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Balancing Act: Artist Paints Seaside Murals from a Surfboard

23 May

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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Painting a hyper-realistic mural outdoors is challenging enough on its own, and artist Sean Yoro not only pulls off incredible portraits, he does it all while balancing on his surfboard. Known as HULA, the Oahu-born, NYC-based painter meticulously crafts stunning images of women onto waterfront walls. Each of the figures seems to be emerging from the surface, the rest of them unseen in the depths.

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“Now entering the street art game. Better grab my surfboard, paints, and get as far away from the street as possible,” the artist jokes on Instagram. In the scant three days since he posted his first seaside mural image, Yoro’s work has exploded across the internet, as much for the quality of his paintings as for the unusual way in which they’re produced.

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Yoro scouts locations at abandoned riverside sites where concrete meets the shimmering surface of the water. The rough, weathered surfaces provide a gritty backdrop for the photo-realistic imagery, making his subjects seem all the more otherworldly in comparison.

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In some shots, mangled metal dangles down from partially demolished buildings as Yoro works, his paint cans set up on one side of his surfboard as he kneels in the center.

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The series is entitled ‘Pu’uawai,” which means ‘heart.’ Of the first image he completed, Yoro says “This piece was inspired by the silence beneath the surface of the water, when all you can hear is your heartbeat as everything else fades away. It’s one of the many places I call home.”

See more on Yoro’s Instagram, @the_hula.

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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Balancing Buildings: 14 Seemingly Gravity-Defying Structures

07 Oct

[ By Steph in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

Balancing Buildings Cubic Houses 2

Heavy structures seem to hover in mid-air, supported only by spindly poles or narrow beams of concrete. Towers lean toward the ground at alarming angles. Narrow houses jut out over cliffs. Whether cantilevered, tilted or strangely stacked, these 14 buildings sometimes seem physically impossible.

Perched Partition by Niizeki Studio

Balancing House 1

Balancing Buildings Niizeki 2

In response to a narrow 2.5-meter-wide space crammed between two neighboring buildings, Japanese architects Niizeki Studio created a metal volume perched on a slice of concrete. The result is a hovering home that feels separate from the structures around it, and maintains an open space at the ground level. The cantilevered portion of the home is connected to a more grounded volume in the rear of the property.

Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank Creates its Own Shade

Balancing Buildings Alphe 1

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Unlike a certain other infamous building in Italy, the Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank leans at a dramatic angle on purpose. The passive solar design tilts the entire building 14 degrees to the south so the upper portion provides shade to the lower portion.

Cubic Houses by Piet Blom

Balancing Buildings Cubic Houses 1

It’s more than a little disorienting to gaze up at Rotterdam’s Cubic Houses from ground level – not only does it seem as if these geometric volumes are going to come tumbling down off their perches, they’re also tilted at such unusual angles that it’s difficult to picture what the interiors look like. Architect Piet Blom took inspiration from Le Corbusier in designing a complex that elevates inhabitable volumes on narrow trunks to give residents great views while maintaining open space on ground level.

Balancing Barn by MVRDV

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The gleaming metal Balancing Barn by MVRDV looks more like a sculpture than an actual house, but this seemingly teetering vacation rental in the English countryside is quite comfortable inside. The architects describe it as “boldly designed to provoke a gut response to architecture and nature over a short stay.”

CCTV Headquarters by OMA

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At 75 meters (246 feet), the cantilevered portion of the jaw-dropping CCTV Headquarters building is as wide as many skyscrapers are tall, and it’s supported only by two leaning towers. It’s hard for anyone without a pretty good grasp o advanced engineering techniques to understand how the whole thing doesn’t just topple over.

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Balancing Buildings 14 Gravity Defying Structures

[ By Steph in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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Balancing Color for Flash and Ambient Light using Gels

13 Jan

Flash with 1 CTO plus 1/8 CTO In the last article Balancing Flash and Ambient Light Using an Incident Light Meter I did not mention color temperature or any correction for the colorcast in the background. There were however requests for it in the comments section, so in this article we will cover three ways of balancing color for flash and ambient light (tungsten yellow/orange which is approximately 3200°K, flash which has a color temperature close to daylight or 5500°K).

Color Temperature Explained

Before you go into the process of correcting color imbalance you will need to understand color temperature. A basic description of color temperature is based on the color characteristics of visible light from warm (yellows) to cool (blues) and the ability to measure this in degrees Kelvin (°K). Degrees Kelvin is a numerical value assigned to the color emitted by a light source. Visualize a lamp filament that is heated using an electric current. It starts off as black and starts getting hot. At a particular point it will become hot enough to start glowing, typically a dark red. As it gets hotter, it will change from dark red to orange to yellow to practically white. It is important to understand that technically, red light has a lower color temperature but is described as warm, while blue light is a higher color temperature but is described as cool. So remember that the terms warm and cool describe color, not temperature. This is a fairly extensive topic but for a quick explanation this should help.

Read more on White Balance and color temperature:

Practical White Balance and Why You Should Learn It!
Introduction to White Balance

Since warm and cool are colors, we can change their characteristics by modifying color. In lighting we achieve this modification by using various colored gels of varying densities. Lets examine the first and simplest method.

Method One – Using Color Gels on the Flash

Here are two images of the same scene, one using Auto White Balance (AWB) and the next using Daylight White Balance (WB). The daylight WB is 5200°K while the AWB applied 3200°K. Clearly the Daylight WB is too yellow.

Image captured with camera set to Auto White Balance (AWB)

Same scene as above captured with the camera set to Daylight White Balance

The Problem

The background room is lit by tungsten bulbs (typically around 3200°K). We will use a flash to light the main subject (approximately 5500°K). This is a considerable difference that you will need to resolve. So if you can make both the light sources match in color temperature, you can then set the WB on your camera to that, and get a perfectly balanced image.

The Solution

To achieve this balance, you will use a color correction gel on your flash, to match the orange color of the tungsten bulbs. Theoretically both sources will now produce the same color. So if you set your camera’s WB to “tungsten” you will capture the background without any colorcast and it will look neutral. What about your primary subject? Since the flash output has been color modified to “tungsten”, the entire scene will look natural and devoid of any colorcast as long as the lights are close to the color temperature of tungsten.

Color correction is achieved using gels. These gels are manufactured by companies like Roscoe, Lee and ExpoImaging. Gels come in all sizes from large rolls to precut sheets. My preferences are the Rogue Gels made by ExpoImaging as they are the perfect size for flash heads and are attached using an elastic band. Each gel is marked for its strength and light loss. As a starter, for under $ 10 you can buy sample packs from most lighting supply stores.

Gels that create yellow/orange light are known as CTO gels (Color Temperature Orange). These gels are available in various strengths as follows:

1/8 CTO Converts 5500°K to 4900°K
1/4 CTO Converts 5500°K to 4500°K
1/2 CTO Converts 5500°K to 3800°K

3/4 CTO Converts 5500°K to 3200°K
Full CTO Converts 5500°K to 2900°K

I recommend you start with a full CTO and adjust by adding or reducing the color temperature correction by either combining gels or using gels of lesser strength. Since these gels add color they also reduce the amount of light transmitted. Based upon the gel that you are using, you will need to compensate for the loss of light. The typical light loss is mentioned in “f” stops with each gel strength. This information is typically imprinted on the gel or provided on a backing sheet of paper. You should use this information as an initial guideline for compensating your exposure.

This method will work reasonably well. However, it is not the most accurate, as it relies purely on a visual color correction. See the result in the following image:

The camera White Balance is set to Tungsten and the flash is gelled using a Full CTO

Notice that the color of the subject is fairly accurate but the background is still a bit yellow/orange. The color temperature of the lights in the background may not be true 3200°K.

Method Two – Gels on the Ambient Light Source

In the second method, you will use gels over the offending lights if at all feasible. In this example consider it not feasible. However, you can use additional flash heads to overcome the problem of the tungsten colorcast. You do this by applying an opposing color gel to one or more flash light sources to fill the background. Keep in mind that based upon the size or the area and the intensity of the ambient light in the background, this too may not always be feasible. Take the additional flashheads (make sure they can be fired as slaves) and put a CTB (Color Temperature Blue) gel on each. What you are attempting to do is to negate the effect of the Tungsten by adding blue light to the ambient environment. Test your exposure and set the camera to “flash” white balance. Once again, you may need to add or subtract the gel intensity.

The set up: note how the flash heads are concealed from view and pointed into the room that is the background

The CTB gels like CTO gels are available in multiple strengths as follows:

1/8 CTB Boosts 3200°K to 3300°K
1/4 CTO Boosts 3200°K to 3500°K
1/2 CTO Boosts 3200°K to 3800°K

3/4 CTO Boosts 3200°K to 4100°K
Full CTO Boosts 3200°K to near daylight

Once you are satisfied with the background color, go ahead and photograph the primary subject. Do not gel the main flash and leave the white balance on “flash”.

Color Correction using blue gels in the background

In each of the cases above there is still some color cast in the final image. This is because the lights in the background are not true 3200°K and we have been relying on tungsten color temperature for our corrections.

Method Three – Custom White Balance for Background and Matching Gels on Flash

Here you use custom white balance to establish an exact white balance setting for the ambient light. It is best to use a “white balance card” or a device like the X-Rite Color Checker Passport.

Image captured of a Color Checker Passport in ambient light

Color Checker Passport – Zoomed in for creating a Custom White Balance

Image of the Color Checker Passport after Custom White Balance was established

If possible, bring that image into Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw and determine the actual color temperature. In this case, it is 2400°K, which, as you can see, is vastly different from the 3200°K tungsten. No wonder there was still a yellow colorcast in the first method. Use this measurement to establish the gel strength needed for the primary flash. If you cannot use Lightroom or any other software to obtain an accurate color temperature reading, you will need to do a bit of trial and error to determine how much CTO to use. In this case we need to get to 2400°K. A full CTO will drop 5500°K to 3200°K and a 1/8 CTO will drop an additional 600°K bringing the correction to 2600°K which is fairly close to what we need. Leave the camera set to the custom WB and gel the flash with one Full CTO gel and one 1/8 CTO gel to get a well balanced image.

The correct White Balance for the background

Using a Full CTO on flash head

Flash with a Full CTO plus a 1/8 CTO – a well color balanced image

One full CTO and one 1/4 CTO – the subject is a bit warm

In Conclusion

Always keep a set of color correction gels in your bag if you use flash on location. Not only will you need them for indoor flash photography but the CTO gels are a ideal when using flash for portraiture at sunrise or sunset.

The post Balancing Color for Flash and Ambient Light using Gels by Shiv Verma appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Balancing Flash and Ambient Light Using an Incident Light Meter

22 Nov

Contribution by Shiv Verma

Balancing Exposure

Ambient underexposed by two stops by changing the shutter speed to 1/40th of a second

Why is an incident meter important for flash photography?

How often have you struggled trying to capture a well-exposed portrait in a dimly lit room or hall. All you have is the ambient light and your speedlight. With an understanding of exposure and flash techniques you can learn to successfully balance ambient and flash exposures to create exceptional photographs. Ones that look natural, without the harsh appearance of flash, and without detracting from the ambient light.

For the most part, your camera’s meter and exposure evaluation will be just fine when you are capturing images in even light situations. However, the onboard system will usually fail when you are trying to properly expose a subject in a dimly lit room. In these situations, you must be in a position to balance the ambient light that is in the room ,and the light from the flash that will light your subject. The same concept applies to photographing subjects in low light situations outdoors.

The camera’s metering system is not capable of evaluating the two light sources and establish the correct exposure for the scene, or in other words, balancing flash and ambient light. The camera’s meter when set to evaluative (Canon) , matrix (Nikon), centre-weighted, or spot metering works great for a balanced scene, but not when the exposure of the environment is vastly different than the exposure of the flash lit subject.

Two examples of how in-camera metering systems fail

Choose a camera capable of using a hot shoe or off-camera flash to follow along. The pop-up flash is not suitable for this exercise. Keep the aperture value at f/4 and the ISO at 400 for each scenario.

In the first image, below, the flash is set to ETTL (electronic through the lens meter system). The camera is set on aperture priority and evaluative metering mode.

Notice that the subject is reasonably well lit but the background is under exposed

For this next example, set the meter to the spot metering mode and take the reading for the background. All other settings remain the same and the flash is still on ETTL. Notice the overall image is now underexposed. The metering system is unable to properly evaluate the scene and the primary subject. (image below)

flash-photography-lighting-metering-02b

For the third image in the sequence turned off your flash, and set your camera evaluative/matrix metering. The idea is to try and get the best exposure for the background. Make note of your shutter speed and exposure settings.

Shutter speed 1/13th second and the background is reasonably well exposed, though not perfect

Using a hand-held incident light meter to solve the problem

Good hand-held meters have multiple modes: a spot metering mode which is a reflective reading (usually 2 degrees or less), an incident mode using the meter’s light dome, and one or more flash modes. It is imperative you learn the proper use of these modes in order to be successful at flash photography.

You want all your images to be good, not the occasional 1%. You need to stop struggling and juggling settings to produce the image you want. Experiments are good only if you know what you are doing and what your tools are. Realize that there are infinite ways to light your subject with strobes, as there are infinite scenarios that your subject can be in. So learn how to expose correctly, learn how to balance ambient light and flash, but most of all, learn how to read light.

Set up the ambient exposure first

Let’s go back to the scene as we had above. Set your camera to manual exposure mode. As before, keep your aperture at f/4. Next, to properly expose the room you measure the ambient light using the spot meter function of the hand held meter pointed at an area that is mid tone (approximately the same as medium grey) in the scene. In this test case the meter indicated 1/10 sec at f/4. Set your camera to these settings. Take a test shot to ensure your exposure is correct for the ambient light. See below:

Test exposure using ambient light only

Next set the flash exposure for the primary subject

You can experiment with off-camera flash if you do not have remote triggering capability, using an off-camera remote flash cord (for Canon, or Nikon). On-camera hot shoe flash use is not recommended as it produces harsh, flat lighting. But in order to simplify this exercise, you can use the hot shoe flash mounted on you camera. It will be just slightly off center when you have your camera oriented in portrait mode.

To read the flash exposure, set the hand held meter to “incident” mode, and the exposure on the “flash non-cord” setting (do not use the corded or triggered setting). This will read the light falling on the subject when the flash is fired. If you are using a remote trigger, then the next step is easy. If not, then have someone assist you for the next reading. Position the meter such that the dome points to the camera and fire the flash. At full power, in this test case, the reading was f/19. See the image below:

How to point your meter and measure the flash, this is obviously too much power

An f/19 reading indicates overexposure, as your camera is set at f/4 for the depth of field you want. To resolve this, you need to dial down the output of the flash by five stops (f4 > f5.6 > f8 > f11 > f16 > f19>. Set the flash to 1/32 power which is five stops below full power. It is always good to take another test reading and adjust the distance of the flash to subject to compensate for a half stop variance (to f/19). Now you should get a reading of f/4 and you are ready to shoot.

Flash and ambient balanced successfully. The exposure on the subject is perfect and the room is properly exposed too.

Adjust shutter speed to feature the subject more

Basically, the settings on camera indicate equal exposure and you can see that both the subject and the room are exposed correctly at an aperture of f/4. This is good. But, if you want to emphasize the subject more, you want to underexpose the room. With the way you have your exposure already set up, this is really easy. All you need to do is increase the shutter speed by a stop, two stops, or more. This under exposes all the areas lit by the ambient light but the exposure on the subject remains the same and is always correctly exposed.

Ambient underexposed by one stop by changing the shutter speed to 1/20th of a second

Ambient underexposed by two stops by changing the shutter speed to 1/40th of a second

The reason for this is that the meter reading for the background is based on the ambient light. The subject however, is lit using the flash, an instantaneous light source. Your flash exposure is controlled by its power output, increasing or decreasing the flash’s distance from the subject and by the aperture setting on your camera. Typically, flash exposure is not affected by shutter speeds as long as your camera’s shutter speed is set to the flash sync speed or slower. As a result, changing the shutter speed affects the ambient light exposure (the exposure of the room) without affecting the flash exposure (the exposure of the subject).

Summary and action plan

In conclusion, relying on your camera’s metering system, be it evaluative, spot or centre-weighted, never gives you the kind of exposure control that you can achieve when using a good hand-held incident light meter.

If you have additional tips or tricks please share them in the comments below, and if you haven’t tried your flash off the camera yet why not give it a go!? Grab yourself a light meter and try it!

Shiv Verma, is a photographer, educator and technologist and lives in Wrentham Massachusetts. He is an avid wildlife and commercial photographer and conducts photo workshops and tours worldwide. You can check out more of his work on his website at: www.shivverma.com. Follow him on: Google+, Facebook and Twitter

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Balancing Flash and Ambient Light Using an Incident Light Meter

The post Balancing Flash and Ambient Light Using an Incident Light Meter by Guest Contributor appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Dragging The Shutter: Balancing Fill Flash With Ambient Light

17 Feb

Wedding receptions are notoriously dimly lit places that make use of a flash a must. In this shot, I wanted to balance the ambient light from the stage with my flash to create more depth to the image. EOS-1D X, EF 24-70 f/2.8L II. 600EX-RT Speedlite. 1/60, f/2.8, ISO 800. Photo by Rick Berk/kNot Photography

Shooting indoors with a flash can challenge the best of photographers. Many times, the goal is simply to create enough light to illuminate your subject, and background be damned. The results, however, tend to be less than pleasing when we allow the flash to be the only light source. Assuming there is some ambient light in the room, adjusting the settings in your camera can help allow that ambient light into your exposure and create more depth in your image.

Most cameras typically sync with a flash at around 1/200 or 1/250 of a second. While this speed is fine for the flash alone, it is generally too fast a shutter speed to allow ambient light to factor into the exposure. This creates images with a brightly lit subject and a very dark background. To allow more ambient light in, you’ll want to slow your shutter down. Putting the camera into Manual mode will allow you to adjust your shutter speed to do this. You can then also open your aperture as wide as it can go to allow as much light as possible into the scene. This technique is typically known as “dragging the shutter”.

The problem with dragging the shutter is that if the shutter speed is too slow, any movement can cause a ghost image, ruining the shot. So you’ll need to keep the shutter speed fast enough to avoid that. This may not allow enough ambient light in, so you have one last option to allow more light in. Adjusting the ISO. By raising the ISO speed, you make the camera’s imaging sensor more sensitive to light, allowing that ambient light to show in the image.

For the image above, the stage lighting for the band created a nice background light, but my flash was too powerful and my shutter speed too fast at the maximum sync speed of 1/250. By slowing down the shutter speed to 1/60, I gained two stops of light sensitivity. I also raised the ISO to 800 to allow the sensor to be even more sensitive. This allowed the flash to illuminate the bride and groom, and the stage lighting to show brightly in the background.

Another way to do this is to change the shooting mode on your camera. For most cameras, shooting in Program or Automatic means the camera will treat the flash as the only light source, and disregard the ambient light for exposure. However, if you change the mode on your camera to Aperture Priority, the camera then sets the exposure based on the ambient lighting, and flash is simply treated as fill. The one caveat with this is that the camera could choose a shutter speed that is too slow to safely hand-hold, creating ghosting or blur in your image. You’ll want to keep an eye on the shutter speed, and if necessary, raise the ISO to give you a faster shutter speed. Many cameras also have a setting, allowing you set a minimum shutter speed when using flash in Aperture Priority mode to help avoid ghosting.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Dragging The Shutter: Balancing Fill Flash With Ambient Light

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Photoshop: White balancing in Adobe Camera Raw | lynda.com

06 Nov

This specific tutorial is a single movie from chapter two of the Photoshop CS3 Portrait Retouching Essentials course presented by lynda.com author Chris Orwig. Watch more at www.lynda.com The complete course has a total duration of 10 hours and 19 minutes. Photoshop CS3 Portrait Retouching Essentials table of contents: Introduction 1. Retouching Roadmap 2. Correcting Color and Tone 3. Cleaning Up Images in Camera Raw 4. Cleaning Up Images in Photoshop 5. Structural Image Enhancements 6. Reducing and Removing Wrinkles 7. Enhancing Eyes 8. Enhancing Eyelashes and Eyebrows 9. Improving Hair 10. Improving Faces and Bodies 11. Fixing Teeth 12. Improving Makeup 13. Enhancing Skin 14. Softening Skin Conclusion

www.tazer.co.nr In this tutorial, we will be learning how to edit your holiday photos and enhance them on After Effects, thats right, Adobe After Effects. Not Photoshop. OMG! Enjoy and Happy Holidays! www.tazer.co.nr
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Posts Tagged ‘balancing’

Balancing Act: Artist Paints Seaside Murals from a Surfboard