Tag Archives: light

Creating Composite Images – Part 1

18 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by in Photoshop

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Morning

I have spent a lot of time recently creating fantasy composite images for a new venture of mine. I have not blogged about them only posted them on my Facebook page. A lot of my Facebook fans have asked how they were created – and whilst I’m not going to write a full blown tutorial on compositing images I felt I could put something together that shows how the images are created and how much work goes into creating them.

The key to creating believable composite images is in choosing the correct images for the composite. All the images should have have been shot with the same focal length of lens, to ensure perspective is consistent have the same depth of field and the lighting should be the same across the images. Colour is very important too – and in my next blog post I’ll share a top tip for ensuring consistent colour between background and foreground images.

The most important piece of the puzzle though is lighting. Light can come from any and everywhere in life, there can be soft shadows, hard shadows or no shadows at all and even a mixture of them all – a composite images will look totally fake if the light and the shadows to not match between background and foreground images.

Ideally you should go out and shoot your subject with a composite in mind – that way you can shoot the subject in a way that will fit in with your composite backgrounds. For instance, if you have already chosen your background images and they have directional lighting with soft shadows – you can light your subject to fit in with that.

Some people prefer to shoot the primary subject in a studio setting, so they have total control over the lighting – this is not necessarily a bad thing, but shooting outside can sometimes give you a quality of light that can never be replicated in a studio. My personal preference is neither, I use studio subjects as well as outdoor subjects.

Background stock images can be sourced from a variety of places, if you shoot landscapes or architecture you will probably already have some great images that can be used for compositing – but if not you can spend a serious amount of time searching places like Deviant Art, or iStockphoto or any of the other microstock websites out there. Some stock you may have to pay a few pounds for, others are free, its up to you to decide on what’s best for you – but there are plenty of amazing stock images out there.

Right – enough of the pre-amble. This is an image of the lovely Gemma, daughter of my favourite Bridal Wear supplier.

Gemma in magical forrest

Gemma in magical forest

This is a composite of two background images, the forest trees, the flowers in the foreground and Gemma. Gemma was actually shot in a studio environment for this shot.

This is the composite image BEFORE any work has begun.

Before

Gemma was backlit in the studio and you can see the beautiful light on her hair – this fits in ok with the final image as although the background trees are misty – they are brighter than the foreground – adding a shaft of light in with a photoshop technique adds realism to the lighting on Gemmas’ hair.

In total, this image took around four hours to create, there are 117 individual layers in Photoshop and the unflattened file size is 270 MB. The butterflies, shafts of light and sparkles are all created in Photoshop, using pre-made brushes. Butterflies were coloured and transformed to different sizes for realism.

Finally I coloured the image an overall violet to match the foreground flowers and keep up the overall fantasy woodland theme.

In my next post I’ll show you how I created a fantasy snow queen complete with horses.

Best – Colin

 

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Scotland, land of the brave, the tranquil, and the most beautiful light

07 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Landscapes

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Morning.

I love Scotland. I go there as often as I can. Sometimes three or four times a year in a good year.

Scotland can be the most peaceful tranquil little piece of Earth I know. It’s good to get away and find oneself occasionally and for me, Scotland is the place to be.

Scotland Scotland2 Scotland3

Scotland4

best – Colin

Shooting in Clubs

27 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by in General

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Evening

A couple of days before Christmas I was offered the opportunity to Photograph a cabaret  evening at a local venue – now this is not something I would normally shoot but I knew one of the acts personally and so took up the offer.

The venue seats around 200, reasonably large enough I thought to have plenty of light on stage so that I could get some good shots without going to too high an ISO setting.

Upon arrival I was shown to my shooting area, actually on stage – great – going to be able to get some good shots – I thought

There was some lighting on the stage when I arrived, but this was just a 40watt lightbulb (it wasn’t really, but the light wasn’t much brighter!). I went and asked the sound engineer when they would turn the “proper lighting” on and my heart sunk when he said the 40watt lightbulb was it.

When shooting in dimly lit clubs and other venues its important to have the right gear with you. Especially important is the type of lens, a fast lens is usually accepted to be at minimum a f 2.8 aperture and even faster lenses are available, 1.8. 1.4 and even 1.2.

Coupled with a fast lens you ideally need a camera body that is able to shoot in low light conditions at reasonably high ISO settings. Most modern cameras of today are capable of shooting at high ISO and with a little post processing acceptable results can be easily achieved.

When I got back to my shooting point I set up my body and attached my 24-70mm 2.8 lens – as I was close to the action this lens gave me the flexibility of being able to shoot at wider angles and also to get up close and shoot tight if needed. I’m a manual shooter, the only parameter I let the camera decide what to set for me is the ISO – I set auto ISO to “On” and this meant that I could manually set the aperture and shutter speed and the auto ISO feature of my particular body will adjust the ISO (within certain parameters) to enable a correct exposure.

With my lens wide open (f2.8) and my shutter set to 1/100 and with the 40watt stage light set up in place I was shooting at ISO 12,800 on occasions. It really is a testament to the technology available today for it was not that many years ago that shooting at ISO 800-1000 was considered “pushing it”.

On the night there were many performers, but this one singer stood out – an amazing voice. Gavin Lazarus

Gavin Lazarus

Gavin Lazarus

Gavin Lazarus

Gavin Lazarus

 

Gavin Lazarus

Gavin Lazarus

Gavin Lazarus

Gavin Lazarus

 

Gavin Lazarus

Gavin Lazarus

Gavin Lazarus

Gavin Lazarus

 

Best – Colin

If you fail to prepare.

10 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Photography

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Morning

When I arrive at a clients premises for a photoshoot more often than not the client will look at my gear and say to me, “do you really need all that for this shoot?”

I do take a lot of equipment on every shoot – two camera bodies plus my x100, multiple Speedlights (flashguns), an assortment of lenses ranging from 24mm through to 200mm, flash triggers, at least two sometimes three stands, two umbrellas, a softbox, various reflectors, spare batteries/flash cards and various clips and clamps.

As with all things electrical, if it can fail, it will fail, at some point, and its better to be prepared for that failure rather than have to cancel a shoot (and have an unhappy client)

Case in point – only yesterday I had the final shoot (of three) for a client that had signed up to my, “My First Year” package. I shoot the child when it’s born, then at six months and finally at its first birthday, this provides the client with a record of their child’s first year.

As with every shoot I do, I prepare the day before, make sure everything works, all the batteries are charged up, and pack everything I need for the shoot.

But yesterday was just one of those days.

I set up, went to fire a test shot and one of my Speedlights did not fire, even though it fired the night before. The client then said to me, “can you smell burning? Sure enough, the smell was coming from my fried Speedlight, slowly cooking inside. I quickly whipped out the batteries and put the unit outside – the client watching on nervously.

After setting up another Speedlight I took another test shot and this time once again, the flash failed to fire. Worried now I checked the unit and it appeared ok and fired when I manually fired the test button – I could not smell burning – so I suspected the remote triggers. Swapped out the batteries and all worked ok.

By this time young child was getting a little agitated and restless, so I said to the mother to give him a feed while I finished my setup. While she was feeding him I needed to change the angle of my umbrella, so I twisted the handle of the Manfrotto 155 bracket and it snapped right off in my hand.

At this point I was beginning to wonder who I had upset “up there” as things were going wrong one thing after the other and I was running out of excuses for the client!

I was down a flashgun, I had no way of modifying the angle of the umbrella now the bracket had broken – what could I do – I had to get this shoot finished (started!).

Then I had an idea – the Dad was just stood around watching so I asked if he would mind holding a reflector for me while I used my Speedlight on camera and bounced the light into the reflector being held by Dad.

The shoot turned out ok in the end, everyone was happy.

Happy one year old - Lit with Speedlight fired into reflector held by Dad

Happy one year old – Lit with Speedlight fired into reflector held by Dad

But THAT’S why I have to lug around a huge bag of equipment and assorted items when I go out on shoots!!

Best – Colin

Get Creative with White Balance

23 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by in General, Lighting

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Afternoon.

Light is all around us, both natural and man made – but not all light is equal. Every light source has a different colour, or temperature to them and this is why visible light is measured in degrees using the Kelvin scale. Warm light has a high number and cool light has a lower number.

Our eyes adjust seamlessly to these different light temperatures, or colours, but cameras are not so clever and have to be told what the temperature of the light is to render the scene correctly.

But just because there is a button that allows you to set the White balance correctly, doesn’t mean you actually have to set it correctly.

Take a look at these two images for example. The White Balance was set in camera at the time of capture, to 3330k

Of course, you can change the White Balance settings in post processing, using Camera RAW or Aperture or your own favourite image processor. But doing it in camera at the point of capture, allows you to instantly see the results on screen, so that you can adjust the settings if needed or discard the shot entirely.

 

A colour temperature of 3330k renders the scene very blue and makes the skin tones much cooler, but in these particular images the effect works well. Not all scenes would suit this colour temperature – and purists would discard the images as they are not “correctly exposed” – but from a creative viewpoint you can experiment and create some striking images, just by taking your camera off “Auto White Balance”.

For the purpose of comparison, the image below was taken straight after the image above, but the White Balance is set to “Auto”

 

This is a more natural looking scene, skin tones are more natural and the light appears how we would expect it to appear – white.

I’ll let you decide which you prefer.

 

Best – Colin

 

Back to Basics – one light setup

07 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Business, Lighting, Photography

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Morning

All photographers need light, be it daylight, sunlight, flashlight, or even moon light, we all need light, because without light there is only darkness.

I see photographers spending hours setting up 3, 4, 5, 6 or even more lights to light a single subject in a studio – fine if you are being commissioned to shoot a big brand commercial where you only have one opportunity to pull off the shot, but for normal paying clients it’s really NOT necessary.

Sometimes people over complicate things, you don’t really NEED to use multiple lights to get the best out of your subject. You might think that using a main light with a fill light and perhaps a hair light to separate them from the background is the way it should be done – and if you read most of the text books on studio lighting you will be right – but you don’t HAVE to do it that way.

If you know how to shape and modify light, and position the light correctly, you can create a stunningly simple image that your clients will love.

This image of Emily was taken with a single light, a single exposure and the only Photoshop work was to convert to mono, everything else is straight out of camera.

One Light

Have a think about how I shot this, with just a single light source.

With one light it is quite simple to add light modifiers to shape the light and add some drama to your image.

This picture of Holly was shot using a continuous light source off to my left and simply shot through a set of blinds strapped to a light stand. Careful positioning results in a pleasing composition, with the light striking the eyes and the mouth.

One light

So you see, it is quite easy to create beautiful and simple images that clients will love, with no more than a single light source and some light modifiers.

Best – Colin

 

 

Cameras don’t take pictures, photographers do.

26 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by in Photography

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Afternoon.

Photographers are always chasing that one “special” image, be it the most dramatic landscape lit by the once in a lifetime sunset spectacular, the “killer” Motorsport shot where it all comes together with perfect composition, great motion blur or panning and the jauntiest of angles or that perfectly and meticulously planned and thought out studio shot – we are always after it.

Some of us are lucky to get that image, some of us are not – but nearly all of us are guilty of one thing, and that is buying the latest and greatest camera/lens/flash/or other bit of gear that, if you are to believe the manufacturers, “will make you a better photographer”.

It won’t.

That super fast 1.2 85mm prime you crave for, it won’t make you a better photographer, nor will that new super duper camera body with pixel count off the scale that you are keen to remortgage the house for. None of it will make you a better photographer.

To be a good photographer you have to “see” the picture, look at the way the light falls, look at the shadows, have an understanding of depth of field and to be able to visualise that in the scene you are looking at – photography comes from within.

If you can shoot well then you can take a compelling photo with an iPhone, a compelling photograph comes from inspiration, not from the latest equipment.

The photograph below was taken at my old studio, I was setting up my lights and getting everything ready and the model was just chillin’ in the window frame waiting for me. I turned around and immediately “saw” a picture, my studio lights were pointing the other way, my DSLR had the wrong lens on, so I quickly picked up my trusty X100, (a fixed lens rangefinder type camera) and asked the model to tie her laces on her ballet shoes – I took three images, no flash, just ambient light.

This image is my favourite – it was the models too and it just shows you don’t NEED lots of high end expensive equipment to take a half decent image!

Best – Colin

X100 shoots Ballerina Girl