The more I delve into this newly found passion I have the more light interests me, rather than photography. So I guess in essence, "playing with light" as I have titled REALLY just means "experimenting with light" and various light sources. Kudos to Robert Lee for his CLS skills (sorry I stole your idea mate!) and to Keren Dobia for her tuition!
So last weekend I played at the Argyle, as I do every Saturday night (come down, it's fun!) and thought I'd take a few shots of Phil Hudson, the "Godfather" (baha). SO I thought I'd try a few different things with 2 speedlights and a set of pocket wizards to see if I can make something a little more unique than your everyday run of the mill "DJ in a club" shot.
 |
| f/8.0 1/5 sec ISO1000 LENS: 10-24mm 3.5-5.8 POST: slight increase in blacks and saturation This is a trick Keren Dobia taught me, put your flashes on a high power, with slow shutter, then your ambient light will blur and the flash will freeze the shot! Here I twisted the camera while holding the zoom on the lens still to get a tunnel of rings. The flashes are two SB 900's used in CLS mode. Robert Lee is the MASTER of using two sometimes three speedlights to light up DJ's - say hi to him at Ivy on Saturday night! |
 |
| f/8.0 1/5 sec ISO1000 LENS: 10-24mm 3.5-5.8 POST: exposure increase by 1 stop. Increased blacks and saturation. Similar effect here, but instead of twisting the camera I just zoomed the lens in while taking the shot. |
 |
| f/8.0 1/5 sec ISO 1000 LENS: 10-24mm 3.5-5.8 POST: Increased blacks and clarity (a form of sharpening). Slight reduction in color temp. Here only one strobe has gone off, but I still like how the lights from the DJ console is almost blurring into his hands - as if he is one with the machine, hehe. If I brought it into photoshop I would cut him out with the desk and put in a motion blur in the background… just for kicks... |
 |
| f/3.5 1/40 sec ISO1000 LENS: 10-24mm 3.5-5.8 POST: B&W treatment by un-saturating image, majorly increasing black. Increased clarity, reduced midtones. I increased my shutter to 1/40th to try and stop the ambient light from blurring too much, but trying to keep some ambient it, kept the flash power fairly high to give Phil a nice glow around him. The flashes were also made much brighter due to the larger f-stop. The magic man! |
 |
| f/8.0 1/5 sec ISO 1000 Lens: 10-24mm 3.5-5.8 f/2.8 1/10sec ISO 200 Lens: 50mm 1.8 POST: (Image 1) Colour creative CP2 (Lightroom Preset) increased Blacks. (Image 2) Colour creative CP 3. Yes I do use the presets in Lightroom, in my opinion there is nothing wrong with that, I like the look of it, but I don't necessarily know how those colours are created (because I'm lazy and haven't figured it out yet.) Mind you if I had figures it out I wouldn't have used the preset! So image one isn't anything special in terms of lighting - just a SB 900 on the hotshoe - i just think it's an interesting angle. Image 2 however, I used 2 SB 900's as they were placed before and connected a pocketwizard to the flashes to get myself a good distance away. I pulled out the trusty old 50mm 1.8 to get in as much of the ambient light as I could combined with the flash power on Phil to highlight him in the shot. |
 |
| f/3.5 1/160 sec ISO 1000 Lens:10-24mm 3.5-5.6 f/5.0 1/6 sec ISO 200 Lens: 50mm 1.8 POST: (Image 1)Less saturation, increased black, slightly increased exposure and colour temp. (Image 2) B&W through un-saturating and a heavy amount of Black. This is my girlfriend's saxophone I'm borrowing until I get mine fixed - I placed both flashes under the glass top - it looks cool, my actual intention was to kill the ambient light so I would just get a silhouette of the sax, but this is cool. Must remember to keep my camera strap out of the shot haha! As for image 2, I definitely saw this shot before I made it. This was with one flash to his left, he was looking at his computer at the time, and I had my 50mm 1.8 on. I'm surprised how much ambient light I killed at 1/6 sec - just a fluke I guess lol. |
 |
| f/2.2 1/160 sec ISO 200 LENS: 50mm 1.8 POST: reduced colour temp. Increased black. I really wanted just the flashes to punch through without any ambient light, to illuminate the interaction right in-between the DJ and the audience right at the front of the booth. I've used these two images to show you the light placement - the bottom is attached to a pocket wizard so I can trigger the flash even while Phil is in my line of sight, an the above flash is being triggered in SU-4 mode - which instantaneously reacts to any flash that goes off. Both are set to 1/8th power pointing directly at him so I can try to wrap the light around Phil. |
 |
| f/2.2 1/160 sec ISO 200 LENS: 50mm 1.8 POST: Increased colour temp. slight increase to black. These two are cool shots, I deliberately warmed up these images to match the advertising with the Argyle, in case they would like to use it for their promotion. I love the interaction with the crowd. |
No comments:
Post a Comment