Speedlite Mastery

(This week I assisted Damien Lovegrove on a Speedlite Mastery Day.  This is my summing up.)

‘F*** f*** f***, look at that! I took that!  Kill me now, I never thought I‘d take a shot like that.’

If you’re on a workshop with Damien Lovegrove, and you’re not a mollusc, you’ll be thinking this about twenty times a day, as a conservative estimate.

On the surface of it, it’s not that hard - learn the formulae, set up the place, the model and the lights, and away you go. But if it really were that simple, we would all be huge successes.

This man is where he is because of more than just formulae. Spending a day with Damien, it is impossible not to feel the palpable joy of the chase, the buzz of capturing something wonderful, something that thousands will be happy to gaze upon. And this is after he has done it thousands of times before. It is like a drug with no comedown. He just keeps on going, filling your mind with possibilities, potential scenarios, positive propositions. Every serious photographer should aim to spend time with him. Even during breaks, he is so busy giving away every idea he has, he doesn’t manage to eat more than half his lunch, and his cappuccino has gone cold. And in the fleeting moments when he is not espousing knowledge to his immediate entourage, between mouthfuls of food he is tweeting the rest of the worldwide photo community snippets of Lovegrove wisdom on his iPad. If I had to use one word to describe my impression of him, it would be‘Unstoppable’.

Book with Damien now for a very rewarding experience, and enough inspiration to last you a very long time.

Vicky and James

I shot a wedding recently with my able colleague Ken and we decided to stay late to make the most of the beautiful grounds of the Bowden Hall Hotel in Gloucester and try a 'twilight' shot of the bride and groom, Vicky and James.

Using Ken as my 'couple', I set up two 580EXll's on stands with brollies, one ten feet to the right and one to the left and slightly behind him.  I used the ST-E2 trigger and played with the ratio control until I got something I liked, roughly 2:1 in favour of the right-hand strobe.  Keeping the shutter speed on 200th sec (manual) I then played with the aperture until I got the background 'twilighty' enough.  The ST-E2 ably adjusted the flashes to illuminate the subject as I went along.

When I was happy with the look of the light, we rushed off to find the happy couple and plonked them into the shot, and fired away.  This meant they got a great picture with minimal hanging around, so they could go straight back to partying.

Rain Dance

I'm back!  Much business with portraits, weddings, teaching and processing but I'm finding time for a post. 

This shot was a tester for our imminent launch of a new line in wedding photography called Bohemian Bride, designed for the more fun-loving types out there with the more unusual ideas about what makes a good wedding.

Techincal details:  One brollied speedlite camera left, triggered ETTL via an ST-E2 device, spot metered on the model's face in Av mode;  camera stopped down to f11, which is minus a stop on where it tells me to be, in order to render the background darker and expose the sky nicely.

Avram Grant Lookalike Crazy Lenny

Again I used the ST-E2, this time employing two flashguns for the stereo lighting effect.  They were placed pretty much equidistant either side of my subject, side-on.  The ETTL made light work of the exposure, leaving me to decide how much lighting ratio to give to either side of the face, which, as you can see, ended up being 50/50.  Setting the ratio is ridiculously easy, involving a simple press of a button one way or the other depending where you want the most light.

I used no diffusion on either flash to give the 'hard light' effect.

I think it has the look of one of those football manager shots you see on the front of Four Four Two magazine.

You may disagree!

Claire de Lune

This is a shot from the recent wedding of the lovely Claire and Simon at Clearwell Castle.  We were lucky enough to have beautiful surroundings and a great couple, so things were made easy for us!
This shot was taken using a 580EXll high up on a stand, triggered by a pocket wizard, and using a fairly short home-made snoot to create a 'pool' of light around the bride.  There is just a bit of extra 'pool' to show off the lush red carpet.  We spent a few minutes shuffling the light stand back and forth to get the pool just where we wanted it. I had to stand somewhat precariously on a chair to get the angle, but I think the effect is very pleasing.
Sorry for forgetting the power settings but I didn't want to keep Claire waiting for too long as she had some partying to do!

It's the way I gel 'em

Another shot from the session I had with the amazing Luke Roberts.

This time I wanted an effect that suggested a live performance, as if he were onstage, so I used a blue gel on the strobe camera left and an orange gel on camera right. Each was on half power, no diffusion. The one on the left was pretty much directly side-on to luke, about six feet away, zoomed to about 50mm, with the same home-made gobo to stop it glaring into the lens, and the one on the right was up as high as the stand would go and also sort of side-on, zoomed right out to 24mm, and about eight feet away.

The hardest thing about this shoot was capturing the right moment, when the yo-yo was in just the right place. This guy is FAST. But he was also very helpful and understood when I needed to fire off a few frames before we got one in the bag.

World on a String

Local yo-yo wizard Luke Roberts (current UK champion, no less) and I got together to make promo shots and here is an example of what we were able to achieve with a very simple setup.

One strobe camera right, up high and brollied, half power, one camera left and slightly behind, home-made gobo keeping it from fogging the lens, half power and zoomed to 50mm. Both about eight to ten feet away. Camera f16 (hard to get much dof with full-frame) at 200th sec, iso 400.

What I've quickly learned to love about these Canon flashguns is they have way shorter flash duration than my interfit studio lights, so can freeze the action, and they are also way more portable. I also seem to be able to control how much light falls on the backdrop much more easily, which saves so much time in post-processing!

On location

Happy New Year!

Well, I remembered to record all the details of this shot so here goes:

Strobe camera right on 8th power, widest zoom, about 6 - 8 feet away - should have used an umbrella but it was so cold we didn't bother..;

Strobe camera left on 16th + 0.7 (precise, eh?), widest zoom, same distance away, slightly to the rear of subject/model/wife;

Camera 400 iso, 1/80th sec, f5.6.

This is shot on Painswick Beacon, Gloucestershire - five minutes drive from our house. The wind chill was severe and my ears are just recovering. As you can see, my wife didn't want to wear the bikini I asked her to model - what a primadonna.