show. Because of the layout of the room I didn't have too much flexibility with where I could shoot from. The best I could do was sit 3 feet away from the end of the runway and shoot up at the models. This meant I was also shooting up at the drop ceiling (an ugly backdrop for sure), and my perspective of the girls was not the most flattering because it made their lower halves look wider than their upper.



Because the only ambient light was two spots and some dimmed reccessed lights, I had to use flash. To create a softer light, I bounced it off the ceiling. The challenge was that I was popping off a shot every 10 seconds. This, combined with the extra power required to bounce the flash, meant that the recycle times on my flash quickly dwindled. Thankfully, I brought along my assistant (Brenna) and had two flashes and 20 batteries. As my recycle time became too slow, I quickly changed flashes to one with fresh batteries that Brenna was maintaining.



There are a few things I wished I could have done differently. But, part of being a photographer is the ability to go with what the situation warrants and make the best of it. Besides, the girls all looked beautiful... which made my job easier.

5/30/2009 - Combining Ambient and Flash

This set of portraits of my beautiful nieces was taken at a family bbq. Yes, I am an opportunist. I found a flowering Dogwood and placed my subject in front of a branch that was about chest height. For the lighting, the late afternoon sun was being filtered through haze from camera left and about 45 degrees in front of my subject. I supplemented this with a flash shot through a white umbrella to camera right but just outside of the frame of the image. This was about 2 feet in front of the subject to create a nice soft light.

I shot ETTL with a master flash on-camera, but not firing. The slave flash was set between -2 and -3 depending on the subject.

5/29/09 - A Weekend in the White Mountains, NH

The following images were taken during a camping/photography weekend in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with my friend Erick and Bob.

5/10/2009 - Portraits w/ Remote TTL Flash

Using remote slaves is a nice way to have a portable lighting studio. The downside of slaves is that all your flash exposure needs to be done manually (unless you have the new TTL-capable triggers from PocketWizard. However, both Canon and Nikon have remote capabilities built into their flashes (i.e. their flashes can talk to other flashes of the same brand and compatible models).

These pictures were taken with one remote 580ex as the mainlight, and a 580ex II in the hotshoe for fill. The mainlight is on a stand to camera right and is unfiltered. The fill on the camera is bounced into the corner of the ceiling and wall behind the camera.



The fill is programmed as the master flash and defaults to group A. The main is set as a slave and programmed to group B. Using this method, I am then able to control flash exposure compensation of both flashes from the master on the camera. Even better, I can set a flash exposure ratio difference between the master and the slave. In both cases, the ratio of master (fill) to slave (main) was 1:8.

My makeshift studio on this day was in my screenroom. I exposed so that the background ambient light outside was underexposed. There was little light inside, so my subjects are being lit primarily by my lighting setup

5/9/2009 - Portraits w/ reflected light

What is one to do when your own kids have had quite enough of playing model... well, borrow the neighbors kids, of course!!!

It had been a while since I had done some portrait work using just natural light and as I was finishing up the yard work, I noticed that the light in the yard was perfect. I decided it was a perfect opportunity to get some nice pictures of my daughters. Nothing doing. Apparently, riding scooters is much more fun than standing around takng directions from you dad while he tries to figure out where that perfect light is... go figure.

But, all was not lost. As I was about to sulk back into the house, dragging my gear behind me with that dejected look on my face (yes, I'm not above a little guilt technique), my neighbor Timmy asked, "Mr Roberts, what are you doing?".

Aha!!!! "Timmy, come on over buddy, and I'll show you"

Interesting how all of a sudden my own kids became more interested in what I was doing at this point, also. There is something to be said for peer pressure, afterall. With a little hounding I was able to convince my oldest to hold the reflector.

The trick to using a reflector is to skim the light onto your subject to create a nice feathered light. If you bounce the light back at 180 degrees from the light source, it will look harsh... to say nothing of possibly blinding your model. Also, in most cases, the ideal lighting technique, for any lighting setup, is to give the feel that there is only one light source (i.e. shadows all in the same direction). Any additive light should be a fill and not as strong as the main lightsource.

However, in this case, my subject was in a shaded area and I was using my reflector for the main lightsource. The sun was about an hour from setting to camera right. However, Timmy was mostly blocked from the sun by the archway he was standing next to (to his right). I had my daughter hold the reflector at camera left, about 2 feet in front of my subject. The light was being reflected at Timmy's head at about a 45 degree angle.

The catchlight you see is from the reflector. You can see that it is at about 9:00 in relation to Timmy's pupils. If my daughter were taller, I would have liked the reflector to be higher so the light were more at 10:30. But, a dad can only ask for so much :)

5/8/09 - Remote Triggered Strobes

I've been messing around with lighting with remote triggered strobes. For flashes, I currently have two Canon speedlites (a 580ex and a 580ex II). I am triggering these using three Pocket Wizard Plus II Transceivers. One sits in the camera hotshoe and one for each flash connected via PC Sync cords (note that the 580ex does not have a PC port and therefore needs a special cord with a built-in hotshoe. The 580ex II has a PC port)

The Pocket Wizard Plus II does not support E-TTL, so must be used manually (Note: Pocket Wizard now has a fully E-TTL supported receiver and transmitter for Canon). The method I use for getting the appropriate flash exposure is to use my light meter. The one I have has a strobe mode where it will not take an ambient reading until the flash is fired. For the two sessions I did below, I was going for a 1:4 ratio.

The first session was done inside the old observatory on top of the Blue Hills in Milton, MA. Somehow I managed to convince some friend to get up early un a sunday morning. I was looking for something dramatic to take advantage of the stone walls and winding staircase. So, I told my models to, "think Scooby Doo!!!" as the descended the stairs. I setup my main light to camera right and a background light to camera left. This was no easy task since there wasn't much room to work in. In hindsight, I wish I had the strongest portion of light on Rebecca in the middle to even things out.



The next session was with my wife Lisa for her PanMass image (NOTE: PanMass is a two day 180 mile ride to support the Jimmy Fund). I was going for an edgy, badass look (no small feat considering my wife is just not the badass type).

For this, I had her and her bike about 3 feet in front of a brick wall. I put my main light 45 degrees to my model at camera right and a background light to camera left.

4/3/09 - Fashion Runway Shoot

This was quite the educational experience.... on a couple of levels.

I was asked by one of the mothers in the neighborhood to photograph her daughter at a fashion show she was modeling in. This seemed like a good opportunity so I agreed. I had a pretty good idea what I needed to do, but having never done any runway photography I spent some time researching it beforehand. Like most concepts of photography, there are varying opinions. However, the prevelant opinion for runway photography is a 75-200mm f/2.8 on a monopod and no flash. This is what I went with.



Before the event I also contacted the event organizer to make sure she was ok with me photographing. Technically, she did not have to agree, but did. In fact, it turned out that there was no other photographer there and she asked if I wouldn't mind photographing all the models. When asked about charging I told her that I would charge for prints but not an event fee.



I got to the event an hour early so I could checkout the layout, the lighting, and grab a prime spot at the end of the runway. Right away I became concerned about the lighting. The major lightsources were three skylights directly above the runway, with sidelighting from various flourcent and tungsten sources. I did some tests and found that I could shoot f/4 at about 1/250 at ISO 500 at the middle of the stage where the skylights directed the greatest amount of light. With my 30D, ISO 500 is about the limit. You will get some graininess, but it's useable. My biggest concern was that at the front of the runway the skylight would be behind the models and the exposure dropped to f/4 at 1/100. This would be ok with the older models who took their time and stopped to pose. With the younger kids who sped down the runway and never stopped, it was going to be tricky. But, I didn't want to risk unfocused images with wider than f/4 or excessive graininess with anything greater than ISO 500. I had my flash setup with me, but really didn't want to use it and figured I was going to chance it.





For the entire show I shot in aperature priority mode and f/4. Unfortunately, what I didn't count on was that the main lightsource varied throughout the event because the true lightsource (the sun shining through the skylights) was in and out of clouds. This didn't occur to me until I was postprocessing the photos. I ended up with an f/4 exposure range from 1/60 to 1/500. Pretty drastic. What saved me is that I shot almost 600 images and ended up with almost 200 good ones. However, because I was shooting at ISO 500, the graininess on most of the images will prevent anything larger than 5x7's (to my taste, anyway). Now, I REALLY want the 5DMkII :)



The shooting was fast and furious, and I realy had to anticipate. Althought I was exhausted afterwards, I found it exhilerating and alot of fun.

3/26/09 - Short-Eared Owl

This past weekend we went for a drive along the Gurnet from Duxbury out to Saquish. I was hoping to be able to show the girls Saquish Village, but got cold feet when we saw the enormous sign at the enterance of the village threatening a hefty fine for any trespassers. I figured nobody would be out there this time of year, but the existence of vehicles in a few of the driveways proved otherwise.

On the way back, we noticed a largish owl hanging out on a fencepost. I stopped the jeep and grabbed my camera. But, it flew away before I could get my long lens attached.

At that time, a car pulled up and told us there was another owl hanging out on the bayside a few hundred yards up. I walked the distance and soon spotted a short-eared owl hanging out on the grass washed up on the beach. It was being backlit from the setting sun, so I had to angle myself in such a way to avoid sun flare. I love my 70-200mm 2.8, but it is not the lens for wildlife.... not enough focal-length. However, the beauty of this lens is its sharpness, and I was able to crop it down significantly to get a respectable image

3/19/09 - Chinese New Year Dragon Festival

Took the family into Chinatown for the Dragon Festival. Aside from having to keep one eye on the kids while trying to look for photo opportunities with the other eye, the challenges were 1) capturing good images with so much movement, 2) jockying for position with the crowds, and 3) dealing with so much color. The later was probably the most challenging. As odd as it sound (probably because most photographers thrive on color), the abundance of color was overwhelming. I believe the more simple an images is, the more compelling it is to the viewer, and it was difficult to create images that wouldn't seem overpowering with a mix of bright colors. To overcome this I positioned myself, as best I could, to have darker and simple backgrounds, and used a shallow depth of field to bring out my subject compared to what was going on the background.