More adventures (and workshops) soon.

Alex

So in this edition of the story behind the photo I’m going to go through how on earth we came up with and shot the photos of the Minis below. It’s a bit of a crazy one and goes to show that not all wedding photos have to be boring!

Hit the link for all the details.

Where:
Down Hall Country House Hotel.

When:
Between Starters and Main course. Seriously.

Premise:
So Jon the groom loves Paul Smith. The whole wedding had a bit of a Paul Smith theme and the Minis were the centre piece. As far as I know there’s only about 4 in the country and Jon managed to organise 3 for the wedding (well 2 actually in the end; they broke one going over a speed bump the night before!). Anyway, Jon had told me about the Minis in advance and really wanted a different, unusual shot with them. I got my thinking hat on, I really didn’t want to do the standard “Bride and Groom stand in front of nicely parked cars” shot, I wanted something a bit different. The idea for this one came to me while laying in bed at night: why not use some motion blur and have the cars come flying past the couple?

How:

On the day of the wedding things were really tight. Jon and Elaine are Greek Cypriot and as such didn’t know how to have a small wedding! To top things off, the wedding location was a good 45 minute drive from the reception location at Down Hall. As anticipated we were really pushed for time after the ceremony and before dinner. The Minis were due to go home after arriving at the reception location but with a bit of negotiation I convinced them to stay until dinner. We got all the group shots out of the way and when the couple sat down for dinner I headed outside to set up the Mini shot.

I set up as in the diagram below:

Camera – D3 locked off on a tripod with a 24mm lens. Polarizer fitted, ISO 100, f/9, 1/13 second.

Backlight – Elinchrom Ranger Quadra with kill spill. Full Power

Front Light – Elinchrom Ranger RX Speed with Chimera X-Small softbox – centre baffle removed. Full Power.

Rather than putting the Bride/Groom in there straight away I set up first with my second photographer (the ever wonderful Chris Beaumont) in their places. We started the Minis off with a slow pass at 5mph so they could judge their distances and slowly build up the speed. Unfortuately we were shooting this with quite a lot of light around so I was having to really wack up the aperture and add a polarizer in order to get a decent shutter speed. All this meant the flashes were working overtime trying to add their kickers. It also meant we had to keep increasing the speed of the Minis in order to get the motion blur we needed. The Minis’ run up was quite short – probably about 100m – and it was on gravel. As we increased the speed up to about 30mph the noise and dust flying was quite terrific. Luckily I could see them coming but Chris with his back to them attested it was quite a brown trouser moment every time they went past. Once I was happy we’d got it all right and the Mini drivers were confident with the speeds/distances I went and got our couple.

This is where I have to admit to being very lucky. Jon and Elaine are a great and fearless couple. Where 90% of other people would have walked out and said, “You want me to do what??” before promply bashing me with a monopod, they simply said, “Sure, where do we stand?”. With that I put them in the middle of the photo and we began again slowly building up the speed of the Minis. The reason we did this again was because Elaine’s dress was a touch large and we really wanted to make sure the drivers knew their distances before the speeds got potentially fatal. Slowly we built up the speed and then added in the pose. The dip they’re in is really quite dramatic but I wanted to go for a pose which had impact and could rival the Minis. I choose this one since it looked great, was easy for them to hold and meant they didn’t have to look at what was coming!

And there we have it. It took a few attempts to get it right. I was shooting with rear curtain sync to try and capture the Minis’ motion blur. That made timing it all a touch tricky but after about 4 takes we got it. Jon and Elaine were truly marvelous, they didn’t get scared once and in fact complained a good deal less than Chris, my second, did! By the end we had gathered quite a crowd with Ushers and Bridesmaids alike looking on. I think they were all wondering what the hell this crazy photographer was doing, that was until they saw the photo!

Things I would do differently:

Yep, while I love this photo there are a couple of things I would change if I were to do it again.

1) I’d shoot later at night. Unfortunately since the drivers all had to leave we were a bit stuck with our timings on this one. If I could have shot later at night though we could have opened up the shutter a whole load more, reducing the flash power required and the speed the Minis would need to travel at. It would also have really popped their front headlights and added to the overall effect.

2) I’d add a couple of small speedlights inside the Minis. The drivers were both wearing sunnies and had really mean looks on their face. If I had popped a couple of speedlights in the Minis we really could have brought that out and added to the photo.

And there you go. To wrap up, here’s another quick shot by Chris who was standing by the Best Man. Yeah, the Minis really were that close!

And finally I have to say a great thanks to the Mini drivers. Without their skills, planning and assistance, we could never have got this shot.

More adventures soon,

Alex

Sign up form and more details after the jump…

OK so I basically want this to be a big get-together, social, learning and fun experience for all. The possibilities are there to get some truly unique and awesome portfolio shots. The shoot was originally designed to be free however the owners of the base have somewhat scuppered that one. In order to use the base for the day we’re going to have to put together some cash. I’m hoping we can get enough people to the point where it comes roughly £5-10 each. I’m hoping nobody minds this since it really will be a unique experience. To take part everybody must agree to work on a time for CD basis. Photographers must agree to provide models and makeup artists with digital copies of photographs taken.

One other quick note. The base is derelict. This means there’s broken glass around and some parts of it are completely unsafe. If you want to take part in this shoot you must do so at your own risk. The buildings (in general) are structurally sound however you will need to practice discretion and work out all the risks before shooting in an area. I’ll give a briefing of some things to be aware of before we start and as long as you’re careful it shouldn’t be a problem. Just to reiterate again though everybody taking part MUST be over the age of 18 and must be willing to take full responsibility for their own actions.

Right, on with the sign up form. I’m going to try and group people together of slightly mixed abilities. Ideally I’d love to get some people to also hold some mini-lessons for those interested. These might include things such as lighting techniques, posing styles etc. As such I’ve asked everybody to rate their ability. I know rating ability can be hard. Try to use this as a guide though:
For photographers:
Beginner – I have my own DSLR and still use it mainly on Auto or Aperture Priority.
Intermediate – I am fully proficient with my camera, am happy using it fully and getting along on my own.
Advance – I know everything about my camera, I shoot lots and am happy posing subjects and creating interesting photographs. I’ve also started to get to grips with the basics of lighting.
Expert: I shoot a lot. I have lots of gear and can cope in pretty much all photographic situations. I’m comfortable working with models and lighting. I carry out paid work regularly. I wouldn’t mind teaching some of my immense knowledge to newbies.
For Models:
Beginner – I’m just getting into this modeling malarkey. I’ve not done much before but am very keen.
Intermediate – I’ve been modeling for a while and started to build up a portfolio.
Advanced – I’ve been modeling for ages. I’m quite successful and have shot numerous paid assignments.
Expert – I’ve been modeling for ages. I mainly shoot paid assignments for big names. I’m happy to help out some of the newer models with tips and advice.

I think everything else should be fairly straight-forward. Hit me up in the comments though if you have any more questions.

Edit: Sign up now closed!

Well if you want to know some of the secret sauce which went into this photo hit the read more link…

So this was actually the second attempt at this photo. We had originally intended to shoot it after the horse photo. However as soon as we finished with the horse and Carys went in for make-up the heavens decided to open. With no sun in sight we opted to leave it for a couple of weeks and go for a reshoot.

This time around we were seriously lucky with the weather. While it had rained in the morning the wind was blowing hard and any rain showers quickly passed. We ended up with some really nice cumulous, however it was moving quickly switching us from hard sunlight to shade in the blink of an eye. I had to consider this while setting up the lights but we’ll come to that in a bit.

Now posing dogs. How on earth do you pose dogs? In hindsight I’d have loved to have them sitting down at Carys’ side looking out into the distance. However in the absence of a skilled dog whisperer we had to settle for them standing and looking out. (Yeah OK, I’ll admit we took about 60 photos here and only two have the dogs looking in the right place!) We used all sorts of toys, shouts, screams, incantations to make them look in the right direction but hell, they just didn’t like me.

OK so now onto the techie details:

Main Light:
Elinchrom Ranger cranked up to 1200W/S into a small Chimera soft box up high above Carys. This was on full blast in an attempt to allow me to underexpose the sun as far as possible and saturate the sky.

Fill:
SB900 on the floor in front of me. This was mainly to add a little pop to the dogs.

Left Rim:
Ranger Quadra with an 18cm reflector pumped full blast into the camera left side of Carys. I really had to push this one in an attempt to mimic the sun on the right.

Right Rim:
Mainly the sun. However I did have a couple of SB’s as well for the times the sun went behind the cloud. This allowed me to continue taking pictures and getting the same effect regardless of the current cloud state.

Posing:
Here I just asked Carys to pop her hip to give her shape then give me the distant stare along with the dogs. I also got her to hold her arms out from her body just a little in order to accentuate her figure.

Make-up:
OK so I’m no make-up artist. I’m told though that this was the ‘smokey’ look though (whatever that means )

Post:
This is mainly just aperture again. I darkened and saturated the sky to give it that lovely colour. I also added a bit to the vibrancy of the entire photo.

So there you go, that’s the secrets once more. If you have any more questions don’t hesitate to hit me up in the comments.

More adventures (and techie posts) soon.
Alex

So let’s start with the horse shot. The back story to this is that it was inspired by a mixture of Lord of the Rings and Drew Gardner. What I wanted to do was put Carys in the middle of a sunny forest with beams of light shining through the trees and her riding through them. Here’s the shot again, do you think I made it?

Hit the link for all the techie details behind the shot and some of the issues I had to overcome to make it happen.

Well OK here’s the story of what actually happened. This being a commercial shoot, time was tight. After makeup we had about 10 minutes to shoot the photo before the horse had to disappear. Unfortunately that meant that I couldn’t get Carys to ride out to a proper forest as I had first envisaged. Time meant we had to go with what we had around us and that happened to be a small clump of 5 trees in the middle of a very protective gardener’s lawn. With all the best will in the world sometimes it’s better to go with a shot which isn’t quite as amazing as you had wanted rather than with no photo at all. In this case though it meant sacrificing those lovely rays of light I’d wanted bouncing off and streaming through the trees. Not ideal but hey, you can’t complain since we got to do a very ambitious shot at all.

The second compromise is that Carys is stationary on the horse. I’d have loved to have had her galloping through the trees to get some real movement but alas it was not to be. Unfortunately as good as our four legged friend was, he just wasn’t used to flash and got spooked with every pop of the main light. Manageable while stationary but not something you want to be dealing with riding bareback and with no helmet. Turns out he also didn’t like the big wafters we were using to get the smoke going in the right direction. Apparently horses don’t like big bright things flailing around them. Who’d have guessed?

So there you go, those were the main problems. Here’s the techie details behind the photo (remember this isn’t like a recipe you need to add salt and sugar to taste. If you want to try living without the recipe try some freestyle baking ):

Shot on a D3, full manual mode.

Shutter and Aperture:

1/200 F/8. 1/200 was set since it’s the max sync speed my camera will do with big lights and we really wanted to kill the mid day sun. F/8 is the aperture which allowed us to do that.

Focal Length:

70mm. Most telephoto I could get without hitting a fence. I wanted the tele in order to compress the background and make it look like we had more trees. In a big forest I’d probably have gone wider to make the scene more epic.

Back Flash:
Elinchrom Ranger 1200 W/S on full blast. Needed as much light as possible to make the sun coming through the trees in the background. There is also a little smoke in between which helps give the ‘early morning sun’ look. If we’d had more trees I’d have put the flash further back and with that smoke we would have hopefully got the nice beams of light.

Left Rim:
There’s an SB900 Camera left and behind the horse. This just brings up the back of the horse and provides a bit of rim light separating Carys from the trees behind.

Main:
Elinchrom Quadra (yes, the since-deceased one) on close to full blast in a small softbox camera left. Ideally I’d have gone for a larger light source here but due to the power limitations and having to overpower mid day light we went for a small softbox. This just helps soften the shadows a bit. It’s also gridded to help prevent light from hitting all the trees around.

Posing:
Well there wasn’t much posing going on here other than stay on the horse and try and look like you’re in the middle of a forest rather than a small clump of trees with a man staring at you for taking a big horse over his perfectly manicured lawn. Oops…

Post Production:
Very little post production on this one; only minor aperture adjustments, a bit of contrast and saturation.

So there you have it. Any more questions feel free to hit me up in the comments.

More adventures soon!

Alex

So this is the first of a couple of techie posts to my blog. I know, I know you all come here for the pictures of Orcs but hey this is my way of helping other professional photographers save a bit of time and hair pulling.

The D90 is a Nikon camera used by Holly and myself which allows the recording of HD video. What makes it special is the fact that it has a large sensor and can use any nikon lens, this in turn means you can get truly cinema like depth of feel. If you don’t have a D90 and Premier, I suggest you bail out now, else..

The D90 unfortunately shoots a bit of a bizarre format which premiere claims is an unsupported compression type. However it lies! Thanks to Jean-Luc for helping me to figure it out but I think the main problem is that Premiere is an old Carbon based application and can’t quite understand the D90 file type.

Method1: The non techie way:

1. Download your movies as per normal and place them in a directory on their own
2. Download this zip file
3. Extract both files to your /Application directory (Note that SetFile must be in this directory or else the script won’t work)
4. Double click to run SetFileApp
5. Select the directory with all your D90 movies in it which need to be changed
6. Profit!

Method2: For those who like the gory details:

1. Download the movies as you normally would and make a note of where you’ve stored them.
2. Either install the Mac Developer tools or visit this page to download the setfile application
3. Fire up the Terminal application (yes I know this is scary and I may try and automate this for people in the future…)
4. if you downloaded setfile rather than installing the developer tools, cd into the directory where is it located eg: cd downloads/setfile – tip: if you press tab twice the terminal will autocomplete things for you!
5. In the terminal run this command to set the correct file type  SetFile -t "VfW " pathtofolderwithyourmovies/*.AVI eg (SetFile -t "VfW " movies/test/*.AVI)
6. In the terminal again run this command to rename the files to .mov:  rename -v 's/\.AVI$/\.mov/' pathtofolderwithyourmovies/*.AVI
7. You should find all of your movies have now been renamed to .mov and will now all open in premier!

So there you go, that’s how you open D90 movies in premier for editing. If anybody has any problems hit me up in the comments.

Alex