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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Shadows and Wrinkles

I've always suggested that when shooting with available light, the best time to shoot would be during the "golden hours". This is the time when the sun is casting light from the side.

All of the photographs you would see here were shot late in the afternoon. I felt lucky to have captured these shots and was thankful that my subjects didn't give me a hard time.


Hope this helps...happy shooting!

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Go For Those Subtle Changes


Sometimes the little changes and adjustments in a photograph can make a lot of difference.

In this post, I would like to cite three subtle and simple changes our crew for this assignment made which, in my humble opinion, made the photograph a lot better.

Before the photo above was made, there was this....


Actually, this is good. Our crew was already happy with it...I was happy with it. But since our subject's schedule still allowed him to spend time with us, I figured I can still make a little adjustment in my lighting set up.

Initially, this was lit by a single monolight at camera right. The light's standard reflector bowl was socked and was placed at an angle of around 45 degrees of the subject and placed approximately 8 to 9 feet from him. I wanted a small light source for this one, yet, I ditched the idea of putting a grid since I still wanted it to be big enough to hit the surfaces of the staircase. And since my light was placed far enough from these surfaces, it created long and deep shadows at the back (refresher: longer shadows are created when the light source is farther from the object being hit). A sock was then added to the reflector bowl just to tame the harshness a bit.

In addition to my single monolight setup and, as an adjustment to the lighting treatment of this photograph, I added a strobe at camera left, powered it down and flagged it to avoid spilling light unto the background. In my mind, I wanted this added strobe to just fill in the shadows of our subject's right side and at the same time make him pop out from the background.

Another adjustment we made was the placement of our subject's left hand, notice that in the first photograph made, his left hand was closer to his knee. We simply asked him to pull it back a bit causing him to be in a more upright position. This very small adjustment in his stance projected an air of confidence.

Lastly, our wardrobe stylist changed our subject's inner shirt with something that has more color thus making the photograph less monochromatic.

Honestly, I would like to give credit to our wardbrobe stylist this time. For me, what really did it for this photograph was the change of inner shirt.

Hope this helps. Happy shooting!

Friday, February 3, 2012

Off Centered is Spot On!

"Keep them centered!" A man tell his wife as she was snapping pictures of their children outside our parish church one sunday afternoon.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with putting your subjects at the center of the frame. Lots of wonderful photos were taken this way. On the other hand, there are also lots of successful photographs wherein subjects were placed, well, not in the center. This is basically applying the rule of thirds. This principle can be used in many applications. Here are some of them:

In the photo above, our subject is placed slightly on the right of the frame. When I was composing this shot, I wanted to show the amount of coconut husks this pile has. This lady was actually trying to scavenge for things that she can sell to junk shops and I was trying to tell her story of a hard day's labor.

In a similar photo below, this old lady lady was placed at the left side of our frame. By doing so, I was able to show the expanse of the field she was working in.
And in a slightly different application, our subject was placed at the right side of the frame for an environmental type of portraiture.

By playing with the placement of the subject in your frame, you can tell more with photograph you took. Like what's happening, what's been done, what's going to happen and a hint of where everything is happening. Also, this leaves space for copy if ever you're planning to use the photograph for commercial purposes.

Hope this helps....happy shooting!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Sticks Night Shoot


I've said it quite a lot in the past that I am thankful to be blessed with a job that has literally taken me to a lot of places, and has given me unique opportunities to meet very interesting people....I still am thankful and will continue to be.

One such magazine assignment gave birth to a regular gig for me with a furniture design house. I can't really explain why I love this place....maybe it's the layout, or the designs... or maybe because the owner/designer is such a nice guy!

The showroom is basically a house furnished with all the pieces up for sale. They recently added a new feature to the place, a coffee shop and an outdoor lounging area. These are still part of the showroom since all the pieces here are for sale.

The photo above shows the lounging area surrounding the big tree and inside the building structure is the coffee shop.

I used three strobes to light this one. One strobe was placed inside the coffee shop, bounced unto the ceiling at 3/4 power. Another strobe was placed camera right, just outside the frame and aimed towards the somewhat "X" shaped seat in front. This strobe was zoomed at 50mm and set at 1/2 power. The last strobe was placed at camera left, behind the couch at left of the frame, this was aimed in the direction of the tree and zoomed at 50mm also at 1/2 power.
My exposure setting for this was ISO 400, 0.6 sec, f7.1. and white balance was AWB.

Hope this helps...happy shooting!

P.S.
If you're a furniture design fan, you can visit their site and check out their awesome designs. It's http://www.sticks.ph/