Scouting for Girls – well locations

No, not scouting for girls but scouting for locations to shoot models.

Had a fun day today, well, the morning was not so fun as we spent it at the gym, but then it was off on our lovely BMW R1200GS to explore the East Coast.

Earlier in the week, I had been using the internet to research possible areas where I could have an outdoor photo shoot.  Now with the best three locations book marked in my Garmin GPS, we went off to check them out.

A good scenic location, parking and privacy were the key attributes I was after.  Holding an outdoor shoot is always problematic, with this being the British Isles, the weather is always trouble.  Any scenic location that has parking generally will have privacy issues, and of course getting permission from the land owners also has to be considered.

A quick portrait or landscape shoot you may risk not getting permission, but with models, extensive camera and lighting equipment its best to plan well ahead and get the permissions you require.

Everything is now just about sorted, I just need to pick a date and finalise which models I am going to use.  I feel a test shoot coming up.

Window Light

Workflow – importing and backing up

Workflow. Something many photographers need to consider.

  • Importing your photographs
  • Backing up your photographs
  • Processing
  • Digital Asset Management
  • Metadata, keywording
  • Choosing your Picks
  • Choosing your Selects
  • Final imaging processing
  • Long Term Storage

Thats a lot to consider, and i’ll not go into it all today in this post but lets consider the first part.

Before I start, let me suggest you get yourself a good DAM program (Digital Asset Management). If I had to pick one it would be either Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture program. These two programs enable you to handle the processing, DAM, and metadata and keywording. They can also handle 90% of your post processing needs, meaning you need to spend less time in your heavy duty pixel wrangler program (eg GIMP/Photoshop CS5/Coral Paintshop Pro).

  • Importing your photographs
  • Backing up your photographs

Your photos are on your Compact Flash/ Secure Digital card safe in your camera. But what next.

Well for a start they are not safe, you only have one copy, you need to get those files backed up so you have two copies. First rule, don’t connect your camera to your computer. Take the cards out and put them in a card reader. If your in the field many photographers use devices such as Epson Photo Viewer, some are using Apple iPad’s via a camera connection kit, as am I now.

If your using a laptop, then for myself, I back them up to the local hard disk. I pack the memory cards and the laptop seperately. If one gets lost the images are still safe.

Once back at the hotel/home/office, I then import the photo’s into my DAM program. For me this is Adobe Lightroom, the import preset applies basic metadata information and keyword details. The preset also copies the files to an external hard drive. This now gives me three copies of the files. One still on the cards, one on the laptop and one on the external hard drive. At the end of the day I run a backup (if your an Apple Mac User with OS 10.5, 10.6 or 10.7, use the built in Time Machine Application or I recommend you buy the application SuperDuper) this does a complete backup of my laptop including my photos, this now gives me a fourth copy of the photographs. Its now at this point i’ll risk wiping the cards.

Sound like overkill, well it does not take any real effort when you have the right products, and how much are the images worth to you?

Portable Studio

Saturday I spent the afternoon having a bit of fun.

The great thing about C-Stands is there versatility, with the boom arms fitted they not only light stands but also background stands. It was this versatility I wanted to test to day.

Clearing some space I set up the C-Stands with there boom arms, and used them to support a background roll of paper.

I then set up my Elinchrom Rotalux softbox using my portable Elinchrom Quadra Flashes to provide the illumination. One head in the soft box and one pointing at the background.

Using my long suffering and ever patient wife Caroline as a test model, and using my light meter, I soon had everything set up to give professional high quality results.

Family Birthday Party

We had a family party today to celebrate a birthday.  While the children were playing I took a few snaps.  Unusually for me I set the camera and flash to auto and just shot away.  As usual it was a mistake.  Shots like the one above, shooting into the sun, are always tricky for cameras.  I really should learn to trust myself.

C-Stands

You might have spotted that I recently tweeted about my new C-Stands.

A number of you have asked “What is a C Stand”.

Well as I discovered, a light weight light stand is sometimes no good.  An outdoor photo shoot a few months ago with the lovely Ashleigh nearly turned to disaster.  I had a flash and brolly on a light weight light stand when a sudden gust of wind took the whole lot, and I had to chase it down.

Well my lovely wife has promised me, that see will make me some very useful sandbags, but I felt I needed heavy duty stands.  The C Stand with boom arms is an incredibly versatile stand.  Heavy, sturdy, with the boom arm capable of holding a hair light above the model and support a background.

While difficult to get to the destination, once there the heavy stand is essential for out door flash use.  Outdoor flash is a favourite of mine, off camera, either as fill in or as the main light, using the sun as fill, it gives great results.

Even if you only have a standard hot shoe flash.  Give off camera flash in daylight a go.  Its well worth the effort.

Post Production – HDR and Digital Blending

St Mary's of Lastingham

Having had such a busy week, I am only now getting round to processing my images from last week and our long weekend in the Yorkshire Dales. A fantastic long weekend, but it being a biking trip the photography was limited.

During our exploring I made it a goal to visit a number of waterfalls. With the heavy rain earlier in the week the rivers were full and that meant the waterfalls were in full flow.

Without a tripod I was limited but I still tried to use long shutter speeds. I also bracketed extensively, as I was intending to HDR the images like the one above taken earlier in the year.

As I was going to HDR the images I set the camera to aperture priority. You want the aperture to stay fixed while the shutter speed changes, having the depth of field change will ruin your HDR image.

Recently I have been looking at a number of HDR images on line by other top photographers, and they often have a far better, more realistic quality then mine. In an effort to get a more real quality I have now started to combine HDR with digital blending techniques.

With the camera set for auto bracketing I fired off a number of shots then chose the above two, to combine for the HDR image. I then imported one of the orginal images and the produced HDR image into photoshop as two layers. I then, where I thought was necessary masked the HDR image to bring some of the qualities of the original file back.

The end result is still not realistic but still, for a HDR image I like it.

Watch out for the end of the month shot, I feel I will be using this technique again to produce my Photo of the Month! I’ll try my best to use digital blending to make it more realistic but with a hint of HDR.