Fall is indeed a magical time for everyone. With the air becoming clean and crisp, you get to dust off your overcoats and walking boots. You’ll hear the chopping of the wood that will see everyone though the winter months. But there is nothing more recognizable with the season of autumn than the colors associated with the falling of the Continue Reading
The post Splendid Fall Photography Tips and Tricks to Make The Most Of This Gorgeous Season appeared first on Photodoto.
By Gina Milicia – author of our brand new Portrait Lighting eBook.
Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.” -Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Australian actor Firass Dirani in my Fight Club inspired shoot @firassd (twitter) @firazzle (Instagram).
Most of my inspiration for photo shoots comes from Movies, art and popular culture.
Ever since I saw the movie Fight Club I’ve always wanted to do a fight Club inspired shoot.
My aim was to create a really cool, gritty, edgy looking shot. I could have achieved this look using several different techniques but opted for my new Rotolux deep Octabox with my Elinchrom Ranger Quadra battery operated light system.
For this shoot I worked with Melbourne make up artist Mia’Kate Russell an incredibly talented special effects make up artist. Her brief was to make Firass look like he’d just been in an old school fistfight – busted up but still looking incredibly cool.
If you are thinking of trying something like this then I suggest you check out your nearest school of hair and make up. Special effects make up like Mia used on Firass is taught at these schools and students are often looking for the opportunity to test out their skills.
Another version you may like to try is to just scuff the face up using dirt to give that gritty look. That’s the technique I used for this shot of Lachy Hulme who was playing a trapped minor in the TV Movie Beaconsfield.
A good Make Up artist will take your portraits from OK to amazing. This is definitely a relationship you should invest in and nurture.
The location I chose was an old warehouse near my actual studio. I had gone out scouting a week earlier. It’s important that you always have your locations worked out ahead of time rather than hoping it will all fall into place on the day of the shoot.
Some places will incur a hire fee to work in others you may get permission by finding the owners and just asking (which is exactly what I did to get access to this amazing warehouse!)
If a softbox and a beauty dish got married and had babies they would probably have little rotolux deep octaboxes. I love these light shapers because
They combine the softness and narrow spread of a soft box with the beautiful bone structure defining qualities of the beauty dish. It’s the best of both worlds.
For this image of Firass I converted my Octabox to a beauty dish by removing the outer diffuser and inner bevel and adding the beauty dish attachment.
I could have also just used a beauty dish but I prefer this softer style of lighting.
Here’s some visuals on how I took the shots (click to enlarge).
For this shot I’m using my:
My settings for this shot are:
* I selected a wide aperture of F4 on my long lens because I wanted my background to be out of focus. I could have shot wide open at f2.8 but decided to play it safe at f4 as I find it really difficult to get my models eyes sharp at f2.8 using a long lens and focusing in low light.
** I shot at a very fast shutter speed of 1/200th sec because I wanted to keep my background really dark and moody.
This shot would also work using a Speedlight + Softbox without internal bevel.
If you want to increase the amount of shadow in eye sockets, jawline and cheekbones remove the reflector or replace it with a black cutter.
And here’s one more shot from the shoot.
Get more portrait lighting tips from Gina’s new dPS eBook – Portraits: Lighting the Shot.
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
How to Create this “Fight Club” Inspired Portrait using One Light
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Strobist
[ By Steph in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]
Mobile robotic surveillance devices are nothing new – you can purchase remote-controlled ones online, and the government has been developing spy gadgets that get smaller, faster and harder to spot with each passing year. But the STAR V3 3D-printed robot is able to scoot 15 feet per second and flatten itself to get under doors, calling to mind the iris-scanning robots from the movie Minority Report.
Developed by a team of researchers at The University of California, Berkeley, STAR (Sprawl Tuned Autonomous Robot) V3 is clearly bio-inspired, moving around on six legs that call to mind insects and lobsters. It can overcome obstacles three times taller than its own hip height, and travel at a top speed of 5.2 meters per second. Each side of the robot body has three spoke-wheel legs with a drive distributed from a single motor. All the components can be 3D-printed using a Project 3000 machine, and the parts can be assembled within about thirty minutes.
BAE Systems developed another creepy-crawly robot (among many other sophisticated robotics) that will move in swarms to investigate caves, bunkers and other potentially dangerous places on the battlefront, theoretically reducing casualties. But it’s not hard to imagine these things being deployed in domestic situations, as well, equipped with cameras to spy on people without their knowledge. Once you see how fast the STAR V3 moves in that video, you might just get paranoid about what can fit under your door.
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Commercial photographer Frank Ockenfels III has worked on several high-profile blockbusters like Harry Potter and Men in Black 3, as well as a number of TV shows, and his most recent work is currently being used to promote the season five finale of Breaking Bad on AMC. PopPhoto has published an interview with him, in which he explains how he got started in the TV and movie business, the equipment he uses, and why he bases his career around the concept of ‘never having just one idea’. Click through for a link to the full article.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
New York Times writer Nick Bilton recently wrote an article about his experience with Leica cameras and lenses, and was surprised when this was met by an aggressive influx of ‘vehement messages from all kinds of photographers and camera fans’. Not only did Canon and Nikon fans attack him for not writing a similar piece about their favorite brands, but according to Bilton many Leica fans were also critical of his article, as well as his selection of ‘experts’. Click through for more on this surprising development.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Last year we shared a behind the scenes video that showed some of what went into shooting this amazing ‘dust’ and ‘dance image’.
Since then photographer Thomas David has shot another great series of dust photos – this series was shot outside and has more of a martial arts/fight theme.
See the full series of images here on Flickr.
And as with last time – here’s a behind the scenes video to show you a little more of how it was taken:
Behind the Scene video for the “Dust and Fight” photoshoot from Tom on Vimeo.
Update: check out this post at The PhoBlographer with a heap more information on how the series was shot.
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
Dust and Fight: Behind the Scenes of This Spectacular Photo Series
This week has been an exciting week around dPS headquarters as we’ve celebrated a number of milestones – all of which are thanks to you our amazing community of readers!
Let me share a few of them with you!
On Monday we noticed that our newsletter passed the magical 750,000 subscriber mark! Back in 2006 when I started the dPS newsletter so that a family member could get our latest tutorials (because he didn’t know how to subscribe to our RSS feed or wasn’t on Twitter) I had no idea how important our newsletter would be to three quarters of a million people!
Our weekly newsletter is the #1 way that people get updated on our latest free tutorials and if I ever happen to be late in sending one – boy do we hear about it from our subscribers – it is much anticipated each week!
If you’re not a subscriber yet – just add your email address below and we’ll send it out to you each Thursday!
We can’t wait to hit the million subscriber mark – we’ll have to think of a way to celebrate that one!
On Tuesday we our Pinterest account had it’s 18,000th follower. While there are plenty of bigger accounts around we’re really proud of what we’ve built on Pinterest.
Jade – our Pinterest Guru – has set up 170 different ‘boards’ – each one dedicated to a different category of photography and each day she hunts for and shares some great photographic content from around the web.
So far she’s shared over 7000 great tutorials! Just be warned – if you follow us on Pinterest you may never get any work done again – it’s an amazing resource!
On Wednesday we celebrated our 170,000th Facebook follower!
Our Facebook page is a great place to get the latest updates from our blog as well as connect with other readers.
PS: you can also follow us on Twitter. We’re approaching the 100,000 milestone there!
On Thursday we got a preview of the new dPS redesign that our design and development team have been working on. We’re still a few weeks away from launching it fully but we are REALLY excited by how it is shaping up.
The new design will be great for viewing on your mobile phone (a much requested feature, has an improved comments section, some new gallery features and is a lot more colourful to look at. We think you’ll like it.
We can’t show the full thing but here’s just a teasing glimpse of what’s to come! It’s taken from our new front page.
It’s been 9 days since we launched Living Landscapes and we’ve been overwhelmed by the amazing feedback we’ve been getting about it.
Here’s another comment left on the blog yesterday from one of our readers – Robin Grant:
I bought this eBook last week.
It was the first eBook I’ve ever bought and I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed reading it on my iPad. Todds photos are amazing (I am seriously thinking about booking a trip to New Zealand) and he writes really clearly.
I’ve already taken my camera out of town to experiment with some shots and can see my photos are improving already. Thanks for writing this dPS.
Save 33% on Living Landscapes and go into the draw to win a great $ 1500 photographic prize (lenses and bag) when you pick up a copy of Living Landscapes today.
None of the above would have been possible without our amazing readership. Thanks so much for being a part of what we do and for sharing us with your friends.
Thanks!
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
5 Milestones for dPS This Week!
We all love a bargain! For us here at dPS HQ this was the reason we created SnapnDeals.
But as much as we’d like to think all the good deals for photographers call SnapnDeals home, there are many other places to pick yourself up something nice at a great price. So each fortnight we’ll share with you a list of deals we’ve found from all over the web. Here’s some to get you started …
Know a deal you’d like to be included? Send us an email here.
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
Deals for Photographers This Week
Last weekend one of my photos was selected as a category winner in the national night sky photography competition, the David Malin Awards. The category was “People and Sky”, and Darren asked if I could write a post describing how the photo was created.
I assist friend and colleague Phil Hart with regular night sky photography workshops under the beautiful dark skies of country Victoria (Australia). Knowing my love of fisheye photography, Phil had an idea for a photo to help promote the course: A group photo under the stars by fisheye lens.
I immediately had a vision in my head of the photo and knew it would look cool, so I set myself to working out how to achieve the difficult task of composition and balancing light. Once night fell and we made sure the students were all confident with their new skills and happily taking photos of the night sky, I put my Sigma 8mm f4 circular fisheye on my full-frame Canon 5D MkIII. To achieve this effect you will need a circular fisheye lens and a full-frame camera, or a fisheye lens designed to give a circular image on a cropped sensor. A diagonal fisheye will not capture the whole hemispherical field of view needed to image the whole sky.
Testing the setup and lighting.
From experience shooting the night sky with this lens, I knew that I would be shooting at the widest aperture of f4 and the full 30 seconds shutter speed. Balancing noise and sufficient exposure I chose an ISO of 8000. These settings give me a good exposure of the night sky and particularly the milky way, which would feature in the shot. This is incredibly faint! My main problem was how to light the faces of the students to approximately the same brightness of the Milky Way.
At first I considered using a flash, but even at the lowest setting, even with significant diffusion, the exposure was too difficult to control. The other problem is that I’d need the light to be omnidirectional so that all of the people in the shot would be evenly lit. Ultimately the solution I came up with was to use my LED video light, dialed down to its lowest power setting and laid face down on the ground on a piece of white paper. Only a little bit of light leaked out from around the edges, but it was even and spread out in all directions. Due to the relatively warm white balance of the Milky Way I adjusted the light’s white balance to be warm to match.
A recreation (in my office) of the setup I used. The video light is pointing straight down into the paper.
I took a few test shots to make sure the exposure, focus, white balance and everything else was working just right, and when the galaxy had risen to it’s highest point and was nearly directly overhead we called everyone together. We formed a circle and put our arms over each others’ shoulders to ensure even spacing, and tried to keep where the camera would be in the centre. Linking arms also helped us all to stand as still as possible for the 30 seconds of the exposure. Once we were all ready, I set the camera to 10 second self timer mode and placed it on the ground pointing directly up.
There were a couple of confused comments as people tried to work out how it would look, and jokes about how we all must have looked to anybody watching us from the outside. But once we got a look on the back of the screen, everyone was convinced. This was a truly unique group photo.
Join me on Facebook to learn more and see new photos daily: http://facebook.com/neilcreekphoto.
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
How I Took This Award Winning Night Sky Group Photo
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