Greetings from the studio.  Here is eNewsletter #5.  I hope the information in here is of interest to you.  All the best to you and your business.
    
               
      How I set up this photograph

 

enlarged photo from website

My assignment was to photograph this gentleman for a magazine article.  I was told that the photo did not have to relate in any way to the story.  "Just make it creative and dynamic" were my only instructions.

The photo shoot would take place in the building where he worked, a location that had too many white walls and not much else.  But that was OK.  I would select one of the white walls to act as a canvas, and use my lights as the paint.

We found our setting on the bottom floor, underneath a staircase that had an interestingly curved enclosure.  Not only would it frame our subject quite nicely, but it was something he could use to create some neat poses.  It meant some possibly uncomfortable body positioning for him, but he seemed game.

As for lighting the setup, I wanted a look that would really "pop".  To illuminate the background, I decided to go with a "hot light" (a device that holds a kind of super powered light bulb) rather than a strobe.  A strobe produces an intermittent light, but a "hot light" sends out a continuous beam, making it much easier to see its effect on an object.  I used the shutters, which are in front of the bulb, to shape the illumination, giving it a somewhat defined but still abstract look.  Then I moved the unit to a variety of positions until I found an effect I liked.  Also, the color mismatch between the "hot light" and the film's emulsion produced a great sunset-type tone.

A second light was readied to illuminate our subject, who was placed in a rough pose.  I thought contrasty and low-angled would be great, so I narrowed the beam and lowered the light stand.  I aimed the unit at a portion of his face and jacket.  This produced interesting patches of light on both, with the lit face gently receding to darkness.

We began shooting and varied the poses as we went along.  The only concern was that each new pose meant a change to the lighting setup.  But these were only minor alterations, and it all worked out quite well.


                                     What's new at the studio

I recently upgraded from Photoshop 5 to Photoshop 7.  What an awesome difference. After installing the software,  my plan was to check out some third-party books and begin learning Photoshop all over again, from the beginning.  I waded through a number of tomes and found two I can highly recommend:  Real World Photoshop 7 by Blatner & Fraser and Photoshop 7 Artistry by Haynes & Crumpler.  

Studying the books and playing with the software is helping me discover all sorts of new possibilities.  And it is reinforcing what I already know. It is a slow process that can keep me working late into the night, but it also is darn exciting.

I recently have been experimenting with density and saturation manipulations in Photoshop.  Here is an early result:

The above table has the shutter speeds and apertures usually found on a typical 35mm camera lens.  The top row shows the shutter speeds, left to right, from the fastest to the slowest. The bottom row shows the apertures, left to right, from the largest to the smallest. 

The neat relationship I mentioned is this:  Let us assume that your light meter reading for a particular shot shows a shutter speed of 1/60 at an aperture of f11.  But you decide that you want a faster shutter speed of 1/250.  Using the above table, you can easily determine your new aperture by moving along the aperture row in the same direction and to the same distance as you did on the shutter speed row.  Since you moved two spaces to the left to get from the shutter speed of 1/60 to the desired shutter speed of 1/250, you likewise move two spaces to the left to get from the aperture of f11 to f5.6, which is the new aperture setting.  This is called "Reciprocity".  In the next eNewsletter, I will explain the advantages and disadvantages of using the various shutter speeds and aperture sizes.