Photoshoot Tomorrow.. - DPChallenge Forums

11/24/2008 08:10:59 PM · #1

Ive got a photoshoot tomorrow with two sisters, the shoot is gonna be at my house at 7 which will mean its gonna be darkkkkkkkkkk! haha

How and what would you do?

the only lighting i have (other than house lighting ;)) is a Canon 580EX II and a white umberella (the stand hasnt come yet, but i suppose someone can hold it haha)

i have some idea of what to do but im sure yous can give me more insight :D

The photos is of two sisters for a christmas present for there mum.

Camera: Canon 40D
Lenses: Canon EF 28-135mm F/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

Thanks Jay :)

Message edited by author 2008-11-24 20:12:12.

11/24/2008 08:23:59 PM · #2

sisters...can you be more specific? I've done 80 year old sisters and 2 year old triplets and several in between. COMPLETLY different expectations and preparation.

You can do amazing things in the dark...I shot a HS reunion of 155 people in a dark stadium.

using the city as the bacground (ISO 800, 1/15 and 5.6 handheld, one studio light w/ a softbox).
I'd have liked to have a hair light, but it's tough to work in the dark (posing, moving people in and out, etc) and then you have to deal with short, tall, thin, fat and such, and then one shot is this

and the next is this

and there is no time to change lighting from one to the next as there is a line of 50+ people waiting.

And of course don't forget the group shot - again, in the friggin dark.

. And I had less than ten minutes to set this up and that included moving lights 150 feet.

Or given half a chance you can do some cool things in the dark, or near dark. Mom held a 550 near Prici.

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I'll trade you - I've got a senior coming at 9 am for a session and my studio is being drywalled - so we have to work outside. Forecast is 31 degrees and snow, but it might still be rain. OK, low light, cold and wet...and my mortgage payment depends on my ability to make images she'll want to buy and will tell her friends about. No pressure, huh? LOL

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How old are the folks? Tikes that move will require something different than older kids.
What are the pics for? One image for a christmas card is different than needing 40 for a senior session.
Your house...I know nothing about your house. Mine is not photogenic - inside or out. I have a friends or two that live it what i'd call model homes, large 3 car garages, 2 story family rooms with fireplaces, or one lives in a log home - wow, what it would photograph like!

11/24/2008 08:25:41 PM · #3

Moment of thought...

got nice hardwood floors? have them sit against a wall and you lay on the floor and shoot at them. Even rest the camera on the floor.

set up your christmas tree and use it as the BG - the 50 1.8 could be used to throw it OOF and with a slow shutter the lights would show, the flash would freeze them and you'd have someting nice.

11/24/2008 08:46:01 PM · #4

Sorry for not being more specific, ive only met one of the girls before and shes about my ages so around 20, and its her younger sister but only by a few years,

As for my house i suppose its pretty photogenic (although not as much as a log house haha) but i cant really tell as i see it everyday so looks boring to me. We have erm loads of big mirrors a conservertory a dineing room with wooden flooring and a big table and a decent sized garden with no ligting and its gonna be DARKK at that time haha.

What the best way to use the flash? what power? shoot through the umberella or bounce off it? or should i even use it haha?

(i took some good head shot self portraights before using it to bounce the flash on 125/1 the power i think)

ETA: the picture is going on a canvas as a present for there mum.

One of the pictures i took today, playing around with settings.

Message edited by author 2008-11-24 21:04:17.

11/24/2008 09:01:23 PM · #5

bed sheets make a nice background in an emergency, especially the thicker ones. Red is always a cool option. if you can bounce your light off a wall maybe, it will reduce the shadows on the background to reduce the crappy look nof direct flash.

11/24/2008 09:10:15 PM · #6

I prefer to shoot thru an umbrella in rooms where the 'backwash' will bounce about and act as fill, raising the ambient level a bit. It's a tad softer than using it as a bounce/direct fashion.

Got more than one flash/umbrella? You can one has main light and to create a catchlight in teh eye and the second in the BG as a hair light or accent light or just for overall ambient fill.\

If you expose properly ISO800 is noiseless on the 40D so don't fear that part of it.

Your subjects are old enough to behave/listen/pose, but then they're old enough to have opnions that matter and are physically larger than say a couple of 8 year olds so that will have some effect on how you might pose them.

Are you/they after a more formal shot or something more informal?

If you've got the space to back up you can shoot the 28-135 at F4 and 100mm or so and that will throw the BG OOF some.

Remember to do shots of each one seperately - they can't buy what you don't shoot!

11/24/2008 09:14:03 PM · #7

i just have the one umberella as i only got the flash last week, so im completly new to all the off camera flash (ive been looking through strobist)

As for formal or informal i think they will be more towards the informal side but ill give them some choice.

Thanks again for all the quice and useful advice :)

11/24/2008 09:49:51 PM · #8

well... think about poses then, time is rtunning out. Get 3 distinctive ones, and maybe ask them to bring a change of outfits. You could do something fun and memorable too instead of just having them stand there- make them playfight, dress like secret agents or whatever else you can think of. It'll certainly be more fun and might relax them both.

If you're really stuck, you can make a DIY beauty dish from a turkey basting tin and some sellotape :) Or make a softbox from a cardboard box and some silver foil.

Lack of a lightstand could be solved by anything lying around and some sellotape. I've used a broom handle before, or a ladder with the flash on that or hanging it from the main light fixture as a downlight. Use your imagination man.

Tamron AF 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 XR Di II for Nikon

11/27/2008 12:25:16 PM · #9

The pictures are done!

Wasnt the most creative shoot but i dont htink it really needed to be, not 100% happy with them but they'll do haha

What do yous think?

Pictures here.

Message edited by author 2008-11-27 12:25:42.

david1707

Nikon D90

11/27/2008 02:45:53 PM · #10

I think they look pretty good. Try a program called portrait professional on them. You can try it for free and it costs less then $80.00 and I love it.

FocusPoint

XIAOMI Redmi Note 8 Pro

11/27/2008 02:53:04 PM · #11

About the Portrait Pro, I agree with Dave, but few things on your site and photos.. pop up ad was very annoying, but they stopped after a while :P

Some of the photos looked like softer, and some of them lights didn't seem correct... dark on the shadows a bit... and burnt on the lid areas.

I might be wrong but that's what I see. It could be also your camera settings. You might want tp post some post processed photos as well :) If they are allready there, I missed them.

11/27/2008 03:19:35 PM · #12

they are edited haha, ill take it as a complement to my seemless mastery of Photoshop, i didnt want to be to strong on the editing as the picture is for there mum, they only need one picture and i am happy with one of them so fingers crossed they like it haha

FocusPoint

XIAOMI Redmi Note 8 Pro

11/27/2008 03:39:33 PM · #13

You are the master of "seemless Photoshop editing" LOL

Good luck, I am sure they will like them all, we are here pros talking to pros, regular people should not even notice anything :P

11/27/2008 04:17:30 PM · #14

you've got to find a better place to show pics - pop up windows and advertisements are an abomination.

013 - terrible color, and bad crop
1 - the girl on the left is too dark and is wearing a red light on her head LOL . Background is uneven (one thing on the left, part of a tree and then on the right it ends just beyond her face.
2 - has terrible color, the girl in the back should have brushed her hair and she does not appear to be sharp. There is some piece of furniture in the BG that is distracting. Their clothing? I'm not sure what to say about that. and again, bad crop.
3BW - the faces are not lit the same and the girl on the left is unevenly lit, the one on the right -the top half of her face is too much darker than the lower half of her face
4 - again a bad crop and they are too close to the BG - looks more like a mug shot that a portrait.

Sorry if this comes across as harsh or tough. It's just a critique of the major issues I see. Learn from your photos and grow. I've made mistakes and will make more. I will no doubt make every mistake there is - but I don't plan to make the same mistakes over and over. That's called learning and we all must do it (as in suffer through it).

11/27/2008 04:27:08 PM · #15

the faces seem very red, even more so in the shadows.

Whatever happened to that studio you were opening up by the way?

11/27/2008 04:27:12 PM · #16

i never use that site, just need a place to put them quick and didnt want to use flickr or somehthing similar (linked to too many of my other things) i agree with everything said and the only one im slightly happy with is 1, it was also the very first time ive used off camera lighting, or any lighting ive had to control myself as well as it being in my house (hard to see good in what you see everyday) haha im not making excuses.

Aslong as they find one they like then its alright :)

11/27/2008 04:29:48 PM · #17

Originally posted by Tez:

the faces seem very red, even more so in the shadows.

Whatever happened to that studio you were opening up by the way?

haha someone remembered! well the person i was meant to be going into it with was very hesertant and suggested that we first rent studios per shoot (he was the one paying for the studio) and i thought to myself, i dont need a partner with no photography knowledge to help me do something i could do myself, so decided to leave it and build up little by little.

and my usual site is Carbonmade

:)

11/27/2008 04:46:57 PM · #18

did the pay you for the shoot?

11/27/2008 04:50:07 PM · #19

Originally posted by Tez:

did the pay you for the shoot?

yup

11/27/2008 05:19:49 PM · #20

Originally posted by JayA:

Aslong as they find one they like then its alright :)

I hear ya there!
I did a senior session tuesday morning in the cold and snow. Used a barn down the road and while most of the shots are OK, there are a much higher number of junk ones than I'm used to getting. I've been experimenting with mom holding a flash off camera and working with untrained assistants has it's issues at times. I had a whole series of shots that I got nothing from. Oh well, so it goes.

With practice and some advice you'll learn. it takes time. Get the money shot then practice a bit as you've got a model, are all setup and have nothing to lose.

The ones I hate are family ports in peoples houses. Small tight locations and no preview of what I'm up against. A couple of weeks ago I did one and there 14 people to be in the shot - fourteen! 7 of them under the age of 4! Few options exist to handle this - can't get back far enough for anything but a wide angle lens most of the time. And the client's not happy to stand around for 20 minutes while you try this and then that setup.
I got this (the adults only shot) and am pretty happy, expecially considering this to be my weakest area of photography. You can see shadows on the floor- they had a second floor hallway to the left that overlooked the first floor I put a strobe up there in an attempt to up the ambient a bit and give some modeling to the image. At least the fill light was strong enough I don't have shadows being cast from one person onto the next.

11/27/2008 05:26:24 PM · #21

Yeah i reliased i dont like doing family shots in homes as well now haha, works, work though and i suppose you learn from it all, good or bad. I think the most important thing is when a shoot or picture doesnt turn out the way you wanted not to let it effect your confidence, which is easyier said then done lol

:)

11/27/2008 05:52:29 PM · #22

Making mistakes is gonna happen. As you say, don't let it ruin your confidence!

This was my first attempt at team and individual sports shots. Rainy day so we shot inside in the basketball gym. The second is last year's yearbook photos i did at a local college.

Not bad, not terrible - perfectly acceptable. Not exciting, not artistic. I wanted to do better.

This fall I did this in a gym for a wrestling team/league and next to it is the same school's yearbook pics for '09's book. Better? Yeah! More artistic, more dimensional lighting, etc.

All four images are done with the same gear - same lights, umbrellas, etc. Experience and not being satisfied with what I was doing - learning - is what's bringing me forward, image quality wise.

But it's a lot easier to light one person than two. I think a group is sometimes easier than two people! I struggled with couples - engagement type shots - and while i have confidence i can create nice images of couple I'm not at all happy with the way i've been doing it, lighting wise. I've not found what works for me. I'm playing it too safe.

But then I'm not bored! LOL

11/27/2008 08:09:10 PM · #23

Some of my usual Portraights ;D

haha

Message edited by author 2008-11-27 20:09:57.

11/27/2008 08:28:43 PM · #24

Now I understand the odd crops LOL

Good stuff here, but not, umm, commercial so to say. The word is 'shoot what you love and the clients that love that will find you' and then you can shoot what you love and make money at the same time. And there is a solid reason to be different, as in offer a unique product.

But just like Elton John or Elvis -who've made money in rock and roll for sure - I bet they know the fundamentals and can play the classics very well. So having an understanding and ability to create the 'standards' of photography is always good.