We haven’t done a lot of Photoshop tutorials on LE, but I plan on doing more. The amount of requests I have been getting tell me that there is a lot of interest. And we will be responding.

This tutorial shows you a simple way to add a texture to an image. As with almost anything dealing with Photoshop, there are a lot of ways to get to the same end. This way is mine and it works very well for me. I hope you enjoy the tutorial and have some creative ideas in mind.

Before we get going, here are a few websites where you can get some great textures.

DesignFeed
100+ Textures for Design
And here is a great collection of texture tutorials.

And here is a great list of Photoshop Beauty Tutorials courtesy Smashing Magazine.

There are a lot more out there, try Deviant Art for one, and even Flickr has a couple of forums where textures of larger size are offered free. Look around for some cool ones you like.

This week will find us in Omaha (June 6, 7, 2009), and then we will be heading to Missoula and Chicago for workshops. If you are interested in taking a workshop, consider the Lighting Essentials workshops for a fantastic weekend experience.

Check out our previous posts:
An Interview with Kirk Tuck, an Austin based commercial photographer.
Shooting an Ad from a Sketchy Layout.
Mixing Ambient with Strobe: Seeking Balance.

The photograph of Vanessa on the beach was shot during the Anna Maria Island workshop this winter. We were at the tip of the island, and it was mid-day. I liked that little passage of sand and grass so I placed Vanessa in the middle. Lighting was added with a 430EX on 1/2 power on a pole over my camera and just out of the frame. The strobe and the white sand helped open up the shadows a bit. I had Vanessa throw her hair for a dramatic gesture. Working with a wide angle lens, the sense of “place” was brought into the portrait. I knew when I shot this image that I wanted a textured, desaturated look to the final print.

Now let’s take a look at how I added texture to the image above.

First we have the original file of Vanessa on the beach, straight out of the camera.

It is not a bad shot, but it isn’t the shot I saw in my head when I was shooting. Digital is flat, and that needed to be corrected. I wanted the surreal look of her pose and gesture to be heightened by the presentation with texture and a desaturated, muted color look. I knew that I was going to do some post processing on the image and add some texture to give the shot some context. I knew what the shot was going to look like before I started shooting it.

First I duped the layer and set the blend mode to softlight. This enriches the color and adds some saturation, but it also makes Vanessa too dark. (Drag the background to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers pallet. Blend mode is found at the top of the layers pallet.)

Wanting to get Vanessa the subject back to a more natural exposures, I added a layer mask to the top layer, and painted her back with a black brush at 30%. It took some time, but with careful work, it reveals the lighter color below. I worked the image until I got it the way I wanted it. You could choose to use other tools to bring her back, this masking is the one I use. I am slow and deliberate. If I reveal too much, I can undo my work with a white brush.

At this point I did the editing on the face and body. Using a clone brush with blending mode set to lighten and the healing brush, I was able to clear the face of anomalies and open the shadow a little bit. I wanted the face to look great without destroying the cool look that the sun had added. Shadows are important for this shot. You can do this on a layer above the shot for a non-destructive working method, but I sometimes skip this part when going for a texture look. This was minor work and didn’t take long. We will be doing a Photoshop tutorial on face retouching soon.

Thinking that the skin still looked a little flat to me, I added a new layer above, filled it with 50% gray and set the Blend Mode to “Soft Light”. With a soft white brush set to an opacity of 8% I gently lightened the arms and shoulder areas, and opened up the shadow area. Be very careful and work slowly to build the look you want. I normally use between 6 and 8% and build the highlights up gently.

I then created a new composited layer to keep working (control / alt / shift / e). This lets me go back to the highlight layer and make adjustments and replace the composite layer if needed. You may not need to do this, and can continue with the layers as is. It is something I chose to do at this point.

I added some highlights to the reeds, clouds, sand and other small areas with the white brush. Changing the color to black we added some darkness to the sky. Remember to keep that opacity low and use a large and soft brush. Work slowly and diligently. It is better to add the highlights with several passes than with one big gesture.

Open a texture that you like. You have some choices to make at this point. You can leave it as full color or change it to black and white. You can work with it any way you like, and you should experiment with the different ways to use the color in your textures. For this shot, I am using it as a monochrome image. After you have the texture where you want it, drag it over to your image, adding it to the top layer of the file.

Size the texture layer down to fit or do what you need to do to make sure it covers the entire image. When you have it ready, double click it to apply the resize and move to the next step. You could resize it before bringing it to your image file, it is up to you.

Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Softlight. This blends the texture into the image. It is not looking all that good to me at that point, seeming rather harsh and over the top. We can control that with our next move.

We then add an Adjustment Layer / Levels and adjust it to taste. I like to keep the midtones depressed a bit and lower the highlight adjustment as well. I want the texture, but I don’t want it to be too overwhelming. Flattening the dynamic range seems to work well for my work.

At this point I add a color layer. I used a very faint orange/yellow color and then lowered the opacity down to about 30%. Try different colors and opacity settings to find what looks good to you. I shifted the layer down for effect. You should experiment with the layer placement of the color. Don’t be locked in to where it is placed in the layers, try different places for a different look.

I added another mask to the texture layer and with a black, soft brush, painted the texture back to reveal non-texture in those areas that seemed to much for me. I also lowered the opacity of the texture layer down to about 60%. This reduces the amount of texture and makes it seem more a part of the image.

I readjusted the adjustment layer Levels at that point. You may or may not choose to do this, but I did. Many times I will readjust at this point after adding the color and doing the reveal. Slight tweaks, but important as well.

Adding a Hue and Layer Adjustment Layer, I created a sepia look to drain some of the color from the image. I wanted a more subtle hue to the image. On Hue and Saturation, check ‘colorize’ and adjust the sliders to get the sepia look you like. You can desaturate a little here if you want.

The image looks like Now it is time to lower the opacity of the sepia layer until the image looks like you want it to. I dropped mine to about 55% for this look. I added another layer filled with 50% gray and with a soft brush added a bit more highlight / shadow. This is optional, but it is something I like to do… just tweak it up a little.

Here is the final Photoshop file. You can see the layers and how it was assembled.

And this is the final image.

Hope you enjoyed the Texture tutorial. See you next time on Lighting Essentials.

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Tilt-shift lenses provide the small camera shooter with the functionality of a view camera. At least some of the functionality of a view camera. The front half anyway.

The ability of the camera to change the relationship between lens placement and film or sensor placement can provide many different possibilities. Two of the most popular are the tilt lens and the ability to shift the lens above and below the sensor axis.

Let’s examine the tilt tool on the Tilt Shift lens. Tilting helps control the Depth of Field on images. By tilting the lens forward, the photographer can manipulate the amount of focus by increasing
the angle of the lens’ DOF.

This 3 page Tech Sheet will introduce you to the many things you can do with this extraordinary lens. If you want to try it out, you could rent one for a week from our contest sponsor, BorrowLenses.com. Or you could go to win the contest and get a weeks rental free.

Workshop news. San Diego this coming weekend, then off to Seattle, and then sunny Florida. If you haven’t checked the workshop schedule, now would be a good time.

EDIT: February 18, 2009
“Pre-PMA 2009: Canon has today announced a pair of new tilt and shift lenses, in the shape of the TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II and the ultra-wide TS-E 17mm f/4L. These two optics share a brand new barrel design that allows the directions of the tilt and shift to be rotated independently of each other, offering a high degree of control over the positioning of the focal plane. They also feature Canon’s latest sub-wavelength structure coating (SWC) for the minimization of flare and ghosting, high-precision aspherical front elements to keep distortion to a minimum and multiple UD elements to reduce chromatic aberration. When used on the 35mm full-frame format, the TS-E 17mm f/4L offers the widest angle of view of any similar lens currently available.” LINK HERE

Now on to the Tech Sheet on The Tilt Shift Lens.

One of the specialty lenses that I have used a lot is the Tilt and Shift lens. I had a 35mmPC for my Nikonsand it was one of my most used lenses. I still like that lens and will shoot it on occasion when film is appropriate.

That lens only had shift, but this new Canon one we got from www.borrowlenses.com, has both shift and tilt. For those who wonder, yes you can also use the shift on a horizontal axis as well as using the tilt as a swing. These are tools of the view camera now on our smaller cameras.

Shifting the Lens
The shift function of the lens is one that I use a lot. Keeping the vertical items from keystoning
(seeming to fall back) can be very useful when shooting architecture, still life and landscape.

On the shot below, I stood in the same spot and made the two images. To get rid of the parking lot, I simply shifted the lens up, keeping the camera vertical without tilting it up. This gave me more dramatic sky without changing the verticals of the architecture in the foreground.

Tilting the camera is what causes the image to seem to fall back. So by keeping the camera at the same vertical axis as the subject, the look of falling back is eliminated.

Here are two diagrams to show how the camera angle can effect the falling away of the subject.

Download the Tech Sheet for a more detailed Tutorial.

In the studio, the Tilt Shift lens can be extremely valuable too.

Here are a couple of shots to show how the lens can be used to increase the field of focus, and also create a more narrow field of focus.

First let’s look at the shot before we do any tilting and shifting to it:

The shots below illustrate the use of the tilt/shift on the above shot:

Here is how we can use the shift tool for the studio as well.

As a former studio generalist, I did a lot of shots like this for a wide variety of clients. Many times I liked to use the design of the object itself as a feature of the photograph.

There were many times when doing that and showing the surface that it is sitting on would conflict. I would use a view camera in most cases, either 4×5 or 8×10.

These cameras have tilt and shift on both front and back of the camera. It was absolutely important to be able to compose the image with a sense of design, and eliminate some of the things that were not relevant to the shot.

In this photograph I used the shift function to place the camera at a center spot on the table, eliminating the view of the surface, then shifted the lens to get the composition to the point I wanted it.

The above image is fine of the clock, but centered the image in the camera gave me too much surface and lessens the dynamic design that could be found in the shape of the plane. Below I moved the camera down to center the surface, thereby nearly eliminating the surface at all, but, now we are looking up at the plane a bit, and there is too much bottom to the picture.

By shifting the lens up, I was able to keep the angle of the camera straight across the table, but center the image of the plane in the frame.

Here was the way we used the camera lens to get the plane into the middle of the frame:

Download the Tech Sheet for a more detailed Tutorial.

Stay tuned and remember to check out the workshop pages, and our site at Learn to Light for more information and all kinds of stuff. BTW, my blog at It’s What I Do is getting a lot of posts these days. From Photoshop links to interesting design tips, you may enjoy it for a more immediate set of posts.

See you next time.

Special thanks to www.borrowlenses.com for the use of this Canon lens. I hope I can find it to send it back, Max… hmmm… now where did I put it?

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Our Tech Sheet on using a meter will be next time, we decided for a variety of reasons to bring you this Tech Sheet on beating the sun for effect instead. Explanation could come soon on why, but I wouldn’t wait for it… heh. It just happens when you are a one man publishing mogul. LOL

OK, there are times when you want to be able to beat the sun, that is, provide light that is equal to or brighter than the sun. When using small strobes it becomes even more tricky because there is a limit to the speedlight’s power. And to beat the sun we do need some power.

We are going to take this in two parts, the first being this tech sheet with small speedlights, and later this year with some large strobes. We will be using one and two lights for this exercise, so it should be something most will be able to do easily.

Before we get going, I want to say how cool it is that people are calling from all over the country asking me to bring the Lighting Workshop to their town. We have added Montana, Omaha, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland, and they are filling up pretty fast. I have decided to lower the attendee count a bit because of how well they have done with a few less photogs. We would like to keep it at 12 with an assistant.

Now, let’s get on with the Tech Sheet for the end of February, how to beat the sun with small strobes.

Red Dress, Blond hair and a strange totem pole thing. The sun had slipped a little below the fog bank and it was getting a nice, ambient warmth everywhere. I decided to create our own light with the speedlights. One to camera right and one to camera left. I took an ambient reading and found that at 1/125 the ambient was just a little brighter than f-5.6. So I set the camera at f-11@1/125 and moved the strobes to a distance that would give me f-11 at 1/4 power. Shooting at f-11, we end up with an exposure that is a stop and a half under in the ambient.

Download our Tech Sheet on Beating the Sun here as a PDF file.

Sometimes you end up shooting straight into the sun, and there are all kinds of challenges with that… flare being one of the most challenging.

I couldn’t see the model as she was posing, so I had to trust her to do a great job. She did. I caught the flare by accident, but it made a nice touch to the composition. I underexposed the ambient by shutter speed, keeping the flash to expose the subject. See the tech sheet for more information on this particular shot.

Briana on the roof in Mexico. The sun is coming in over her shoulder and behind her. I took a meter reading of the light hitting Briana from the back and it was f-16@1/125 at ISO 100. I wanted the ambient to be darker so I lowered the ambient two ways: First, I changed the shutter speed from 1/125 to 1/160. This darkened the ambient by 1/3 stop. I then changed the f-stop from f-16 to f-20, effectively darkening the ambient 2/3. Combined, the ambient is 1 full stop under the metered light. So I left the camera setting at f-20 and 1/160 then moved the speed light into a spot where it would provide an exposure of f-20. That put it at 1/2 power, so there was a bit of a wait for the recycle. I hate that, but it is certainly a doable situation.

Trikita in Bermuda. What a wonderful place and exceptional young lady. We had her in the shade, and the ambient was a full f-16 @1/100 – perfect Sunny 16 – and I wanted it to be more muted. I decided to lower the ambient light by a full stop, creating more bang for the flash on Trikita.

Shutter speed was upped to my highest possible sync with those triggers, 1/200 would sync, and that lowered the ambient 2/3 stops, then I set the f-stop at 1/20 which is 1/3 stop less than the ambient exposure reading. Combined they are a full stop less than the ambient light. Keeping the strobe at 1/2 power at 6.5 feet gave me a full f-16 at a medium zoom. The ‘zoom’ setting created a sort of spot light on her and I like that look a lot.

Assignment:
Place a subject with the sun slightly to fully behind them. Take a reading to find your ambient light. If it is a sunny day, you should be around f-16 at 1/100 of a second. Put a speed light on a stand at about 6 feet, then put it on 1/2 power. Adjust to a point where it is giving you an exposure of f-16.

Put the camera on 1/60th and take a picture. At f-16 and 1/60, the background should appear light and bland. Continue at 1/80, 1/100, 1/125, 1/160, 1/200, 1/250. Check the images. The subject should remain fairly consistent, but your ambient background will get darker and darker.

Now change the power of your strobe to full power. That should render f-22 on your subject. Set the camera f-stop to f-22. Do the series over again… 1/60 through 1/250 and examine the images. The darkest images will be those of the 1/250 @ f-22.

This exercise will show you how the ambient is controlled by the shutter speed and the flash exposure by the f-stop.

I hope that you will try some of these tips and download the Tech Sheet for your collection… you do have a collection started, right?

Exciting news to be announced Monday. I think you will like it. See you next week.

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Here we are for our second Tech Sheet of the year. How to create a natural light look to a photograph when there is little to no ambient light to be had. We will be using a couple of speedlights for this Tech Sheet.

It has been a wild first couple of weeks for me, and I don’t mind telling you all that it has been exciting. Clients who had ‘gone dark’ came out with plans for work for this quarter, LE is doing well and the workshops are getting more attention.

I have been furiously working on materials for the workshop, and developing some other interesting things for LE… and on top of that, I have assignments and editing to do.

Hey, I ain’t complaining.

I hope you have checked out the workshop page for our itinerary for the first couple of months. And we are adding some more in the coming days. As always, we are looking for hosts in the areas where we have scheduled workshops as well as entertaining ideas you all may have about the workshop coming to your little part of the world. We need 10-12 attendees and we are ready to roll.

NOTE: I was asked about some Photoshop techniques and have added that to the bottom of this post.

Be sure to check out all the tech sheets we have done by clicking on the Tech Sheet Category above. Now, on to creating a natural ambient looking light when there is none. (And, look… the downloadable Tech Sheet has a third page bonus feature… that’ pretty cool, eh?)

FOR THIS PHOTOGRAPH:
- two speedlights ( am using a 550 and 430 Canon)
- 1 medium or large umbrella (biggest you have)
- two stands
- tripod recommended

We will examine an ambient light look in this tech sheet. There are times when we have some wonderful ambient to work with and then there are times when we have to all the light ourselves. These three shots represent ways of working to provide a natural look to an image without having any naturally occurring light to work with.

I am using a 60” umbrella with a 550 Canon Flash and a bare 430 Canon flash for the light in the first picture. And I wanted the image to look natural, relaxed and not look like it was strobed or overly lit. It is barely out of frame to camera left.

We have a bonus third page for the downloadable tech sheet

Without the flash, there were some large spots in the ceiling and I looked at how they lit the room. I had some ambient so I wanted to make sure that I provided a look that would be somewhat consistent with the look of the room.

You can see the subtleties of the light on her legs and shoulders.

Creating ‘Ambient’ Light
In the first shot we are going to create the ambient light with a second speedlight. I have mine on a stand and it is pointed up at the ceiling at an angle toward camera right. Look at the shadows from the drawer pulls behind Bri. You can see the angle of the shadows. That tells you where the light was coming from. I also wanted it to be at an angle so the image would look a little more natural. Coming straight down could have looked a little contrived. The slight angle is more convincing.

I took a meter reading of that light and dialed it to give me f4.5. That is 1 and 1/3 stop over the main light which was going to be f-2.8.

I moved Bri into position and made a few shots to get the angle of the light just right. Notice that there is no spill of the ambient strobe onto the shadow side of her face.

Two reasons:
1. I wanted her to be separated from the back
2. The feeling of light coming from the front.

Here is a diagram of the light and how I pre-visualized it.

Briana in the kitchen... you can see how the light is working.

Below you see the room with only the back light firing. You can see the spotlights in the ceiling and also how dark it is to Briana’s front. The addition of the umbrella and its soft light makes the shot look more natural. And having the background be brighter also gives the shot a sense of light in two distinct areas… the way it would be naturally.

Notice how the light is bright on the areas I needed for the shot.

Above:
The effect of the large umbrella is very easily seen in these two images. The power of the light in the umbrella isn’t very high. I wanted the spotlights to stay a part of the image, even though they may not be offering too much. The light on the camera left of her head shows how a little punch from the spotlight in the dining room can help add some ‘texture’ to the shot.

A small contact sheet section of this shoot:

FOR THIS PHOTOGRAPH:
- one speedlight
- one stand
- tripod recommended

The shot of Bri near the shower is a great example of how to create a natural light look with some strobes, in this case only one strobe.

This is a large, walk-in shower in the condo we use when doing the Mexico workshops. The shot was taken late at night so there is no sunlight coming through the large block glass window to camera right. I had to create a feeling of that beautiful sunlight with my strobes.

Briana and the shower:

I took a speedlight and put it inside the shower with a medium shoot through umbrella and made some shots. They looked alright… but didn’t have the look of the light flooding in that window. So I took the bare strobe and placed it right inside the shower and blasted the walls with it. That huge lightsource nearly replicated the light that would be normally filling that shower on a beautiful Mexico morning.

I had Bri lean forward so there would be light flowing on the wall behind her head and then blocked by her body leaning against the moulding. The tungsten lights in the bath area added some warm fill and the shot ended up looking quite natural. I had seen this shot in my head from the first morning, so it was cool to make it happen… and it looked exactly like I had it my head.

FOR THIS PHOTOGRAPH:
- one speedlight
- one stand
- tripod recommended

Bri on the phone is a great example of finding a shot on the spur of the moment. She was doing her hair in the mirror there and the makeup lights all around the mirror were creating a wonderful light.

She turned her back to the mirror and all the light on her face went away. But I wanted to recreate that cool look of the mirror lights and the natural ambiance of the dressing room.

Directly in front of Briana, to camera left, is a walkin closet. It is painted white. Perfect. I took a speedlight and placed it in the closet. Aiming it at the back wall provided a very large, soft light source coming out the double doors of the closet.

I metered the lights at ISO 800, and found a shutter speed that placed them at f-4. I made sure the light coming out of the closet was f 2.8 and shot at that exposure. This made the makeup lights brighter. And that gave the shot a sense of reality. If the light in front had been brighter, then it would not have made sense and it would have looked ‘lit’… which is what I wasn’t looking for.

EDIT:
I was asked about some Photoshop work on the images. I will explain below.

First off, I use Tony Kuyper’s excellent Luminosity Masks religiously. Love them. Get them, tip him well. There is a hell of a lot of work in them… and they will make your work stand out.

Here is the image on left as it came out of the camera RAW – no manipulation.

First, you can see my markup… simple, just a reminder of the thoughts I have as editing.

Here is what I did.

1. Checked the levels pallet and moved a little darker.
2. Retouched any skin anomalies.
3. Smoothed skin by making a new layer, blending it with Softlight, backing opacity off to 30% and adding Gaussian Blur at 10
4. Added a layer of 50% gray and used soft brush at 10% to gently paint in shadow and highlights: black for shadow and white for highlights.
5. Copied that layer to a new layer and changed blend mode to Overlay. Adjusted opacity to what I liked.
6. Applied TK’s “Light” mask and adjusted a slight ‘S’ Curve effectively raising the contrast in the lighter areas without modifying the shadows.
7. Applied TK’s “Dark” mask and adjusted a tighter ‘S’ creating contrast in the shadows. This helped bring the texture out of the wall and stone.
8. Applied TK’s “Narrow MidTone” mask and raised the midtones across middle and light nodes. This made the image more ‘airy’ in the middle tones.
9. Applied sharpening to blue channel and overall at 200 / .3 / 4

And closed the image. This hardly took more than a few minutes, but the result is what I was looking for… a contrast that looks real, with tones and color that are rich as well

Join us after the weekend for a special post on Light Meters.

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I have been working on a personal project, shooting some of the old mining towns in Eastern/Central Arizona. Sometimes I shoot natural light and sometimes I like to pull out my speedlights for a little drama.

Let’s take a look at some easy ways to add a sense of lighting drama with a single speedlight. I use a 430EZ on a tethered hotshoe cord. I could use wireless remotes, and sometimes do, but the tether keeps me working within a set of limits that I like for this kind of shoot.

The tether means it fires every time, and there isn’t a bunch of things hanging off of the strobe or extending it. Anyway, if it wasn’t actually attached to my camera I would probably lose it.

We are shooting the towns of Superior, Miami and Hayden which are just east of Phoenix about an hour or so. They are very damaged towns, and I want to document where they are, because I really don’t know if they will make it or not.

We are working on Friday’s tech sheet now, and it will be really cool so check back.

Now, on to some fun, and easy ways to use your flash to pop the natural landscape and make some cool shots. If you want to try some shots like this, all you need is a camera and a flash that can be fired off camera… not on the hotshoe, but from another place. I handhold mine a lot.

For the shot below I used a home made Beauty Dish. You can see it in action on the video here. It is made from an IKEA light fixture and I compliment my friend Megan for making it for me. I have adjusted it a little, but it is her basic design.

With a 430 stuck in the back of it, I can get pretty good up-close flash power. I think it takes about a stop and a half off the light, so I do have to crank it up a notch. On the other hand, I am using it on a tethered Canon cable from hot shoe to flash. This is a totally manual configuration as the strobe is not a digital era strobe. Still connects for manual though and that is all I need.

What I love about this light is in close the highlights are glossy, smooth and the fall off is quick and edgy. This cactus was standing in the bright overcast day, so I decided to underexpose the background with shutter speed and let the flash ‘feature’ the thorns and lines of the cactus.

Shutter speed is the controlling factor for the daylight when you are shooting outside. I use some basic knowledge of the light (f16 rule in bright sun, dropping a stop and a half under overcast) and the basic knowledge of what the strobe is giving at the settings I use. I know that the beauty dish at about 18″ at 1/8 power is going to give me around f16… so I can make quick, knowledgeable decisions on the run… without necessarily pulling out my trusty Minolta meter. This cactus is in ‘downtown’ superior.

Jerry and I were hiking around Miami when I spotted this stick leaning up against the wall. I thought there may be an image there… stairs are red, sign is sort of strange out in that environment, light is bouncing back on the stairs, and the patina of the wall was pretty cool. I took a few natural light images and they looked… well, boring.

I decided to add a little wink of flash coming from the opposite side of the sun to add some drama to the scene. Setting the flash on 1/32. I aimed it high and down on the side of the cactus. I kept the shutterspeed/f-stop at the correct point to expose the sunlit side correctly, but adding that little wink of light, the highlight on the stick and the shadow going opposite of the light to the left side of the image made the shot work for me.

This prickly pear cactus was outside an old, run down building in the business district of Miami, Arizona. The sun was coming from camera left a little over my shoulder and casting a lot of shadows. The natural light shot looked like a cactus in the bright sun. Not much drama.

I knew if I could use the spires of the tall trees, the dramatic sky and the three Prickly Pears, I may get something more than a cactus shot. Taking the strobe to 1/16 power, it is literally about 16″ inches over my head. At the exposure I used, it matches the sun for power… but I quickened the shutter speed a stop and that gave me the dramatic dark sky and mysterious spires. I couldn’t really see through the camera lens as it is buried deep in the cactus, but a few ‘chimps’ and I kinda knew where to place the lens. I am using a bare Canon 430 here.

Shooting at 1/16, 1/32 power is great as well… it is plenty of power, I only have about 28″ of reach with that tether, so it keeps me close. And the flash recycles very, very quickly.

The Agave plants were at the edge of a parking lot in Hayden, Arizona. I looked at the dramatic sky and all those power lines and knew I had a shot. The sun was coming from camera left, slightly backlighting the Agave and the interesting shapes. Lots of wacky shadows made the shot not work… I decided to bring out the beauty dish and get it in close.

I placed the beauty dish right over the top of the Agave and brought it in close. Putting the camera into the cactus and aiming up, I was able to compose after a shot or two. Then it was a matter of moving the beauty dish around to try and get some interesting shadows, and smooth light on the spires. Agave are very accommodating to photographers I have found.

One of the most important things you can practice is knowing your f-stop / shutter speed correlations and be able to do them quickly in your head. For instance, I knew that 1/100 at f-16 would be the natural light shot, so changing the shutter speed to 1/160 would darken the sky about a 2/3 stop. The sun shining on the lamp would be slightly darker, but it would still be very bright compared to the slightly underexposed background… still at f-16. The strobe isn’t controlled by the shutter speed, and I brought it in to the distance to give me f-16. The strobe lit side is slightly brighter than the sun lit side, and that is what makes the image have some drama.

Our last shot is of a lamp post in Miami, Arizona. the sun was over my right shoulder and it simply had a side lit shot going on the lamp. I have shot these lamps for about two dozen years, so nothing new there.

I did notice how the light was bright on one side of the wash below and dark on the right side. Deciding to bring in the bare Canon 430 to the shadow side gave the lamp a kind of ethereal light. It took only a single shot to chimp it in and I took vertical and horizontals of it.

For these shots I used a Canon 400D with a kit lens. My beloved 20-35MML is still in the shop. I am not crazy about this kit lens, but it doesn’t totally suck at the wide angle setting.

Take a strobe with you next time you go for a walk. And use to the side, from above, and from any angle you can, to create something that wasn’t seen before.

Thanks for dropping by Lighting Essentials. A Place for Photographers. And if you are interested in doing a Lighting Essentials Workshop, check out the workshop page here: Learn to Light

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Our first Tech Sheet of 2009 is kinda fun. I have been working on getting a client to approve a project I want to do and they did over the holidays. It will be a series of images of athletes and artists in environments that may not be their regular habitat.

This image of an ice skater in the desert was done as a test. Before I embark on shooting the images I want to make sure everyone is on the same page as far as style and concept. Having a daughter who is a high level ice skater made the choice of model easy.

I had scouted a great location last weekend and when I got to it for the shoot, it had been fenced off. It was a dry river bottom and I had some other plans for the shot that would work well in the sand. But getting the kids together with a time frame that worked meant that I had to do the shot in another spot.

I found a road leading right to the setting sun and decided to use it as a graphic element in the shot. The three pieces of the shot then were the desert road, the setting sun and the subject – an ice skater in the desert.

As a professional photographer, one of the things that keep us sharp and prepared is being familiar with the tools and the practice of our art. And that helps so much when undertaking a new assignment. This tech sheet is based on a test that I am doing for a client whom I pitched a month ago for a set of portraits. I have the job and wanted to produce an initial shot for a point of reference as we continue on the quarter long shoot schedule.

It showed the client my direction and I got buy-in for the concept of athletes and artists in areas that are incongruous to their sports. In this case, ice skaters in the desert.

FOR THIS PORTRAIT:
- two speedlights ( am using a 550 and 430 Canon)
- one small/medium beauty dish (small umbrella optional)
- a boom for the main light
- a medium stand for the back light
- tripod optional

FLARE:: I wanted some flare to make the shot warm and add some texture to it. Working with flare can be a little tricky. Good lense make it easier, but this kit lens did a pretty fair job with it in this case.

Finding an old dirt road south of Phoenix near the town of Maricopa, I then scouted a direction that would place the sun directly down the road. The sandy two lane path had no marks or footprints on it and I wanted it to remain that way so I was very careful to walk on the perimeter of it to get the shot lined up.

The scene as I started working on it.

The shots above show the road as I worked to find the angle that would place the sun directly behind them and ‘down the road’ for the metaphorical shot.

Download our two page Tech Sheet on doing this kind of portrait here

Tech Sheet Download (PDF)

When having them approach the shoot space, I had them go down the road and come up in a very straight line. That made it easier to hide the footprints from the camera.

The set in this case is a fragile one. If someone walks out across it, the sand gets footprints and we have to move on down to another location. Not a big deal sometimes, but a shot killer other times. The sun moves really dang quick at this point of the day, so working carefully and smart is your best option.

Here is the setup for the shots. It only changed when I would move the side light in or out a bit dependent on having one or two girls in the shot. It was important to catch both girls legs from the back with that light.

You are in control not only of the shot and the lights, but the entire set. Keep it in your mind and in the mind of your team.

Below is are the lights we used for the shoot and includes the ‘test firing’ to make sure all were syncing correctly.

In these horizontal images you can see the play of the sand and how well the sun backlight adds to the texture of the shot. The camera is very low at this point and it can be quite a challenge to compose and focus with the flare coming in and filling that viewfinder.

I caught this little bit of flare and liked it right away. This one is by far the best. It highlights the skates and maybe helps make some sort of statement about the relationship a skater has to her skates… or maybe it’s just cool. Whatever works is also a good plan.

Notice how the road goes right back to the setting sun.

Here is a shot without flare for comparison

Working a set with delicate features, like sand, means taking extra precautions to keep it as clean as possible. A bunch of footprints in the sand here would have been a disaster for the retouching time.

The shot of the setup shows how important a boom is when working with lights. I nearly always have a boom or two when doing a shot. I like the stands to be out of the way and I can use the booms to easily position the lights where I want them.

There is additional Photoshop information on the tech sheet downloadable file. Enjoy.
Tech Sheet Download (PDF)

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Today’s tech sheet looks at using two speedlights for a dramatic headshot. We aren’t doing anything really special, although I did modify a Gary Fong diffuser to give me a round light instead of the oblong/square light that a normal speedlight gives off.

I wanted to add some flare to headshots I had planned with Briana, and I wanted to try to get them inside. We had gone outside to get some flare and it worked pretty well. (In an upcoming post there will be more on that shoot.) But doing it in the studio with studio strobes would be tricky. I decided on the speedlights for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to shoot at a wide aperture and two, I wanted to do something a little different than pulling out the big guns.

Before we start out, a reminder on upcoming workshops, some cool previous posts, and of course a link to our tech sheet area which is growing pretty well. Go ahead and print them out. They will really make a nice set of tutorials for your bag.

On to this weeks Tech Sheet:

Working with Speedlights has advantages and disadvantages. Lets look at some of the advantages that using the two speedlights gave this shoot:

They are able to give just a wink of light to allow me to shoot at the minimum aperture I wanted, they are fast to set up, and at low power they recycle immediately. The disadvantages are the squared off light pattern they produce and the harshness of the bare light. (NOTE: You can download your Tech Sheet in PDF form here.)

We addressed both of these in this shoot.

I modified the Gary Fong diffuser by attaching a round reflector from an old Sunpack strobe that has long since bit the dust. That reflector rounds off the light pretty well and also gives it some parabolic tendencies although it really isn’t a parabolic reflector. A true parabolic has the bulb in the space of the reflector where this one does not.

The harshness is something that I and the model work with from a position choice. Keeping the face into the axis of the light mitigates the shadows on the nose and lips. If the model turns away from the light, there are more shadows, and if she keeps her face toward the light there are less shadows. I work with great models who know and understand what I want, so telling Bri to keep into the speedlight was all it took. She wrote a great little article on models working with the light here.

Here is one of the shots we did. You can see the flare from the back coming through her hair. I was really happy when I saw how it was working as that was exactly the look I wanted.

Working with speedlights have their own challenges: For one thing, there is no modeling light.

Not having modeling lights is a little tricky, and focusing my 100mm Canon was challenging at first… man that thing was hunting focus like crazy. I finally added a little lamp light to help it along. The model is essentially working in the dark and the image doesn’t look all that cool when the strobes aren’t firing. But, a quick check and you know you have it.

Having the round light also gave me a nice shape to the light as it fell off. Remember that the light is in a pretty close position to the model, so it is not spreading the light for her full length, but falling off around midsection.

This shot shows the falloff pretty well. Notice the soft edge to it.

The soft edge to the falloff is due to the parabolic effect of the speedlight modified with a round reflector.

One of the important things is working the model toward the light. Keeping that axis of her face and the light close will keep the harsh shadows on the nose and lips to a minimum. Here are some contact sheets so you can watch as Briana works her face toward the light, but keeps plenty of other dynamics in play so it doesn’t end up looking static.

Using her body and shoulders to advantage, Briana works her face toward the light for a more pleasing result.

This contact sheet shows what happens when the flare gets too strong.

As I move around the set, the angle would change with the back light and the camera. Occasionally, as you notice above, the flare would be too much from the exposed flash. I will always try to push it to the limit, so there are times when it completely obliterates the image.

I shoot tethered for most of my studio work and just recently got a MacBook for going on location – it’s smaller and easier to pack. I cannot stress how much shooting tethered can make your shooting go easier. Once you try it, going back to mere ‘chimping’ seems so, well, ancient.

One of my favorite shots from this session so far (I still am looking and processing, a task that I spread over a few months usually) is this one. Just enough flare to make it work and a great angle/gesture from Briana.

One of my favorites

I hope you all like the tech sheets and keep them to help give you ideas for shooting on your own.

Remember to get your tech sheet (PDF) here and start your collection. There will be at least 26 next year so start now or play catch up then.

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A simple product shot can sometimes present a lot of challenges for the photographer not used to thinking about reflected specular lighting. In this shot, the product is practically lit with specular reflection. There is very little direct light on the Hard Drive case, rather we have built an environment where the unit is simply reflecting all that surrounds it with our control to make it look fantastic.

This is our newest Tech Sheet and it is three pages long. I have put it into a PDF for printing and working with. I hope anyone who would like to work on something like this shot finds it helpful.

You will need a scrim and boom for your speedlight or a softbox for your strobe. I used a strip light of 48 x 18, but you can use a smaller one for similar results. Four small sheets of fome core will also be of use, minimum 24 x 18 or a little larger. I find that stands, clamps, and booms come in to great use when working with the finesse that a shot like this requires. A second light for the background can be added for more interest.

You should have at least 4 feet behind your product so that the spray light can be used without having it bleed back on the product.

Before we jump on over, I am glad to announce that the workshops for the first part of next year are being set up now. You can see the list here. If you are thinking about hosting one, let me know as soon as possible so we can get it set up. There is also a new post at LE Magazine on Shooting For Free, a subject that David Hobby mentioned recently in a blog post and got a lot of people talking pro and con. My take here.

Let’s look at the item itself. It has a brushed aluminum front panel that is a full curve facing camera, an aluminum base and a flat side panel with etched logo. Download printable Tech Sheet here (PDF).

Our Tech Sheet this week is three pages in PDF form.

Download Here

We of course want to see all of that, and that means lighting control. You will see the well rounded front panel, an side panel that needs to be evenly lit and the etched logo that should be visible in our final shot. I want a cleanly let front panel, some edge lights for drama and separation and the unit should look like it is important… and worth the hundred bucks or so it would cost.

While this is a fairly easy shot to do, it does require careful placement of light and fill/reflector cards to provide smooth, even light that has dimension to it. We want to see the curves as they are one of the defining elements of this design, and curves mean a wide reaching reflection.

Placement in the frame is also very important and we want to make the item the “hero” of this ad or
catalog shot. One way to do that is to shoot slightly “up” at the item creating a “towering” presence. It is also important in this shot that we don’t show the table that it is sitting on as that would make it more mundane and it would appear as a hard drive sitting on a table… boring.

Below you can see how important the placement of the overhead light is. We want it to be subtle and not overpowering in the final shot. We will be using the natural reflectiveness of the item to build the light around.

Here are some shots of the vertical alignment of the light. The camera aimed at an oblique angle to the table and the hard drive sitting at a slight angle in order to show depth. I am using a wide angle lens here to help create a little drama in the shot. In the end, though, I was zoomed out a bit as the wide angle was too much.

You can see the basic setup. We have a large fill card in front of the unit and right up next to the camera lens. The cards you see on the table are creating the highlights on the sides of the unit. They are angled to slightly catch the light from the strip light above and become bright enough to be reflected by the units curves and materials right back into the lens… soft, wide, liquid specular highlights.

Putting a fill card angled to reflect light back to the side of the unit added a clean wide specular down the side, also showing the logo as an embossed highlight. That was easy.

We added a “spray” light to the background by placing a head with a small parabolic reflector directly opposite the lens and right against the wall… in this case it is only about 4” from the wall. I stand and sight the lens to see the light.

This spray can be controlled by moving it closer to the wall, changing the power settings or putting some type of diffusion over the head.

I tried some long exposures to find the one that would let the light of the unit shine and we went with that exposure for shutterspeed, and the flash exposure for f-stop. In this shot it was f-11 at ISO 100 at 1 second. The 1 second exposure was for the light to burn in… sometimes called dragging the shutter.

Final setup shows the added fill card on camera right. It took the dark area to the right of the previous image front plate and cancelled it out with a soft reflected highlight that really offset the bright highlight on the rim of the front plate. Looking carefully at the shots below you can see the differences.

We decided a blue gel would nicely set off the blue light inside the unit so a double set of blue gels were added to the front of the spray light and clamped in place. The modeling light was then turned off to prevent heat build up in the reflector.

The back light was tuned a bit by moving it in and away from the wall. I checked how it looked by shooting without the top light on. That gave me a silhouette against the background. Once I got it in the correct final position I made sure the unit was clean and made my exposures, bracketing by third stops. I always shoot in RAW by the way.

On the Tech Sheet you will find some information on the Photoshop work we did.

I hope you enjoyed this high tech product shot using only one light for the product itself. Here is one last shot of the product as it was finished.

Download printable Tech Sheet here (PDF).

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This weeks Tech Sheet features one of my favorite portrait techniques. In this shot I am using it as a bright, poppy front light with a very pronounced back “spray” light. It is an easy setup with lots of room for customization and personalization. It can be done with studio strobes as well as speedlights and would be appropriate in many settings.
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Before we continue on, I want to remind everyone that next Monday, November 24th, we will start the listing of next years workshops. We will start in Phoenix in January, then off to the Bahamas, Sacramento, Detroit, Tampa, Denver, Dallas, New York and Washington DC. We have more dates to announce and we are always looking for hosts in cities we haven’t booked yet. If you are interested in hosting a workshop, let me know in the contact area of the site.

(BTW… I am thinking about doing some live broadcasts… say, every weekend do a free livecast of something or a shoot. Do you all think that would be a good thing or should I simply video it and post it. I like the vidcast thing because we can have a dialogue while it is happening. Thoughts?)

Now on to the portrait lighting Tech Sheet for November 21, 2009.

The key to this light is keeping the umbrella in close, in bounce position, to get plenty of natural wrap fill from the parabolic shape of the umbrella. Let’s take a closer look at how this light can be used without fill cards.

In this image we can see how well the light covers Briana and seems to wrap all around her even without a fill.

You can see how well the light wraps in this close up portrait.

In the image above you can see how the light plays soft and yet with a pop that keeps the skin bright and clean. You can also notice how the closeness of the umbrella creates light that falls off quickly as it moves away from the source (ISL). The back shoulder is considerably darker than the front of the image because it is farther away from the light source. This also makes the image a little more dramatic.

Let’s take a look at the tech sheet:
To download it and print it, use your right mouse button and “Save Link As”.

Please download and print the tech sheet for your files.

The size of the umbrella in this shot can make all the difference in how the skin looks and how poppy the light can get. I am using a 60 inch umbrella at 4 feet. In this shot I am using 400 WS heads… one in the umbrella and one on the backlight stand. The reflector that is in the umbrella allows for maximum coverage of the umbrella and that translates into a very even and ‘clean’ light onto the model’s face.

This image shows the model in position, 8 feet from the wall behind her. The spray light is plainly visible from this angle and you can see how close it is to the wall. This closeness chokes the light off and forces it to quickly dissipate as it leaves the close area of the reflector. Placing this light at the same angle as the camera will put the circle of light in the middle of your image. You must also be careful in that it gets placed in a spot that is not seen by the camera. Your model will probably be able to hide the strobe head behind her.

Let’s take a look at what it looks like from camera angle:

Notice the careful placement of the umbrella so it is in the center between the camera and the backlight.

Keeping the main light on the vertical axis of the camera means that there is very little shadow provided and also that the light wraps evenly around the model. The spray light in the back can be centered or placed where ever in the background the photographer wants by moving shooting position slightly to each side. Too much movement could reveal the light, so be careful.

Here is an alternate shot:

We have the wind machine off for this image

When taking the reading with a flash meter I place the meter against the wall at the spot right above the models shoulder. I make the choices at that point on how bright or dark I want the spray to be and adjust from there. For a subtle look have it match and for drama make it one over the main. If you are chimping, make sure that the light isn’t too flat.

Let’s look at the Photoshop work for this image now. After the normal skin retouching and basic editing the image is ready for the final tweaking. Here is where it gets pretty interesting. After the normal processes which can be a local skin repair or as elaborate as recalling several layers, we have an image that looks pretty good, but we can make it look better.

I rarely process an image these days without using Tony Kuyper’s amazing Luminance Masks. They are available here and Tony asks for a donation to keep him working on them. Please let him know you were recommended by Lighting Essentials.

Here is the image with the basic masks turned off:

Not bad, but a little flat to my taste. I add a layer mask action of “light” and create a gentle “S” curve… very gentle… on the curves adjustment layer that the action. Small adjustments are the best so be judicious in their use. With this mask only the light pixels are chosen, added to the curves adjustment and then can be made to be lighter or darker without touching the pixels that are not in the lightest categories. In other words, we can start to add contrast without affecting the other parts of the image.

Now we will add the ‘dark’ mask with the action. This chooses the dark pixels and I make a gently curved ‘S’ on the channel layer. Again small movements can be a large change so watch your image very carefully and don’t go overboard with the changes.

Adding the dark luminance mask to the image

Below is the group shot with this medium layer mask turned on. This layer has a little bigger movement allowed because , but still watch that image critically to see the final adjustment layer doesn’t make changes that are inappropriate. I do the medium masks last.

I use the narrow mid-tones to tweak the skin tones

At the end I add a layer of 50% gray, blend mode to either soft light or overlay and set my brush opacity to around 8%. Using white I gently add to the highlights and with black I can add to the darker tones. This is a very small move, so be gentle with what you do.

Keep your opacity at no more than 10% so you can gently add highlights and shadows into the image.

Here is the final image with the tweaks in place:

Photoshop is used to compliment the Lighting

For fun I am including this small section of images in a “contact sheet” form so you can see the work that Briana did on this shoot. These are unedited and right out of the camera in sequence. Notice how she works toward the camera in each image… from keeping an ‘open’ chest to focusing the eyes right into the lens.

Briana at work on Lighting Essentials

Assignment:

1. Using a similar setup do an environmental portrait of someone in a situation where the backlight is not on a wall.

2. Find a very dramatic top for your model and go wild with the makeup. Add a shiny board under her chest for a very dramatic bright light.

3. Try to make the spray light very soft and almost imperceptible. You may have to add a little diffusion to a very low powered strobe to keep it down in the lower register, but give it a go.

Thanks for visiting Lighting Essentials. Let us know what you think of these tech sheets.

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We are so excited about the new series we are starting… the “Tech Sheet” series. We will do one every two weeks and they will be uploaded on the first Friday and the third Friday of each month. Those months with an extra Friday will find an extra Tech Sheet.

The “Tech Sheets” will have lots of information breaking down one shot. We have jewelry, still life, product, fashion, glamor, headshots and more coming. We will cover studio and location. This first Tech Sheet is a breakdown of an image, and the Photoshop used, that we did for a demonstration at the Houston workshop in November 2008.

Nicole was ready to jump and the studio had these two cool windows with clouds outside. It seemed custom made for a wide angle shot, and the exposed brick was an added kick, ya know!

Before we get to it, we still have a few openings in the Cleveland workshop coming up November 15 – 16, 2008. Get on over and sign up if you can get to the area to join us.

And don’t forget the free wallpaper for November available here.

Let’s take a look at the tech sheet here:
Please feel free to download it and print it out. (right click and “Save Link As”)

Feel free to download and print this to keep for your files.

The use of one diffused hard light can create a pretty cool image. I try not to get the light too far off of camera axis though, maybe a max of 20% either side. I prefer not to have large shadows from noses and lips and cheeks so I keep the light working toward my model and my model toward my light.

To keep it from looking “on-camera” I kept the light high and the camera very low. I actually am not looking through the viewfinder as the camera is right on the floor slightly tilted up. I determined that angle by a couple of tests. I also shot the windows without the strobe going off to determine the correct exposure of the image. F-16 at 1/100 seemed to give me the best look at the clouds through the window (why not… f-16 rule and all).

Test one for angle:

Test two had her jumping to make sure she didn’t jump out of the frame:

You can see that she is throwing her head too far back for the image to work. I had her look down at me for the next series of jumps. I also determined that I had enough angle to make sure she and the floor were in the shot from that distance. Time to shoot a few frames.

IMPORTANT LIGHTING NOTE: I have the strobe on a boom and it is being held by a workshop attendee. While the basic point of the light is on axis, I did ask him to watch her face and correct the light slightly to match the axis of her face. This means the light would slide a little to left or right as she would jump to keep the light directly on her face.

And here is the image we created:

You can see how we did it on the tech sheet, but let’s take a little time and look at the Photoshop work we did. I strive to get it right in the camera, so there isn’t a lot of extra work done on this image. You can feel free to do whatever you want in Photoshop though, it’s all good with me.

First I knew that the shadow area was going to be a little dark so I processed a lighter version of the same Raw file that I had selected. I added a full stop to it and processed. That gave me two JPEGS… one at exposure and one a stop over. I held the shift key down and moved the normal image over the darker image.

You can see the lighter processed image on the left. holding the shift key down I dragged the image from the right over the image on the left.

I then added a layer mask to the top layer and gently exposed the lighter image where her boots and the wall was. I use a brush at 10% so that I can slowly get to what I want instead of just ripping it open.

After that work, I add a layer of 50% gray and using a soft brush, white, at 7% paint in some highlights and lightened areas. Face a little, jacket, black dress, highlights on boots and a few areas of bricks. To make some of the lighter areas darker, I paint on that layer with black at 7%. It is very important to just add it a little at a time… building to what you want instead of just banging it out.

Using a layer mask that is only applied to the lightest pixels, I open the highs up a slight bit. I use Tony Kuypers masks for doing this. You can see how gentle the curve adjustment is. I made a composite layer above the others to do this work on.

A slight curve adjustment added to only the brightest levels of pixes makes a huge difference in the normally flat digital image.

Here is the image with all of the adjustment layers added turned off:

You can see that the three layers for light, dark and midtone are off. The image looks fine, but it can look better.

Here you can see how the image looks with the three layer masks turned on.

You can see the difference in the image with the three layers turned on.

Assignment:

Do a shot with a single hard light. Add some diffusion to get a softer edge, but keep the light very ‘poppy’ and bright. Try not to get too many shadows by keeping the light high and close to camera axis. You can place the images at my Lighting Essentials Group at Flickr here. We don’t have prizes yet, but we are working on something cool. Title it November LETS Assignment 1.

I hope you enjoy these. They are really going to be fun.

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