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.