Improvising on-site

This past Sunday, I had the chance to work with Andrea, a photographer/model from Bali. We also had Kat, a great makeup artist on Maui. This was a short session, which we did at a rental house in Paia.

This shoot was done in the living room, with windows all around, and an open doorway. There was no way to cover all the windows to get directional light, so I had to improvise.

Using two Photoflex lightstands and a Litedisc holder as a crossbar,I set up a 16' roll of black duvetyne fabric at one end of the living room and let it run the length of the living room. The front end of the roll ended up near the open doorway.

In the doorway, I set up an AB800 on 1/2 power and attached a small strip softbox with a grid to keep the light mainly on the subject. To check the placement of the light, I walked over to the background and looked at my light from that point of view. I did this several times and adjusted the angle of the light until I could no longer see the face of the softbox from the point of view of the background. This insured that no light from the softbox would hit the backdrop.

To control the ambient light in the room, I set my camera to 1/250 @ f16, the maximum shutter sync speed I could do with my Canon 1DmkII and triggered the AB800 with a set of Pocket Wizards.

We tried several different poses, but weren't really happy with what we were getting. When we took a short break, the makeup artist fixed Andrea's makeup and that was when we saw this shot.

Rise, originally uploaded by Mizomi Photography.

This is actually a horizontally framed shot where Andrea is leaning toward the light on the left, but compositionally, I thought it looked cool as a vertical image.

Pocket Wizard announces Mini TT1 transmitter & Flex TT5 transceiver

Pocket Wizard announced a new set of ETTL II capable radio triggers.
Some of the benefits listed on their site:
Dedicated Canon compatibility
On-camera hot-shoe
Up to 8 fps
Standard X-sync Speeds up to 1/500 sec. with almost any flash
FP/High Speed Sync up to 1/8000 sec.
Triggers remote flash or camera
Upgradeable and Configurable
Compatible with any PocketWizard for standard triggering

Watch their promo video below. And check out Strobist.com for a review.

Gotta see this! - Speed painting from 2009 Narcissus Queen

Thanks to my friend Cathy for the link. This is really cool!

Location Laptop case

February is going to be a busy month for weddings for our company, so I probably won't have many photoshoots to post about for a while. (Although you never know....)

In between weddings, my project for this month is to finish building one of these:



I actually built a larger version of this last year with the Pelican 1495 for my old 17"Powerbook. This year however, I finally upgraded to a 15" MacBook Pro, so I'm redoing it with the smaller Pelican 1490. Will be posting pics of the construction when I have time.

Here's another video of the same idea as the Chase Jarvis video. This one goes into a little more detail of the drilling and cutting required. Wish I had seen this second video before I started cutting up my 1490 case.

Shooting the makeup session

Malynn, originally uploaded by Mizomi Photography.

Whenever I work with model and a MUA (makeup artist), I usually like to shoot the makeup session as well. This is similar to shooting weddings when I shoot the bride getting ready, except we don't have to worry about rushing to a wedding. This gives me time to experiment with new ideas and techniques, which I can later apply to when I shoot a wedding.

This also serves to kind of break the ice, especially when working with a new model. It's also great for getting on the MUA's good side, when you offer these images to them for their website (Being friends with a great makeup artist is always a good thing for photographers that shoot models). I always ask both the model's and the MUA's permission first before shooting the makeup session, and haven't been turned down yet.

This image is from a workshop I attended several years ago, my introduction to the world of photographing models.

The setting is actually in the kitchen of the house the models were staying in at this workshop. I used a Canon 1DmkII with a 70-200L lens to throw the refrigerator behind her and the makeup artist standing in front of her out of focus.

Main light is a Gary Fong Lightsphere on a Canon 580EX pointed straight up. The edge light is natural daylight coming in through a small window behind her and to the right.

This is actually cropped in from a slightly wider over-the-shoulder shot that showed more of the kitchen and the MUA. I almost didn't use this picture as it was totally unplanned and unposed, but I saw that she had a great smile in this shot. When I took a closer look at the image, i liked the way the outside light kind of wraps around her chin and saw that a tighter crop would make a great headshot.

More from the shoot with Mokihana

A few more shots from Sunday's shoot with Mokihana:

Did this headshot with two SB26 strobes on lightstands arranged one above the other and shooting inbetween them for the pseudo ringflash look. Upper one at 1/4 power is in the larger SD softbox and the lower one at 1/8th power is in the small Photoflex Q39.

Canon 1DmkII ISO 400 1/125@f8 70-200mm L (non-IS) at 135mm

This is with the same sunset style lighting I described in my last post. 2 SB26s with gels (Front 1/4CTO, back full CTO). Main light in softbox, rim light was bare with the gel.

Canon 1DmkII ISO 400 1/250@f8 70-200mm L (non-IS) at 70mm

This last one is a shot I've been wanting to do for a long time, and I'm very thankful that Mokihana was brave enough to attempt it. To be fair, she wasn't in any real serious danger at the time we made this shot. In fact I made sure to keep her as far away from the edge of that cliff as I possibly could.

Lighting is just the SB26 in the SD softbox, I don't remember if it was 1/2 or full power at the time.

Canon 1D mkII ISO 100 1/125 @ f8 70-200mm L (non IS) at 125mm

Model shoot with Mokihana + behind the scenes

Canon 1D MkII 1/250 f8 ISO100 24-70mm L at 25mm

Amazingly, I found out there's actually people who read this blog?!?! You people have WAY too much time on your hands. ;-)

But thank you, I do appreciate the feedback. I've been mostly writing this for reference for myself when I need to remember how a particular shot was done. I'll try to make it interesting for you. No guarantees though.

This past Sunday I had a shoot on Oahu with Mokihana, whom I met through Model Mayhem.
We decided on two looks - a casual outfit and a "Tomb Raider" style look.


Our prop department:
2 Glock 17s (airsoft versions imported from Japan)
2 Beretta M92s (airsoft versions imported from Japan)
*I'm a lot of fun going through customs ;-)
Leg holsters
Shoulder holsters
Gloves


Strobist lighting gear:
2 SB 26 strobes
3 Pocket Wizards
2 Bogen lightstands
2 Westcott shoot thru umbrellas
1 Westcott silver umbrella
1 Photoflex Q39 Softbox
1 Shashin Denki Kogyo (SD) Softbox
Ball Bungees
Roscoe gel samples
1 grid - homemade from black straws, Frosted Flakes cereal box and a lotta gaffer's tape (which came in handy later on during the shoot)


Amazingly, all that lighting gear fits into this Slik tripod case:




Back light with CTO gel:


The two softboxes side by side. Photoflex is on the right.
The larger SD softbox folds like an umbrella. Picked it up in Japan.


Because the SD softbox mounts on the lightstand like an umbrella, the SB26 sits too high if seated in the coldshoe mount. Ball bungies to the rescue!


Mounting the SD softbox:


For the Tomb Raider image at our first location, we wanted to give the impression that she was in a cave. The rock wall nearby(seen in the shot with the two side by side softboxes) served as a backdrop . Had Mokihana position herself about 15-20 feet away from the wall, and setup the camera so that we weren't shooting directly into the wall.

We took a shot on program which gave us 1/100 at f8 ISO 100.
Set the shutter speed to 1/250, the max sync speed of our Canon 1DmkII, which dropped the ambient light down.
Setup the SD softbox and SB-26 1/2 power with 1/4 CTO gel about 8-10 feet in front of the model.

The Photoflex softbox went behind her, SB-26 1/2 power with a CTO gel.

Results:

Canon 1D MkII 1/250 f8 ISO100 70-200mm L (non-IS) at 95mm

For the casual look, Mokihana had a red outfit, so I wanted to find some greenery to work with. Walking through the parking structure near this wall, I found a narrow strip of foliage with some light coming from overhead.

The sky was pretty overcast, and we probably could have gotten by with a reflector to get some standard portraits, but I wanted to go for a sunset style shot (in photographer-speak, that means "I forgot to pack my reflectors")

This is with the same lighting as the Tomb Raider style shots, with the SD softbox as the main light, SB26 1/2 power with 1/4 CTO. The only difference was the back light. I first tried it with the Photoflex softbox and SB26 1/2 power with CTO but wasn't getting the highlight we wanted.

Took off the softbox, and the highlights were good, but now the rear flash was flaring into the camera (the rear flash was set pretty close to the model - just out of the frame to the right). So to remedy that, I put the black straw cereal box grid on that light and we ended up with this:

Canon 1D MkII 1/250 f2.8 ISO400 70-200mm L (non-IS) at 140mm

That's actually a little more overexposed than I usually like, but both the model and I agreed that we liked this look better.

I'm still going over the other shots that we took that day. More to come later.

If you found any of this interesting at all, let me know by leaving a comment, and I'll try to remember to do more behind the scenes stuff on my next shoot.