Diagrams...

Learning lighting set-ups can be a nightmare simply because there are dozens of ways to use a flash, and thousands of ways of lighting something. Learning how to operate the kit is easier, in my opinion, if you use it on manual and if your flash allows you to vary the output like most speedlights. Once you've sussed the kit, what are you going to do with it ? For me, its about having an idea for a shot, then working out what kit you need to make it effective rather than a "i've got these lights, now where do I put them ?" approach. An idea i've had for a while was to portray myself as a meglomaniac, a slightly menacing, grumpy so-and-so with an accusing eye. (too many Bond movies as a kid!) I had a pair of heavy glasses that might lend a meglomaniac feel and practised a mad scientist-type frown. I want the portrait to look like i'm bearing down on the viewer through a magnifying glass, and that there's no 'escape' from an 'all-seeing' eye ! I also wanted a threatening, dark sky as a backdrop to further project a sense of world-domination etc etc... I then roughed out a few sketches and started to look at the lighting for it. I decided that it would need some harsh light to give it the menacing bit, but it would need softer but directional light from the front for detail. I'm rubbish at drawing but i've practised thumbnailing for years and can draw a half-tidy diagram. If you're not too great at drawing, you could use a diagram-generator like the one I came across on a website recently. Basically it lets you build your own lighting diagrams from preset graphics and the one above is an example I made. They're called Sylights and you'll need to sign up for it. You can start to create your own diagrams from a comprehensive list of reshapeable and repositional graphics. Its straightforward enough to drop and drag the shapes you want into place, and get your ideas down on paper. You could also try using Take the basic lighting set-up above for my idea. Try to previsualise what you think its going to look like. There are 2 hard flashes fired from behind, and from the front, there's another, moody but softer flash. Can you previsualise what its going to look like yet ? I'm being deliberately vague on the technical details because I want to concentrate on the idea, not the kit. The kit bit comes later. In attempting to predict a lighting set-up for an idea, you have got to have an idea in the first place. Concentrate on the idea and then work out how to go about shooting it. In this case, I needed rim-lighting from behind in the shape of snooted speedlights, and a brollied speedlight from the front, just above the camera. Now, hopefully you got what I was trying to do and formed a mental idea that looked similar to this !

Blurring the sky... part 3

Well, I think i've got the technique sussed now so I need to devise a project that will benefit from this look. Its a bit eye-candy ish for me and it needs some subtlety and i'm torn between landscapes and buildings at the mo, neither of which are my main preference.... Most of the exposures i've been making are consistent at the moment due to the mad weather and cloud systems. It takes a while to tune in to the weather and i've spent the weekend boring the pants of my partner as i've been at pains to point out the shifting, pilowy cumulus (350ft) clouds against the more static, wispy cirrus (2700ft) formations. Did you know that there are hundreds of differing cloud types ? Neither did I until I started this project ! And thats the problem for me at the moment because i'm not a cloud-photographer but I like the effect that a long exposure has on them. I mentioned previously that as part of being out and about in the landscape, I love the sense of movement and the changing moods of the weather, wind in the trees etc. and this has always been missing from my landscape pictures. All I need now is to forget about the technique and its effects and find a reason to photograph the land around me.... then i'll be happy !

Mini Projects....

I've cycled for as long as I can remember and have always preferred off-roading to anything else. My first serious cross-country ('mountain-bike' is a relatively new term!) bike was a Silver Fox but I have to confess, I had no idea what constituted a good cross-country bike. All I knew was that it had grippy, chunky tyres that didn't puncture easily, and forks that were straight and wouldn't buckle when I threw it down hillsides ! I swear it was made out of scaffold pipes it was that heavy... So in recent years, there has been an explosion in MTB'ing and you can pay £££££'s for a machine which has similar technology as a motorbike ! But as with most things, i'm not too fussed about having the top kit so long as I get a cracking day out, i'll ride anything ! This started me off on a project photographing cyclists and their preferred methods of perambulation. I wanted to photograph anyone who cycled, at whatever level they could and set about meeting people to achieve this. The pic on the right is taken on the Spen Valley Greenway which is the old railway line made into a bridleway. Ironically, I used to ride my Silver Fox along it way before it was tarmaced over to get to the local woods. I set up some kit one day and haranged anyone kind enough to stop to get some pics. About 1 in 3 stopped and offered to pose, probably more out of curiosity than anything. I set up 2 bare metz's either side of the footpath and one above my camera firing through a brolly, all triggered by cheapo wireless transmitters. I really like the shadows of the bike created by the bare metz and have tried to 'build' this in to the rest of the portraits. The shutter speed is metered to give some depth to the skies and again, the intention is to keep that as a constant throughout the series. It can be a bit of a pain though trying to keep to a 'look' throughout the series as it is beginning to dictate how and where I shoot, but that said, I do like the purposeful-ness of it. The guy on the left replied to a poster that I pinned up in cycle shops across the area. I set up a mobile phone number on a PAYG sim card, knocked out some flyers with the phone number on and offered free prints for time taken and took them round local cycle shops who kindly displayed them for me. I met this chap at his workplace and he kindly showed me all the stuff he'd attached to his bike. The bike was overloaded with lights, speakers for his sound system, horns and was even converted to pull a trailer so that he could go shopping on it ! One word of warning, Hi-viz jackets are a nightmare to light/expose for as they are designed to be highly reflective!