Natural Light Adventures 03: Finding The Light.

This part can be difficult in some cases or it can be easy. Depends how are you with seeing light, and then even when you find great interesting light you'd need to ensure it falls onto the subject(s) properly, as well have an appealing composition. 

If you've just jumped into this part of the blog series I highly recommend you read the past parts as this part is spoke with the assumption you've read the past parts, as well you've learned the important part of timing which can be figured out with what gear you have and location you're shooting at. Check the index.

This post is why I shoot the way I shoot on natural light and recommend anyone in my situation, such as lack funding for assistants, don't have friends/family willing to help consistently on a bunch of natural light portrait shoots, and don't feel comfortable with any lighting equipment/modifiers in the field by themselves while you shoot. I know most others teach to have a fill, reflector, or something but this isn't doable alone (just you and a model/person), especially in a big city where tons of people pass by, or even small cities if you're paranoid like me. So the following will help you in this same situation to still create unique and amazing natural light portrait shots.

Cloudy Shooting

When I say easy, it can be very easy if the sky is very consistent in cloud coverage (large cloud coverage) so you have constant and consistent giant softbox type of light during your time shooting outside. Such as for example on my day shooting outdoors on Halloween 2015.

Detailed First Impressions: Sigma 85mm 1.4 for Canon

Here's the video version, and the written version underneath it.

Some information may or may not pertain to you. I'll label as much as I can and you can skip to the parts you are interested in.

Reasons why I rented

I rented the Sigma 85mm 1.4 for general environmental portraiture with portrait and modeling type photography. Reasons I wanted to rent it is for

1. One being the obvious, exploring new focal length with the wide open aperture being available. I've shot with a similar focal and aperture, the Canon 50mm 1.4, but I felt it wasn't giving the very much more appealing look I liked in the 85mm focal lengths. 
2. This summer I was primarily focused on shooting and mastering the natural lighting for portrait and modeling photography in an environmental portraiture style.
3. Another reason was being inspired by portrait photographer Dani Diamond. Which he stated he uses an 85mm 1.4 lens on his nikon setup. Since I loved his work a lot why not try the similar style, and a bit more towards fashion with my own twist.
4. I was also advised by colleagues to try the current Sigma 85mm 1.4 lens over waiting for the ART version which everyone was crying over and over for, including myself. 

Reveal 01: Heather Elaine - Lancaster, PA - Portrait & Fashion Shots

- "Reveal" is now a new series to help teach or inform those wondering how I shot a specific shot that they either asked or I thought it very much worth sharing. What I would normally share would be pretty much everything, as to why I choose the image, how I shot it, the location, etc. most of the day detail leading up to how and why the shot was created. As well some how and why I edited it in a certain way to the image(s) being revealed. 

Model: Heather Elaine MM#: 2963534

Assistant: Eric S.

Location: The Lancaster Central Market

The shot was not intended to be more of a portrait. The primary goal of the whole shoot was fashion and maybe a bit of lifestyle shots. As I got home looked over the images I noticed this shot. While it did not give neither an obvious fashion feel, or lifestyle shot I still had to select it and choose to edit this for my portfolio. It could easily be used as a great editorial portrait for my commercial website or solo portrait for my non-commercial side of my business. But I do have other shots within the same environment, model, wardrobe and lighting... just different pose and facial expression that makes it more obvious it is a fashion or lifestyle shot.

This shot (below) became the selected shot best represented fashion for this shoot. The shot does have more obvious post processing done but that is part of the trend of fashion photography I've learned. Even though I really wanted to do more photography with models with a lot less photoshoping than what the trends had, I could not simply not follow the trends if I wanted to succeed. I've learned in fashion photography you give what the market demands and what the fashion photography's demanding more intensely edited images even if they look fake or not, its not about that as long as the product(s) standout and the products clearly is the hero in the shots. Since this shot was my first shot I've intentionally spent more time in editing to intentionally want the super clean fashion look and feel I spent about 3-5 hours on editing it in the span of 3 days (1-2 hours a night). It did take longer than anyone would as I was using a few different new techniques, such as removed a lot of the skin texture then re-created it. 

Videos I used as point of reference was regarding techniques of both Frequency Separation and creating skin texture both shown by PHLEARN.

The Tech...
EXIF:
1st Shot: f/2.8
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/180th
Focal: 200mm

2nd Shot: f/2.8
ISO: 640
Shutter: 1/125th
Focal: 200mm

Time of Day: Between 730pm and 830pm EST 
Lighting: Lastolite 30x30 Large Softbox w/ YN600 on ETTL zoom 24mm, triggered with a YN622C. Light was held by an assistant, angled left of frame above model's head pointing down to create shadows underneath model's chin.
Camera+Lens: Canon 6D w/ Tamron 70-200 2.8 (non-VC)
Memory: Lexar Professional 400x 8GB



Ask any questions in the comments!

Photoshop Workflow: How to make a Modeling/Portrait Photo Truly High Key

Check out my speed up photoshop workflow on a photo I shot for PPW wrestlers a few months ago.

Note the video is not from start to finish as it was my first time in a very long time using the capture software so I forgot I was not recording (I know), so its in bites and pieces which ended being a 1 hour 44 minutes+ edit! And then compressed it into a 12+ minute video at the fastest speed I could make it. Plus my computer crashed right after saving the file, and starting up the video capture again as the video capture took way too much of my CPU

After watching that I basically did some masking and filled in the background with solid clean white as my seamless was a bit too small for tag team wrestlers (2 subjects), so I shot it anyways even though I generally don't and would always aim to get perfect shot in-camera, sadly it was not possible as it was on-location before an actual PPW show and bringing only a small seamless than the very large, which I cannot travel with as it is much bigger than my car! 

Other than the white-ing the background I did simple cleaning on the wardrobe and skin with the healing brush mostly. 

Lighting setup was 2 medium softboxes on left and right of subjects and 1 Lastolite Ez Box as the key light

Posing Project 01 - Heather G.

More information about the Posing Project here.

Follow Chris Adval's board The Posing Project on Pinterest.

BTS/Teaser From Last Year's Secret Knight Rider Replica Photoshoot!

Check out the Pinterest Board Here!

Follow Chris Adval's board My Knight Rider Photography Project on Pinterest.

Sample Photos of Lastolite EZY Box Large Softbox (30x30)

*The following sample photos are Straight out of Camera, totally untouched/edited, these are purely sample photos to show how the softbox looks with and without. LEFT is without flash, the RIGHT is with the flash on.

Shutter: 1/160th
Aperture: f/7.1
ISO: 200
Lens: Canon 24-70 2.8L
Camera Body: Canon 6D

Lastolite Hot Shoe EZYBOX Softbox Kit-30 x 30"

Side note of my experience with using hotshoe softboxes in the field, its ok, as long as you got someone holding the lightstand(s) or good weights to hold them down. I don't have weights right now other than normal sandbags I may start using since assitants are so hard to come by in my area. Other than that I would have loved more power but the only option for more power is studio strobe or investing into a $500+ speedlight (600EX) as I was using YN560 here at 90% power. I may invest into more studio strobes and battery packs to shoot more environmentals instead of speedlights, primarily cost savings is a big difference. Once I could afford into more speedlights then I'll go into a heavy speedlight setups for obvious reasons.