Assignment 4 - Environmental Portrait Indoors: Final

Final shot:

Alternative final shot:

1. What was your intention in terms of how you planned to use the available light (as your main, your fill or even a hair light)?

I used the available light as my main light. I wanted the background to be brightly lit. I wanted the lines created by the lights running along the ceiling to create a sense of depth.

2. What is the reason for your lens choice (did you want the compression of a long lens or the exaggerated perspective of a wide angle)?

I wanted the exaggerated perspective of a wider lens. I wanted to give a sense of the workspace, rather than focusing solely on the subject, and/or the machine. I shot at a focal length of 24mm.

3. What aperture did you use and why?

I used f/ 3.2. Firstly, I didn't want the background sharply in focus -- I wanted a sense of the workspace, but not to overwhelm the foreground image with too much detail. In fact, in my final shot, I have removed some detail from the background, because I felt the added colour and clutter detracted from the subject. I also needed to shoot at a wide aperture to make sure that my main light (the fluorescent lights in the ceiling) were bright enough.

4. What shutter speed did you use and why?

To have enough available light in my shot, I used 1/60. My ISO was 400. I didn't use a tripod, because a) there was a pillar exactly where I wanted to shoot my crop, and it was easier to get the shot I was after shooting handheld, and b) using an aperture of  f/ 3.2 meant that I was playing with fire in terms of getting the correct focus. I felt that using a tripod would only complicate things for me in the long run, rather than simplify them.

5. Did you have enough available light to achieve these camera settings?

Yes and no. The available light was quite bright, but to get the look I was after I had to shoot at f/ 3.2 and I probably would have been more comfortable at f/ 4, or even f/ 5.6. Also, I needed to overexpose slightly to get the brightness that I wanted. This created a conflict with my strobe lights.

6. Did you have enough strobe to achieve these settings?

Yes. In fact, too much.

7. Did you have too much light to achieve these settings?

Yes, in terms of my strobe lights. I had my lights at the lowest setting possible, and pulled them as far away from my model as I could (and still have a style of lighting that I liked).

I shot after Georgina, and if I had had more time, I would've experimented with neutral density filters. As it was, my subject was a little too brightly lit (but nothing I couldn't correct in post production). However, I should have used a reflector to bring some light to the lower area of the image. The area of the subject's apron (in the lower left hand corner) has no detail in the shadows, and this cannot be corrected in post production. This is one thing I will try to be aware of for the future.

8. Were there any technical problems with your test shot that needed to be addressed at the shoot or in post-production?

The issue of colour balance.

9. How did you address color balance?

We used green filters on our strobes, but they were probably too strong, according to Val. She also mentioned that I would need to correct my background in post production. I've tried to do so. In fact, I might've gone overboard. The walls in the workspace are yellow, and I wanted my shot to be more uniform, so the walls and the ceiling are the same colour/tone.


In post production I've done one shot that is more conservative and traditional (in colour) and one shot (in black and white) that uses far more contrast, and gives the image a gritty, industrial feel. I prefer the second one by far, but think the school and/or subject might not, so am submitting both.

Assignment 4 Environmental Portrait Indoors: Pre-light report and analysis

1. What is your intention in terms of how you plan to use the available light (as your main, your fill or even a hair light)?

I want to use the available light as my main light. I want the background quite brightly lit. I want a feeling of space. I want the lights running along the ceiling to create a sense of perspective.

2. What is the reason for your lens choice (do you want the compression of a long lens or the exaggerated perspective of a wide angle)?

I want the exaggerated perspective of a wider lens. I want to give a sense of the workspace, rather than focusing on the subject, and/or the machine.

3. What aperture do you plan to use and why?

I'm vacillating between 3.5 and 5.6. I don't want the background too out of focus, but I don't want it too sharp, either -- I don't the background too crisp or creating too much of a sense of busyness, which will then detract from the subject in the foreground.

4. What shutter speed to you plan to use and why?

It depends. To have enough ambient light in my test shots, I was at between 1/60 and 1/100. I will be shooting with flash, I still want the available light to be bright, and I also want my shot sharp. Maybe if I shoot with a tripod I can get away with that shutter speed.

5. Do you have enough available light to achieve these camera settings?

I may have trouble with the exposure for my ambient light.

6. Do you have enough strobe to achieve these settings?

Yes.

7. Do you have too much light to achieve these settings?

Possibly. I have a feeling my strobes will be too powerful. I will try using neutral density filters on the final shoot to achieve the effect I'm after.

8. Are there any technical problems with your test shot that will need to be addressed at the shoot or in post-production?

Just colour balance, I think. The focus in my test shots is off. I will need to be very careful of that at the final shoot.

9. How will you be addressing color balance?

I'll be using green gels on my lights, and shoot with a grey card.

10. What is the equipment you will need for the shoot?

- camera
- tripod
- two stands
- reflector
- 1 profoto flash kit
- extension cords
- 1 medium sized softbox
- 1 strip softbox
- green gels
- neutral density filters
- transmitter/receiver
- laptop
- lightmeter
- two speedlights (sunpaks)
- two hotshoes
- two umbrellas


Settings for the test shots below were (left to right): 1/60 sec at f/2.8, focal length 24mm, ISO 800; 1/100 sec at f/ 2.8, ISO 800 with a focal length of 24mm.

Assignment 3: Environmental Portrait Outdoors - Final

Having decided to shoot in the twilight, I came up against a few problems that I had not anticipated on the pre-light (sans actual lights) / scouting trip.

Number 1: It was around -20 with wind chill, and the winds were up to 30km. (At least it wasn't snowing.) I decided to use the small softbox, because even though it caught the wind like a kite, it was a little better than the umbrella.

Number 2: How do I get my background in focus, with enough light, and not overexpose my subject, and/or not have my subject blurry because my shutter speed is so slow.

Sure, it was easy enough to bracket my exposures for the background and do an HDR shot:

But how do I get that kind of clarity, with my subject sharp and not overexposed in the foreground?

I certainly didn't figure it out on this exercise. I have a 5D Mark 1, so my ISO only comfortably goes up to around 1600 (still with a lot of noise). If I shot with an aperture of around 11, so that the background would have detail, then my shutter speed would be so slow that it was almost guaranteed my subject would be soft. If I shot for my subject, then my background was in darkness:

I tried a few different things, but I had to shoot fast, because I was rapidly losing light.

And in the end, I brought up my background in post-production.

I had my subject stand on a stool, so I could angle my shot up and get the structures in the background, but not have the fence (which was just behind my subject) in the frame.

I had a small softbox on a stand just behind my camera/tripod set-up. I put it high enough to get a butterfly effect on my subject, and used a reflector to try and fill in the shadow under her chin.

I used a 24-70mm lens, with a focal length of 35mm, which allowed me to get the wider perspective of the overpasses in the background, but meant that I have a bit of the "big body/small head" effect going on.

My ISO was at 1600, my shutter speed at 1/8 of a second, and my aperture was F/ 5.6. I used a speedlight (on Manual, at 1/8), with an orange gel.

Successful? Not sure. A really intriguing learning experience, though. Definitely not pleasant to shoot outdoors in that temperature. But I know for next time: be much more prepared. And I think there are very exciting possibilities in this kind of location shooting. These kinds of dirty, industrial spaces in Montreal are beautiful at night. How to insert a subject in there, though, and make it work? I would like to explore that more...

Assignment 3: Environmental Portrait Outdoors - Prelight

I chose two images as a basis to think about what lighting I would use on the location shoot:

I had initially planned to use a male model, but this didn't pan out, so I used the above images just as a starting point, because I realized I would want my light to be softer for a female model.

I arrived at the location mid-to-late afternoon and tried to get an idea of what crop I would want for my image.

I shot a number of different spots on the location itself: with the river in the background; with the graffiti wall as background; with the perspective of the footbridge in the background. The one I found the most interesting was with the overpass structures as a backdrop:

Even though we were losing the light, I continued to shoot and experiment. We were shooting in the twilight and I felt the shot with the overpasses as background was suddenly much more interesting. When I got home, I played around a little in Lightroom, and when I switched the image to black and white (pumping up the orange channel), I felt I was on to something that I would like to shoot for the final:

On the actual day of the shoot, I plan to bring:

• 1 speedlight
• 1 stand
• 1 softbox
• 1 umbrella
• 1 reflector
• 1 tripod
• 1 orange gel
• 1 sync cord
• 1 umbrella mount
• Sandbags

Assignment 2: Product on location

How does that saying go? "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."

I had planned to do a food shoot in Wellington city during my vacation in New Zealand. I knew I would be able to hire equipment and there are loads of cafés and restaurants in Wellington.

As often happens on vacations, our plans changed completely. In the end, I wasn't going to be in Wellington until three days before I was to come back to Montreal, and it was going to make my assignment too late.

Most of my time in New Zealand has been spent in places either without internet at all, or in places where the wireless was too slow to upload images.

So I decided to try and go ahead and do a food shoot "on location" -- without lights, but using only the available light and whatever else was available.

I shot a digital polaroid to get my crop:

I had a few problems.

I ordered a seafood pizza from the owners of the place we were staying at, and the sun promptly went behind clouds. It made my shot look totally flat, so I decided to wait till the sun came out again. Not only did the pizza start to look pretty tired, but I had a few persistent guests:

I also wanted to try and fill in the hard shadows on the table created by the plate and wine glasses, so I used what was to hand: a steel garden chair. I had a couple of assistants to help with the "reflector" and the wasps. They did get rewarded at the end, though:

Finally, I shot in full sunlight at 1/6400 sec at f/3.2, with an ISO of 125, and a focal length of 27 (using a 24mm-70mm lens). Obviously I didn't have a polarizing filter, so I definitely have the greasy pizza look, but it was the best I could come up with, with the resources I had.

Assignment 1 - Indoor Environmental Portrait: Final

I came into the location shoot with a clear idea of how I wanted to crop my image, and what lens I wanted to use.

I knew that I wanted the copious light from the windows behind my subject as my main light, and I proceeded to set up a softbox as a fill.

I soon encountered one difficulty -- namely that I had forgotten to get a sync cord from the studio -- which effectively meant I had no way to fire my flash. Thankfully Val was on hand, and suggested I connect one of our sunpaks to my camera hotshoe, bounce it off the floor, and trigger the softbox that way.

I very quickly found that my artificial light sources were way too bright. To keep the ambient light from the windows in the background nice and distinct, and to keep my shallow(ish) depth of field, I needed to set my ISO to around 400, my aperture to 3.2 and have a shutter speed at around 1/125. This meant that the light on my model from the sunpak and softbox was way too harsh and over-exposed.

When I tried without the softbox, and simply bounced my on-camera flash off the floor, the results were much more satisfying and natural. I dropped my shutter speed to 1/60, and the image was much closer to what I'd been aiming for.

Val pointed out, however, that the light was quite flat.

So we took the softbox off the profoto, attached a reflector, extended it as high as it would go, and bounced it off the ceiling above.

This gave a more dynamic feel to the image, and a feeling of airy, lofty space above my model. As Val pointed out, because you can't actually see that there are not windows on the left side of the space, the eye is tricked into thinking the windows curve off out of the picture, and that my model is lit (naturally) from the left.

I took care of my white balance in post production. I did take a grey card on the shoot, but forgot to shoot with it. I always open my images in Lightroom, do white balance, exposure and curves there, and then open the image in Photoshop to do my retouching.

I do feel my shot might be a little bit grainy. Whether this is because of my ISO, or my aperture being just a little bit too wide, I'm not sure. There are other problems, like the blown out area in the bottom right corner, and my retouching is a little bit rough.

I'm also not too sure about the expression of my model. I had other shots where the expression is better, but could not use them, because of problems like: her hair on the right-hand side came up like brush underneath her chin -- it was too distracting, and there was no way I could easily retouch that kind of thing. Similarly with the hand: I had shots where the hand was placed better, but they didn't work for other reasons (expression, hair, etc.)

It just reinforces to me that shooting with Capture One on a location shoot (or any kind of shoot) is crucial. There is so much to think about in terms of just lighting a shot, that those smaller details can get lost in the process. Seeing the images blown up on a computer screen, however, would show those kinds of things right away.

Having said all that, I'm fairly happy with the results. I think it works well for the brief. The picture is definitely far from perfect, but overall, I'm really happy with what I learned on the shoot.

Assignment 1 - Indoor Environmental Portrait: Polaroid

Lighting diagram:

Objective:

This assignment is to provide an image of a businessperson in their environment, suitable for the front cover of Time magazine.

1. What is your intention in terms of how you plan to use the available light (as your main, your fill or even a hair light)?

When I got into the space, I became obsessed almost straight away with the large curving windows looking out over De Maisonneuve.

I knew I wanted to have the perspective, and the lines the windows created, in my shot.

I also knew I wanted to be looking up at my subject, to create an impression of power. At first, I thought I wanted a full length shot. I wasn't sure if I wanted a wide lens shot, or a more closely cropped shot, so I started taking shots to see what my perspective and my crop would be.

Before I came into the space I thought I wanted to go with a more stylized image, where the flash would be my main light. As I took more shots, and started to have a crop that I would like to work with, I realized my main light -- as well as the hair light -- would be the ambient light coming in through the windows.

I will need to use a very soft diffused light from my flash to fill in the shadows on my subject's face, as my subject will be turned towards me, away from the ambient light.

2. What is the reason for your lens choice (do you want the compression of a long lens or the exaggerated perspective of a wide angle)?

In the end, I realized I wanted to shoot with a long lens (70-200mm) because I want the compression and the shallow depth of field -- as I want the background to be a feature: architectural, interesting, structural, but not detracting from the portrait: I want a softer focus for the background.

3. What aperture do you plan to use and why?

I am going to go with something between 2.8 and 5.6.  I want a shallow depth of field, to concentrate on the subject. I want the background to create a sense of perspective and spaciousness, but not to overpower the image. And I don't want it to be recognizable necessarily. I want it to emphasize the sense of power of the subject.

4. What shutter speed to you plan to use and why?

Around 125. With my aperture, and the flash, and all the available light, though, I might have trouble. I will need to experiment and refine on the shoot.

5. Do you have enough available light to achieve these camera settings?

Definitely, if I shoot quickly and as soon as I arrive on location (around 12.30pm) I will have more than enough light. If I don't shoot quickly enough, or it's a particularly dull, overcast day, I might need to set up a hairlight on my subject.

6. Do you have enough strobe to achieve these settings?

Yes, if anything my strobe will be too strong. 

7. Do you have too much light to achieve these settings?

Potentially, yes. If, as I said, I shoot early and quickly, I will have abundant light from the windows in my shot. I might need to look out for flare. If anything, though, my flash will be too bright and harsh. I will need to have a neutral density filter. Perhaps even more diffusing material over the softbox. The light needs to very gentle and natural. I might look at using a reflector also.

In these shots, I'm starting to get a crop that I'm beginning to like.  On the right I still have light from the windows, but the subject is not well lit. On the left I am losing the daylight, and the flash is too harsh on my subject:

8. Are there any technical problems with your test shot that will need to be addressed at the shoot or in post-production?

I think I need to revisit the space and check my settings with the ambient light. I need to check my iso, and my shutter speed. My test shots seem to be a bit grainy, and I want to avoid this.

I have a LOT of refining to do (to think about). I think I will go back to the space before the location shoot. But this is getting near the kind of crop that I want on the day:

9. How will you be addressing color balance?

I will take a grey card reading for the ambient light and adjust from there. I really only want to be using one flash head.

10. What is the equipment you will need for the shoot? Are there any other special requirements or preparation (ie: permits, models, crew, research etc.)?

I will need:

• My model
• Profoto: Two flash heads (I really only want to use one, but might need one for the hairlight)
• Softbox
• Neutral density filter
• Diffusing material
• Two tall stands
• Reflector
• Clips
• Two Extension cords
• Masking tape
• Magazine layout, laptop and Capture One
• Tripod
• Light meter