Control

  If I could choose where to shoot, it most certainly would be away from home. Maybe in an abandoned building or in a mysterious forest. But as much as I do love to shoot outside it can be a challenge sometimes to haul my self out there, you know because of laziness. One more thing is that if I have the privilege to work with someone who is willing to model, I just don't like the idea of him or her freezing to death. It's not that much of a problem during the spring, summer or fall, but the winter. So if the weather isn't fine enough just stay at home. It's so nice to work inside when it's warm and cozy. Good for me, good for the model and the equipment. So what would you have to have in mind when shooting portraits at home?
  I'm not lucky enough to live in a fancy place with lots of square meters. What's worse is that the ceiling is pretty low, you can stand and touch it with your hand without a ladder or chair. The ceiling is white as they tend to be often and the walls are painted light beige. Not too bad if you want to shoot images that require light, maybe some hi-key portraits. But how about some dark low-key stuff? Biggest issue would be the light bouncing from the ceiling and walls, and hitting things you don't want. So definitely a problem, but solvable problem.
  A large black piece of fabric will make a nice dark backdrop and kill some of that light that otherwise would reflect from the walls. The next thing would be to control your light. For the following images I used two different kinds of light modifiers, a home made grid which nicely directs the light to only one direction, and a flash bender, which allows you to direct the light and prevent light hitting for example the wall or ceiling or both.
  So in the end it's all about controlling the light. In a a large space it's obviously easier, but if you are working in a small room you still can manage. Fastest sync speed possible, stopped down f-number, inverse square law, light modifiers, all of these help you to have control over your light.

Lighting up the winter

  I'm on little vacation from nature photography it seems. Of course I'm already eagerly waiting the herp season 2017 to get off, but it will take a while until we are there. So what to do while waiting? Days are getting shorter and that means less light. Good time for some portraiture with some artificial lighting. You don't need to fancy equipment. One flash light may be enough, just as I wrote in my previous post. The rest is up to you. A model and some props. As a model for this shoot was chosen my lovely wife. She was the MUA as well. Clothes from her wardrobe. Some props hanging around were chosen as well... grandpas old alarm clock, a small hat hanging on the wall as a decoration, one free running cat, a snifter and some cheap brandy ( the idea was to use some red wine, but some moron drank it all.). Oh, and a fabric that's waiting to become a dress some day was used as a backdrop. Simple, right? Afterwards some PP. Tried to achieve some kind of a steampunk western look with the filters I used. For an half an hour shoot I'm pretty satisfied with results.

     

The midwinter sun

   Dark days during December, so an additional light or two might be a good thing. One speedlight can do a lot for an image. A little snow might have been helpful, I mean it's winter anyway, but it seems that the climate exchange is doing its job so no natural reflector from the all white ground. What's cool, is that the weather was sunny, actually almost springlike. So, here's a few photos from a short and healthy walk accompanied by one Yongnuo YN-560 speedlight and Nikon D300s + my lovely wife as a model...

A mix of images

  Grabbing up a camera and making a couple of images can sometimes be such a pain. Sometimes you are just too busy. Sometimes it's just that you lack inspiration. And then it could be laziness. Or how about a nice even combination of all three? However, I managed to make a few images during the last couple of weeks. Tried a flash bender, photographed landscapes, portraits, and even a couple of bugs... and then I had a gig to shoot a couple apartments (and I was very exited about it), but it failed due to a misunderstanding. So no photos of that. But I'll share what I have...

 

      

Lady in red

  Saturday was a big day for my friends, Nikolaj and Petya. I had the honor to be the photographer, so later when the post processing is done and the couple has got their images I'll try to post a few photos. At the venue I saw this beautiful (mysterious) lady, dressed in red. Just couldn't help my self, but had to ask her to pose for a couple of shots. Used my old faithful Nikon SB-600 on a stand behind a white glass door to the right from the model.

More kittens... (sigh!)

  Working on my flash technique and trying to figure out how to use a reflector by my self. Really, I feel like I need one more hand, two for the camera and one for the reflector or flash. I guess an assistant would be even better... maybe one day. So, anyway, the kittens are growing and we even got rid of with two, both went to good homes. One'll stay, so it means three to go. Meanwhile, as I feel it's too hot to get out, I'm shooting kittens inside. As said, I'm trying to hone my lighting skills. Still quite faraway from Joe Mcnally, Frank Doorhof and other lighting gurus, however I'm trying. So here they are, more kittens, enjoy. ( I'm sick of kittens already, but what can I do? )

Cats, cats, dogs and one wife...

  During the past two weeks I've hadn't had too much of spare time over for photography, but when there's been those moments it's mostly been pets in the focus images. So here's a few.

             No flash or any other equipment than camera and a lens. Very convenient.

                          Some extra light added with a white card from the left.

                                            Kitten version of Count Dracula.

                                     Clean towel and your new box home

                                               Kitten with a flash.

                                Kittens with a flash and a reflector on the left.

                                ...Same as the previous.

                                The dogs need some attention too ( and my wife. )

                               Anu, Sussu and high speed sync... What a combination!  

Walking the dog

  It was pretty cold outside yesterday, but I still thought it would be nice to try to make a couple of images when walking our dog. Choosing the subject was easy, and even the backdrop were on my mind from the beginning. Then just add  a little bit of strobe light and shutter dragging, and that's it.

When the light's gone...

  Today it's been a pretty bad day when it comes to weather. Cold, I had to wear long johns. Wet and rainy, bad for the camera equipment. What ever, I felt I had to get out and just to motivate my self a little bit more I asked a friend to join me. When we started it was hardly raining, just a little bit of cold drizzle, but when we were almost there were I thought we would do a few images, it was already raining quite a bit. That's life and bad weather, even if it's raining cats and dogs, shouldn't be a hindrance for photography. There we were walking in the rainy forest with pretty bad light. So what can you do? Grab your speed light and use it. I didn't hope to find any animals but found. One poor Fire Salamander was crawling among the fallen leaves. Camera on the tripod and a little off-camera flash from the right side of the animal. It's almost like sun would be shining out side...

  
  Wet condition is good for fungi and I managed to make a couple of images of Puffball mushrooms. Again I chose to give the mushrooms some extra light therapy. In the first image the I used a longer shutter speed to give the backdrop some light. The second one has a shorter shutter speed and thus the background is a bit darker, this way you can see why these mushrooms are called Puffballs. The "smoke" coming out from the fungi is its spores, emitted because of an impact from a water droplet. Even if we witnessed this happening because of raindrops, in this image it is faked, my friend took some water from the nearby stream and you know...  

  

Cat with a flash

  Thought that I should start to use my old faithful flashgun more and more. So today I was trying to use off camera flash in various situations. Mostly this happened with people, but as I love to shoot our pets, of course one of our cats ended up as guinea pig...

 Our youngest one got a bit tired, so it was pretty easy to try some flash techniques on him while he was resting.

  And one more image. A beautiful woman with a kitten, a nice conclusion for the day.     

Macros with a flash

  In most of my photography I rely on ambient, natural light. I think that the sun is the best light source existing. Today I thought I'd make an compromise and try to shoot a couple of macro images with my old and faithful sb-600 speedlight unit. For the purpose I fastened it on a tripod and adjusted it so that I could use it wireless and off-camera. In these next three images the strobe is placed on the right side of the camera and quite close to the subject and the power is 1/16 of full power.

   A shield bug larvae on fig leaf...

   Bees enjoying an overly ripe fig...

   A snail on a zinnia.