A portrait in Gorinchem

Lately I have had little time to work on my blogs, but I have half an hour to spare now....

Yesterday my brother and I both didn't have to work so we agreed for a small stroll in the historic town of Gorinchem, which I only know from the water side, as we sail by a couple of times every year. Up till now I could never see the real beauty of the city.

Instead of making a lot of city photo's we chatted most of the time, but we found some time to make a nice portrait. My brother is the one in his family who takes the photos and complained he hardly has any pictures of himself. Well, I can help out with that...

We found a calm spot on the medieval walls with trees and a footpath in the distance. I mounted my flash in one of the tree branches with my new gorilla-pod, a half CTO gel on it, and shoot away under the trees and a clear blue sky behind them. In fact all photos are made with off-camera flash.

The rather harsh shadows may tell you that I did not use a softbox or shoot-through umbrella, to keep light output of the speedlite high. With a little shade at hand my Metz 58 held itself well and produced these nice shots without too much effort.

Learning points: keep an eye on the ever changing background: e.g. dogs, people, etc.

Equipment list: Canon 450D with a no-brand battery, Canon 85mm/F1.8, Hoya polarizing filter, Yongnuo remote trigger.
And remember to keep up your shutter speed! (not slower than 1/100s, but not faster than 1/200 due to the sync speed because we use flash without high speed sync capabilities).

Sometimes I wonder if the person in the pictures and I are related after all... or do you see any physical resemblance?

Back-lit by the sun (left) and front-lit by the flash (right). Note the nice highlights on the shoulders. Don't note the leg of the woman under the elbow. Don't note the crop which is too tight...

Tough guy.
Is that a phone in his hand?

Nicely shot from below, room for him to watch. I like.

Bathrooms

I have got a difficult assignment this time. I thought it would not be too hard, but I was wrong: photographing bathrooms is quite a task, even while I prepared myself well I thought. Got the 24mm tilt-and-shift lens from Canon, my good old tripod, a speedlite (and some) with a white shoot-through umbrella and a stylist.

This kitchen sink manufacturer close to my town Eindhoven added bath room sinks in their assortment, and needed photos for the salesmen's Ipads, pronto. So here I was.

So I did prepare myself well, brought all my stuff and set everything up. The shoot-through umbrella is required for nice even light, supposedly coming from a window, nicely spread through the showroom. Yes, showroom, not a studio. We don't want a more directional light than the umbrella, like from a small softbox to make it more believable. (1-0 for Marc).

Next to that I brought the Canon 24mm TS lens. Unfortunately I could not get the perfect performance of the version 2, but the version 1 is OK as well. Note that the version 1 does not let you rotate the lens in such a way that you can tilt in one way and shift in the other, like the version 2 does. In my setups today, this is no problem. Both in portrait and landscape  you can shift up and down, to prevent converting lines of the furniture, while tilting from left to right, keeping the focal plane parallel to the walls when shooting from an angle, which I did.  (2-0)

Now some test shooting. Setup the camera in such a way that you can look into the sinks and see the bottom (customer requirement). Shift it right and tilt it right, as described above. Now by doing this with a 24 mm lens you will get some distortions in your photos, especially when photographing straight times such as modern sinks and cabinets. This is something you cannot (without compromises) change during shooting, or post processing (see third image below for a good example). A better solution would be to use a longer lens, and step back. Well, I did not have another TS lens, and the space in the showroom was limited. (2-1). In the end I think the results look very acceptable, but yes, there is room for improvement.

When you make photos of items of one color, like white in this case, make sure you check that every plane is differently lit, to be able to tell the shape of the item. When you look at the pictures, you will see what I mean - some planes are a bit darker, some are whiter. And never let two planes that come together have exacly the same value. (3-1)

I have to say that the first images were the hardest. You would agree of course, but these were the hardest startup up till now for a photoshoot. Fortunately we finished everything on time. Well... the photoshoot that is. The photoshop-time also consumed quite some time. In the end the customer was happy - that's what it is all about.

So what do I prefer? People or products?
Well, both are cool, as long as I don't work all alone, but portraiture is still my number one.

Model shoot in a Philips building

Last Saturday I organized a photo walk for some of my friends in Eindhoven. Because of the assignment, make an environmental portrait WITH implemening one or more well known composition rules, we rented a model. We were lucky we had one with a 'pro' expression and dito drive.

These are some of my photos. For photos of my fellow photographers that day, see this link to the photo club blog (in dutch) Komt Dat Schot.

Liquid

Today I saw some nice water sculptures on the internet, and I though it would be nice to experiment with photographing water (or liquids). As a complete beginner in this area I thought that the easiest way to get some decent shots is not to make it too complex. For this kind of work I figured that I would need a macro-lens, which I don't have. I tried to make some shots with my Canon 450D with my 85mm F/1.8 with a flash attached (Canon 430EXII), handheld, while the water was running slowly (can I say that this way in English?). I took some shots and the results where quite good, althoug not pin sharp. Well, I mean that only the water droplets are not pin sharp, the rest is of the photo is.

I looked back on the internet how to get those crispy sharp shots, and this is it: The flash duration must be extremely short, and  if you know your flash (speedlite) you know that the lower the power, the shorter the flash. So... reduced the power to the minimum of my two Metz 58's (1/256th), made my flashes remotely controlled.

Also I found my 50mm F/1.8 with my 250D closeup filter. I used this combination on my 5Dmk2 for even higher quality. Mounted everyting on a tripod, placed it in the bathroom sink, and from there it was easy. Focus carefully (manual), ISO100, 1/250s, F/8, 2x Metz 58 on 1/256s, 2x Yongnuo CRT301 remote triggers. Make sure the light in the bathroom is off, to be able to freeze all the action with the flash light.
A carefull reader would see that I use 1/250s with flash. This results in a black bar on the left of the mages. This is all cropped out in post.

Here the final result.

Composition practice (or: painting with light)

To improve my Photoshop skills I gave myself the assignment to make a composition of different photos and make it into one. Normally I only use Photoshop to solve some problems and not to improve or even create a new photo with. Lately I notice many fellow photographers expect that using a computer to create a new image will become more and more important. For me good reason to start playing...

Ingredients:

• DSLR (camera)
• Wide angle lens (e.g. 35mm)
• Tripod
• Cable release (couldn't find it in my big box of small photo-accessories, so: not with me)
• Flash + remote control + extra batteries
• Colored gels to put over the flash
• White shoot-through umbrella
• Model (=car)
• Location (=industrial area in Eindhoven, next to the car-wash)

Instructions

• Wait for the late afternoon (early February in the Netherlands 16.00h is about OK).
• Wipe the snow of your car and throw your gear in the back (your photogear I mean).
• Drive to the car wash and wait your turn.
• Clean your car, thoroughly (I forgot the last part).
• Position your car at the supermarket parking lot and find a nice angle. 
• NOtice that at 16.00h the supermarkte opens (it's a Sunday) and the parking lot fills COMPLETELY.
• Find another spot where no-one is WITHOUT spoiling your clean car with snow and salt. (drive slowly)
• Position your car and find a nice angle to shoot the car from.
• Put the camera on the tripod and DON'T move it anymore until you are finised.
• THINK what you want to accomplish and take shots.
• Merge all shots in Photoshop to a nice picture.

I thought it would be nice to combine all kinds of light angles on the car and the surroundings and then combine it.
These are some of the individual images I took. I made quite a lot of photos to be able to play with them at home. Better one too many than one short...

Then..
Go to Photoshop and put all photos in a different layer. Because the final image is not very large, I used the selection brush (A) to paint what I wanted to keep: the specially lit areas. The rest is erased with Eraser (E). This is done with every photo (about 20 or so). I used the 'lighten' function for the layer behavior adding light to the base layer. Finaly I picked the nicest sky, placed the moon and flattened all layers. Then finalized in Lightroom. (I can't help using Lightroom...)
And yes, the moon was really there. Sure, you're right. It was a little smaller. I used a 200mm to get it to this size.

Here is the final image.

Portrait of a couple

Last week I have made an environmental portrait of a couple in their house. The mission was that they both would be well portraited while you can see clearly that the images are taken in their own environment.

At first I thought of making a photo at the kitchen table with the bright kitchen blurred out in the back, but this did not seem to work: the lamp on the table was too low and the blurring out just didn't work. Also, it could be any kitchen, right?

Instead of the kitchen we found out that there was an old framed map on the wall, the birth place of the man of the house. This would be the focal point of this shoot. Later we walked through the house looking for other nice spots, and we found one in front of the cabinet and special paintings: the lady's preferred backdrop.

The lady of the house warned me even before the day of the shoot, that she never looks good on any photo: "...so prepare yourself, Marc." When I look at the results it paid out to take plenty of time to have a little chat with a cup of tea, and do the shoot. Staying friendly and patient paid out here. Very seriously: "I am surprised that you could make this photo with me so relaxed and nice....".

Business portrait Mr. De Leeuw

Another business portrait? Yes...
When I have finished the complete assignment (currently the photos are in review with the customer) I post the best pictures here.
 ==============

I remembered that this post wasn't finished...
Sorry te be brief: these are the results.

Fatima's LinkedIn portrait (and then some)

Fatima, an ex-collegue of mine from Philips, liked to have a LinkedIn portrait, taken at her house. Of course, being ex-collegues, we spent the first hour chatting, before I started making preparations for the photo shoot in the living room. This all went surprisingly quickly so I had some time left for some family portraits.

How it's done...
Most of it is not different than my other photoshoots, although I am experimenting a bit with shallow depth of field, which is even visible in the face. The eyes, or maybe better: the closest eye is always sharp, and therfore most of the face, but not all of the head. This gives it a nice touch, to my opinion at least.
Because most of the backgrounds in the room were quite cluttered, or not very usable for a formal portrait, I narrowed the frame quite a lot with a long lens. With the combination of a very shallow depth of field the background is hardly recognizable anymore. Generally I do prefer to show more of the backround as shown in the photos of mr. Lenssen (link) which I made recently.

Also I played with some gels on the secondary flash. The red wall becomes more intense when spot-lit with a full CTO (color temperature orange) gel, over the heads of the children.

John's dog Ziko

John wanted to have a nice portrait. Not of himself, but of his dog Ziko, an american Akita.
Of course I like to try new things so John and I had to work together closely to get a good smile of the dog.

Here some of the results.

How it's done....

First, the dog must be at ease, but this was not easy. You can tell by the open mouth that he was not completely comfortable, although the result is a nice picture. To have the owner present is a must. 

The first pictures are made in front of a white background with a large window on camera left, while a flash is on camera right to balance out the light. 

In the last photo I tried to have a 'natural' frame around him created by the wooden panels in the back. It looks like a classic old-school dog photo.

Family portrait with 18 persons

During the dark days of the winter here in the Netherlands our neighbor Victor asked me to take a family portrait for and with his parents. I made it difficult for myself to stick to outside portraiture because it was freezing cold. So first composing with jackets on, then take them off and make the picture quickly...

Here the result
 

 

How it's done...

Some things I took into consideration where 1. to photograph from a higher standpoint to get a better spread of people, 2. still I put everybody close to eachother 'grouped' in individual families and 3. used artificial light (flashes) to let them stand out of the background. A small aperture on a wide angle lens (35mm, F8) made the picture sharp from front to back. 

I needed some photoshop to blur the grass and background a bit. And also, to get 18 good expressions, I combined two almost identical images for this result.

Busines portrait mr. Lenssen of Smartgroup (Vught, Netherlands)

It has been some time that I posted some of my photography work. I hope to keep it up for the coming shoots, and I add some results of previous shoots.
On the 30th of December I photographed mr. Lenssen of Smartgroup, the director of this company. Initially he wanted to have two photos: one for his social network pages like LindedIn, and one for general usaged on websites or publications, but when I presented the results of the shoot he wanted to have six.

Here some of the results.

 Mr. Lenssen with some of his artistic creations on the table.

 Casual, comfortable...

 Business....

Artistic background...


How it's done...
I relied mostly on my 50mm/F1.8 on my FF camera to get some of the background in the frame: THE most important added element of a business/environmental portrait. Because of its relative wide field of view I used some large apertures like F2.8 to F4 instead of the safe setting of F8 for longer focal lengths. Now I could blur the background slightly but not too much, so it is still well recognizable. A longer focal length like 70 to 200mm would isolate the head too much from the background, at least to my taste. The view is then both too narrow and too blurry.
Note the foreground-subject-background stack in the pictures, giving it a good sense of depth. One of the most important composition rules.
But don't forget rule number 1: the subject must be razor sharp.