Gareth Dix Photographer

New Years Resolutions 2012

2011-12-27T18:30:00.002Z

It's that time of the year again where we do things like buy gym memberships that we'll never use, go on diets that never last and there's a surge of people looking for new jobs or making life changes. This makes it the perfect time to set yourself some goals to achieve over the next year that will really help to keep you motivated (Whether it's photography or anything else in life)

Normally by the end of November I look back on the year I've just had and I'm already looking at NY resolutions to set as goals, but this year I have been so busy I'm only just starting to look at this now. Before I get into listing some of things I'll be doing this year there are some rules that need to be followed.

The Rules of Resolutions:

If you write it down it's set in stone - However you do have until the 1st of Jan to make changes but whatever is on that piece of paper/word document/tattooed on your skin on the 1st of Jan is final. This is to stop you trying to move the goal posts closer and should stop you being lazy about the resolutions through the year.
Make a couple of the resolutions take you out of your comfort zone - This will keep things interesting but also means that you're forced to try something new.
Keep copies of the resolutions everywhere that you'll see them - Whether that's on the bathroom mirror on the wallpaper of your computer screen, in your camera bag or on the front page of your note pad. Just make sure that it's somewhere that's going to keep them front of mind.
Every day as soon as you wake up read them - Like number 3 it'll keep things front of mind, but it'll also change your day when you have something to aim for
Keep track of your progress and Celebrate your successes - Make sure you know when you're achieving them and celebrate the success. This isn't something you have to wait until next December to look back at again and see if you have achieved it.
Tell other people about it - Just as I'm doing by posting about it on my blog, you should shout about what you're hoping to do next year and share it with others. Not only will it make you feel great about yourself when you share your hopes, but it's also an added piece of motivation in that you'd rather tell them about how successful you were than you haven't done it.
Finally if you don't achieve them all don't worry about it - You'll accomplish more by aiming high and missing than aiming low and achieving it all.

My Resolutions for 2012

This year I'm creating different resolutions for different things. Those of you that know me, know that I'm really into my fitness and philosophising about life, however in the interest of this blog I'm only going to talk about my photography resolutions. I'll be adding to this list over the next week or so and should have a finished article by the 1st of Jan.

Shoot more for myself- 2011 was a lot of shooting for clients and other people and my own work took a back seat, 2012 will have a lot more time dedicated to what I want to shoot.
Shoot Fitness Models- It's something I've always wanted to do more of and as an added bonus is great motivation for my fitness goals for this year.
Use more local talent- living so close to London I tend to gravitate towards the talent pool there but there's loads of talent in Essex, Kent and Herts
Assist other photographers on shoots- I learned a lot doing this years ago and don't do this nearly enough now.
Upgrade my camera- I have been saying this for awhile now but I think it's about time I got a new one. Now that it's on the list I can't put it off anymore.
Shoot some lingerie, glamour, boobs- Not something I've done before but in the interest of taking me out of my comfort zone I will make that sacrifice.
Shoot for shits and giggles at short notice- I tend to plan, plan and plan a shoot, I know what I want, I know what model I want, I know what equipment I need to do it. Here I'll try booking a model at short notice, doing a shoot in a forest, park or even in the street just to see what happens off the cuff
Do a shoot when I go travelling- I don't do this nearly enough, so I will book a shoot when I'm holiday this year.
Take an opportunity when it presents itself- Some of the most successful photographers I know are successful not because of their technical knowledge or how good their photos are, but because they have the confidence to (in the words of Nike) "Just Do It"
Build a strong team with MUA's, Stylists and Models that I can use again and again - Just as a good team, we'll know the abilities of each member and the limitations so we can get the right result every time.
Print a portfolio I can show off to people- I've always used a digital portfolio, but I think it's important to have something printed that I can take with me to show people my work.

It's a start, I'll be adding/modifying these over the next week or so but remember whatever is here on the 1st of Jan is what I'm sticking to.

Anyone else fancy sharing their new year's resolutions? If so drop me a note in the comments below or on Twitter and I'll link to them from here.

I'm now on 500Px

2011-12-03T12:23:00.001Z

I've been looking at creating a portfolio site for some time now instead of just using flickr links. A few of you guys have been telling me about 500px so I thought I'd check it out and so far I'm impressed!

Come find me on there and say hello, I'll be posting quite a bit over the next few weeks.

<p>&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://500px.com/garethdix"&amp;gt;garethdix&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; on &amp;lt;a href="http://500px.com"&amp;gt;500px&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;</p>

Joanna Martin as Cinderella

2011-11-25T11:41:00.001Z

You may remember a few months back I did headshots for the Santa Monica Players (SMP) and wrote about it in a blog post entitled 30 Actor Headshots.

Having had such a good laugh on that shoot, I jumped at the chance when the group asked me to come back and shoot with them again.

The Brief

Coming into Panto season (a tradition in here in the Uk) SMP are putting on a production of Cinderella this year and wanted something a bit different to help them promote it.

The brief was simple, instead of a normal Panto Style photo, they wanted something a little bit more elegant and on location. They would arrange costumes, location and the talent I just had to let them know what I my vision was for the shoot so they could arrange it.

Scouting the Location

A few weeks beforehand I decided to meet up with Luke from the group and have a look at the location they were thinking about. This was partially a location scouting exercise but at the same time it would really help me to visualise what would be possible with the actors in the shot and a chance to get a bit more info around the brief.

I'll do a blog post on how I scout a location and give you some tips in the near future

The Location was great, a large Georgian Manor with a grand exterior. What wasn't so great was the amount of scaffolding on the most scenic part of the building at the rear, the adjacent buildings which weren't in the same style and sign posts and wheelchair ramp at the front of the building. Having seen all this beforehand really helped as I could think about how I would work around this before the shoot.

The Shoot

The night of the shoot was freezing cold... and to make things worse there was a lot of fog. As it worked out the fog around the house was probably just the right amount to help diffuse the streetlamp lights and add a bit of extra atmosphere to the shot.

As I was setting up the first thing I thought of was balancing the colour of the ambient light from the street lamps, but compared to the non-balanced version, the person in the foreground didn't pop enough. I decided to balance with a bare flash as it kept the whole scene looking quite warm.

Lighting Info
I realised that the two street lamps in the back were in a perfect position to act as rim lights to wrap Joanna in light without me having to use two more flashes. I wanted to see how long the exposure would be to get the effect that I wanted so I took a multiple frames at different lengths to gauge not only how the ambient light was looking, but how much it affected the colour of the white dress that Joanne was wearing. Once I had that ready it was time to start adding lights.

The main light was a large umbrella, basically a 45" Softlighter without the diffuser directly above the camera
Light two was a bare flash to the right to add a bit of fill to the side and overpower the effect the ambient was having on that part of the dress
Light three was a snooted flash boomed overhead pointing at the shoe that was left behind to create a spotlight.

Here's a lighting diagram that gives you a rough idea of what was happening

Post Processing

There was a little bit of tidying on the image, like removing signs and railings from the building. But even with the spotlight I wanted to put more emphasis on the shoe in the background. Having added a bit of sparkle to the tiara and the shoes, I thought I could lead the eye from the dress straight to the shoe by adding a bit more to the dress.

A little bit of sharpening later and I'm at the final result. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Tickets to see Joanne performing in Cinderella with the Santa Monica Players are available from www.smptheatre.co.uk I'll be around on the Saturday so if you're there say hello!

How to get work you want to get.

2011-11-07T18:01:00.000Z

I have a long history of corporate and product photography but you won't see much of this in my portfolio, but why? I remember years ago earlier on in my photography career I read a piece of advice that has stuck with me for awhile now.

"Don't put your best images in your portfolio, only show the work you want to do more of"

Regardless of what we think as an artist, in order to understand what we do, people ~~like~~ need to put everything into boxes/genres so they can work out and understand what they're looking at. The same goes for anything creative, if you're in a band and someone asks what kind of thing do you play, you either take the arrogant step of saying, "It's completely different from anything you ever heard, we play what we play" or you say, "It's a mix of grunge and country".

In photography if your portfolio consists of car photos, but you want to shoot fine art, a client won't see that there are similar lighting principles and control over the image, they will assume you are a car photographer and have no experience of photographing a building. Similarly if your portfolio consists of soley of scantily clad women that wouldn't look out of place in Nuts magazine then you might want to re-consider what you're showing a client interested in corporate head shots.

For me, I shoot a lot of varied subjects but then I have a lot of different portfolio's for different clients (made so much easier with an ipad and digital portfolio). But keep yourself open to everything, because you can always transfer learnings, but be very clear on what you want to do more of and adapt your porfolio to that.

30 Actor Headshots

2011-06-10T16:09:00.000+01:00

Hot on the heels of my shoot with Emma, I was assigned to shoot headshots for the Santa Monica Players local theatre group who were putting on a production of the wedding singer. The complicated part of it was, that I needed to do 30 head shots in just under 2 hours.

For those people that are thinking don't school photographers do that all the time? Well yes they do, but a school ~~mugshot~~ photograph is much different to and actor head shot. The actor head shot needs to show the subject in good light (somewhat glamourous) at the same time as being true to how they really look. Looking at a lot of actor head shots beforehand I was thinking as they are part of a theatre group and they were going to be showing these photos in the programmes along with on the boards outside of the auditorium (for potential talent scouts), I decided that we needed to have something consistent, and that meant the lighting had to work for every type of face.

I was told that I'd be able to shoot at a rehearsal session so I was hoping there was going to be enough space to set up a makeshift studio. Basically I have a couple of lightstands with Manfrotto Superclamps attached to the top and my boom arm running across the top with a king sized white bedsheet clipped to it, sounds a bit ghetto right? well to be honest a lot of the time I'll use a blank wall or a projector screen, whatever I can find to get the same sort of look.

Luckily when I get there, they've got a separate room that I can set up in and take the shots whilst the rehearsal was going on in another place. There was plenty of space as well so I could go for a big set up. I recently picked up an absolutely huge light stand which I wanted to use with my boom... wait didn't I just say I was going to use that for the background? yes I did... bugger! Well I solved this by using another light stand as the cross bar for the background, all hail the superclamp!

There are two other main pieces of equipment that I used for this shoot, the Lastolite Triflector 2 (which is an expensive bit of kit but it's awesome) and my photek softlighter 2 (which is like a giant brolly octabox type thing but gives really amazing light). I boomed the softlighter overhead and used the triflector as a fill in front of the models and this set up gives a very nice light for portraits.

You can see the set up I was using below for the group shots at the end. The only difference for the head shots was that there were two flashes on the background on each side and just the photek was used not the umbrella as well.

Basically once the light was set up I didn't have to worry about changing it a lot, a slight tweak here and there for a couple of people but all in all the settings remained the same. This allowed me to concentrate on the actors and getting the right expression from them for the shot. You'd actually be surprised how uncomfortable actors are in front of a camera that takes stills as they're used to moving around, sometimes it's better to just let them do that and shoot.

I've created a contact sheet of all the headshots which you can see larger on my flickr page by clicking on the image.

I'll be down at their production of the wedding singer (June 15-18th) and from what I saw at the rehearsal it would be well worth getting tickets from their website www.smptheatre.co.uk

Actor; Emma Feeney

2011-05-06T15:57:00.001+01:00

It's been awhile since I updated, not because I haven't been shooting, but more because I've been so busy shooting and travelling around the world. I know I know it's not a good enough excuse but it's great because it gives me some posts to work on.

I've been working on quite a few portraits recently which is a change from working with models. I do like working with people that aren't used to posing for the photos, something about having to build that rapport with people very quickly to make them comfortable at doing something they're not used to (I'm pretty sure that sounded a lot worse than I meant it to).

Emma is an old friend of mine, working for the music industry by day and serious actor by night (and weekends). She needed some industry style 8x10 headshots that she could hand out at castings. A headshot is one of those simple things that as a people photographer is one of the first things you'll learn. It's one of those things that is easy to learn but takes a lifetime to master.

So I arrived at Emma's house and being in the uk space is always an issue. There was no way I could get my background up and get enough space between it and her. So we pulled a painting down from the wall and used the blank wall. Even though it was an off white colour I knew that this was a black and white shoot and if I wanted it pure white I could hit it with enough light to blow it out.

So the light set up was a 60cm softbox overhead and a reflector underneath. Using the small box helps with the contrast of the image and I'm not the biggest fan of completely shadowless flat lit portraits.

Easy right? well I got lucky as Emma is photogenic already, but being an actor that has to play various roles, it's great to have a neutral serious headshot but we wanted to make sure we got a few varying expressions to basically show off what she can do. Apart from being a lot of fun it really does make for an interesting set of photos. But more to the point it really shows her personality which in this case can be a real advantage.

Am I an equipment junkie?

2010-10-15T09:38:00.004+01:00

A slightly different style of post today, but bear with me on this.

I do get asked a lot about the camera I use, what lenses, lights, modifiers etc both in general and on specific photos. I never have any problem sharing any of this info but a lot of the time I'm fairly puzzled why people are interested in just the equipment I've used.

I have to confess I have bought certain pieces of equipment on a whim or for a particular set of features and fallen prey to the marketing machine equation:

Your photography + This piece of equipment = Masterpiece

Don't get me wrong I love some of the equipment I have, and some photos just aren't possible or are at least very difficult/ take longer to do without it, but what happens when I'm in a situation where I don't have it?

Luckily I spent years using a 1970's film camera (Pentax MX) with a standard 50mm lens and a digital point and shoot (Sony P-10), then moved on to the cheapest digital SLR at the time (Canon 350D) with a kit lens. Why is this significant? Well I had to try and get the best photos possible with most limited amount of gadgets. I had to figure out work arounds for everything, I had to see things to make the composition "pop" on a photo.

Take this example taken on a Sony P-10 point and shoot camera in Berlin back in 2005.

I had no extra lighting, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the photo, the angle composition etc. then at one point the guy in the photo just walked straight into the frame completely unplanned and I managed to get this shot. This is one of my most popular photographs and in terms of equipment, anyone could take this shot.

For those of you that know me, met me, shot with me, you'll know that I love shooting portraits and fashion work. I do have softboxes, octaboxes and beauty dishes, a selection of lenses and strobes etc. but when I'm teaching someone photography I rarely bring out loads of equipment that I know they want, but don't really need.

A few examples of where I'm using loads of lights/equipment to create a look

The first two examples are using 3 lights, booms, 135mm lens, beauty dish, octabox, grids, reflectors, gels etc. The 3rd shot is using 2 lights, softbox and a gridded dish.

Overkill? maybe but that's what the assignment called for, if i didn't have all of that stuff with me, I probably wouldn't get the same shot but I'd still be able to get a shot that I want.

This is the point where someone will tell me to prove it, so here's two recent examples.

Surprise No 1. The Student

I teach Danny each week around various parts of photography, from camera settings and composition, to photoshop workflows and creativity. A couple of weeks ago he caught me off guard as I thought we would be doing a theory session to go through the photos he'd taken in the last week and evaluate them, but arrived to see he'd set up a home studio and had been taking portraits of family members all day.

He showed me some of the photos and asked me what I'd do to improve them using the equipment and space that he has got. Rather than just look at the photo and say change this, do this... think about this etc... I took him through how I would approach the shoot and showed him various techniques and ideas to get something more professional looking. The catch was, I had none of my equipment and as Danny is a Nikon shooter I had to work out how to use the camera and how to change the power on his flashes as well!

This was the final image of Danny, he'd recently bought a small softbox (if you can call it that from ebay) thinking it might be like one of my small softboxes, but rather than a 40cmx40xm box it was just slightly bigger than the flash head of an SB800. I'm not suggesting you can get the same photo with this tiny modifier, but it's just big enough to take the edge off of a bare flash gun. I pulled Danny away from the background and moved the flash in as close as possible to get this shot.

So just to recap, that's one light, one stand, £2.50 worth of modifier from china and a completely different camera system.

2) Corporate headshot

Life is full of Surprises and this one was a biggie. I was staying at a friend's house when I was asked to shoot a couple of corporate headshots the next day as there was a print deadline. The big problem was, I only had my spare body (a Canon 350d) which I hadn't used for over a year and a 70-300mm budget lens that was my friends that I'd never used before. I had no lights, no reflectors and most importantly no time. I had no more than 5 minutes with each person to get the shot. The one saving grace is that I knew the building fairly well and had a good idea of where would have a good natural light at that time of the day. The bad news was that particular room wasn't available, and being in the UK the weather is never predictable at the best of times.

I chose a corridor that had a large set of windows on one side, and a white wall on the other. I knew from looking at the size of the corridor the wall would act as a reflector for the window light and add fill.

So a recap of this shot:

Cheapo Camera

Cheapo Lens

No lights

No modifiers

No extra equipment

I long for the day when someone asks me what was my thinking behind getting the shot instead of what lens I used, what inspires me to take the photos I take instead of why don't I use the latest camera body.

The moral of this post is, stop worrying about how much you're not spending on your equipment or what lens/camera body your friend has. If you can't take a decent photo with the most basic equipment then even with £10k worth of gear you're still not going to get a good shot.

For those that are still interested I'll post a list of my equipment and possibly a photo in the next week or so, those that haven't seen me shoot will probably be quite surprised.

Shooting a car with one light

2010-06-03T09:47:00.005+01:00

For those of you who've either been following me on Twitter or have met me at a shoot or just at one of the London Strobist or Essex Strobist Socials you've probably heard me going on about building my own camera rig to stick onto a moving car. Well I got so close however one of the Avenger suction cups wasn't working so I had to send it back... but I digress...

Photographing cars is like any other subject in that there's no standard way of lighting it, each car has it's own challenges and mine wasn't any exception to that rule. A few months back I was doing a strobist assignment on the way we move and produced this image of my friend's New Fiat 500 in a pearlescent white.

This image was created with two lights, one inside the car aimed straight up to light the inside and one in a softbox that I walked around the car with. It was a long exposure to get the headlights and the background lights to burn into the image, and took about 200 tries to get right (ok slight exaggeration but you get the point). The great thing about this car was the colour was easy to light and there were plenty of large flat areas on the car for the light.

As I mentioned earlier I was building a rig to stick to my car and that it hadn't happened due to a dodgy suction cup. The reason I wanted to shoot my car using a rig is because looking at the colour and the angles on the car a moving shot using ambient would probably take care of getting that even lighting I needed.

After washing my car I thought I'd better take some shots now before one of the flying rats (pigeons) uses my car as target practice. I used the same location as the fiat although it was a bit lighter (the fiat was shot at night time) so I could use some of the ambient light if I needed.

Problem #1: The colour of my car isn't as light as the Fiat 500.

This meant the one little light I had was going to work hard to get enough light. It's a fairly dark green as well and was almost (but not quite) as bad as photographing a black car where it acts like a giant mirror.

Problem #2: There are a lot of angles on the car meaning that I couldn't just paint a section of the car that easily... add to this the colour problem and it gives you a bigger problem.

Problem #3: The car isn't just one colour. most of it is green, the roof is black (and two different materials), the tridion is silver and the wheels are diamond cut chrome. I'd have to be very careful how I light this.

In the end after taking the first shot I realised there was no way I was going to get enough light on the car in 15 seconds with one light at full power and after the numerous failed attempts at the Fiat 500 to get the final shot (which was a faily easy car), I decided to cheat.

Can you say photoshop? ok just as a disclaimer I did still use one light and I wasn't creating a HDR image from multiple exposures. I basically kept the camera settings the same and concentrated on lighting certain sections of the car until I got it looking how I needed then moved onto another section and repeated the process. I also took a shot without any strobes as well just so that I could make sure I had the sky and background how I needed.

This image shows the basic set up of me walking around the car, this is actually a composite image of a few of the exposures to give you an idea of what was going on. and what I had to fix in post. Using layer masks I painted sections of the car that were lit until I got the result I wanted. Total Time spent, 20 minutes shooting 1 hour in post processing.

Learn your weaknesses to make you a better photographer

2010-05-15T12:47:00.000+01:00

Awhile back on my Twitter account I started posting new year's resolution tweets. Doesn't sound so weird does it? I'm sure I wasn't the only one

During December 2009, I began to look at my work over the course of 2009 and saw some great improvement in what I was doing, however something in the back of my mind was constantly telling me what I already knew. I realised I had been sticking within my limits and comfort zone. That's not to say what I was producing wasn't good, I could have easily carried on producing work that was "nice" but safe.

On a shoot my thought process, just like many other photographers tends to be get that safe shot (the one that you've prepped for) in the bag first so you have something usable in case nothing else works, then go crazy and try and push the limits. Although I do this to some extent on shoots, I realised that I wasn't really pushing myself far enough or in my photography in an overall sense.

A few things I noticed that I'll be doing this year to expand myself:

Shoot more Blondes - It's not a preference it's just the way it's worked out over the last few years
Shoot a style that seems alien to me - I shoot plenty of Fashion and Beauty but I've stayed away from things such as Fitness, Glamour, Lingerie, Editorial etc but realise that doing this can only help to improve my creative foundation in my own field.
Post-process more - I've been using photoshop for 12 years, WAY before even learning about photography, but over the last few years I've realised that I've only used photoshop to do basic retouching on my own photos but with all that knowledge and experience I should be trying to expand my use of it.
Use some great locations, I've been far to normal in my selections
Shoot more than just models - i.e. real people, don't get me wrong, shooting models is great, but there's something about shooting normal people that I miss.
Pay it forward - Basically a lot of the skills I've learned were taught to me by other people that haven't asked for anything in return. Now it's my turn.

So far this year I've done quite well. This shot of Vik Moreno and Shafina Patel is more a style I hadn't really explored before, although still fashion. I went a lot further with the post processing than I would normally to get this surreal look, used a fantastic location and also was taking another photographer through the shoot, so 3 of the points above covered in one shoot.

I guess the moral of this post is, if you ever start thinking that you're feeling comfortable with what you're shooting and what you're producing... it's time to change it up!

New Portfolio Pages

2010-05-13T22:00:00.003+01:00

I've been having issues with the company I was using to host my portfolio pages over the last couple of months (hence the lack of updates to those pages). As a temporary measure I have started using the flickr river app which will show each of these pages with the most recent additions first. Check out the photos and let me know what you think either by commenting here or on the photos themselves on flickr.

Strobist (David Hobby) Workshops in the UK

2010-04-22T13:23:00.002+01:00

DSC_0271
Originally uploaded by strobist

I don't normally post about anything but photoshoots etc, but I think this it worth it. A few years ago I started following a little photography lighting blog called Strobist. Since then the site's community has grown exponentially and there are now Strobist groups around the world sharing ideas on shoots.

I owe so much to David Hobby already, as it was the teachings on his site that would see my photography evolve into what it is today. But the turning point which accelerated my photography from being "that's nice" to "Oh wow, where did you download that from?" was back in May 2007 when I attended the first London Strobist Workshop (That's me there in the middle right). I even got pulled up to model for one of the photos which I won't post on here as it's too easy to see why I stay behind the camera.

We walked through plenty of concepts that are now available on the Strobist DVD's but as great as they are, it's not a substitute for being taught by the man himself. The biggest difference and what I think I got most out of, is his thinking process of how to use the light to make the most of the elements around him. Reading the On Assignment section of the site or watching the DVD's you'll get an understanding of how he does this, however to see him doing it in front of you in the room you're in (in 2007 it wasn't a particularly intersting room) and making some amazing images from that is on par with a certain water into wine incident from 2000 years ago.

David is has posted about his tour in the Uk for May 2010 on the main Strobist blog, and I would urge anyone with an interest in taking their photography to the next level to go and sign up, it's worth more than anything photography related you could buy for the same money.

Laura Nm Shoot

2010-04-13T23:55:00.004+01:00

Model: Laura Nm

MUA: OKO

Venue: Ingatestone Hall

I've been meaning to post these photos of Laura Nm for awhile now. I did a group shoot awhile back with the Essex Strobists Group at Ingatestone Hall. The location was probably the most amazing place I've shot to date. I could have easily spent the whole day just shooting the interior.

We had to start finishing up at 4pm, and I'd spent the whole day shooting with other models and helping some of the newer photographers out with their light set ups (Posts and Pictures to come). I'd asked Laura to come along to the shoot, and had been meaning to shoot with her all day, but she was in high demand from the beginning. I finally managed to grab her at around 3:45 giving me around 15 minutes to shoot. I chose one of the main corridors that had some fantastic chairs as well as a few bits in the background. Choosing this location was key because i wanted to knock the ambient light right down and create a dark and moody high fashion style photo.

There were no large windows to contend with and there was plenty of space on either side so I wouldn't get any reflection from the light off the walls. My weapons of choice for this shot: 1x 16" gridded beauty dish 1x small 24" softbox I'd been using these all day with the other shoots as well, and I had mainly used the beauty dish as my main light. For this shot though I wanted a tight light on the hair and face, and the dress body and chair to have a much more softer light. Using a shoot through umbrella wasn't an option because I needed to control the spill from affecting the background too much, so i went with the softbox.

This was the set up with my friend (and apprentice) Danny using my lighting set up to get a couple of shots in afterwards with laura

I had laura sit down, took a shot to test the light and it was pefect! Didn't need to adjust the power or position of the lights at all, which suited me fine as we didn't have much time to shoot. Laura did a great job of throwing in different poses and as soon as I got this shot I already knew it was the one.

In all that shoot lasted around 5 minutes, but I did get very lucky and I don't think i'll ever experience anything like that again in terms of it being pefect without any modification to the set up. But I didn't stop there, after Danny had taken a few shots using the set up, I used the last 5 minutes to take some beauty shots... but that's for another post.

Latest Shoots

2010-01-18T18:31:00.003Z

I've been trying to shoot with a friend of mine (Jazz) for awhile now but our free time never really gave us the opportunity. Just over a week ago we did a crazy 3 hour session before heading into London to party the night away. I'll post some notes on the shoot in the next few days.

Two days ago was the inaugural Essex Strobist Meetup shoot born from a few members of the London Strobist Meetup group on Flickr that realised that we all live fairly near each other just outside of London. The day was awesome, the venue was amazing and the models were all outstanding! The only problem on the day was that it went really fast, but I've just finished sorting through the frames and I can't believe how great they came out. It was definitely a shoot that allowed me to start fulfilling one of my main new years resolutions of shooting in a different style than I'm used to.

More on that to come in the next week along with a walkthru of some of the photos from the day. For now here's a photo of my photography partner for the first part of the shoot Martin Malone helping me to test my lighting set up whilst we waited for the models to arrive on set.

London Christmas lights.

2010-01-05T13:24:00.003Z

Being good at your job has its downfalls, namely working over the christmas period, however I did get christmas day and boxing day off.

During christmas day, after all the presents and big meal etc, I always like to venture into the city to photograph the christmas lights on oxford street as it's pretty much the only time (except at maybe 4am) that you can actually stop on the pavement (sidewalk if you're from north america) and set a tripod down. It's also the only day that the police don't seem to try and arrest you for being a terrorist for taking photos in the city (but that's for another post).

Over the last few years I've noticed that the numbers of photographers doing the same thing has increased somewhat and this year there were loads and loads of photographers out with cameras and tripods. I tend to try and travel light but there were plenty of people there with roller cases full of equipment.

I wanted to take a few shots of the lights and i was hoping that there were only going to be a few cars on the road so i could get some light streaks from a long exposure. As I got to oxford circus I realised that there was more traffic using the road than usual and everything was at a standstill.

I decided to go with a shorter exposure for this frame so didn't need the tripod... the sky was so clear and dark that night that I wasn't getting any ambient light bouncing off the clouds/pollution so it didn't seem to matter how long I exposed the frame for the sky was still pretty much black.

I ventured down Oxford street a little further and remembered South Moulton St near Bond Street had some really amazing looking lights. It's a small side street with a number of boutique shops and usually quite quiet. I needed to use a tripod for this shot as I was trying to get the people to blur to make it look busy.

At this point I was actually starting to freeze and finding it difficult to change the settings on the camera so decided to head back to where my car was parked. I realised that there was a perfect location with some very cool lights on regent street. I headed back up to Oxford Circus and then went to the North side of Regent street as there was a steady flow of cars there (for light streaking) and I could get a good shot of the Georgian Buildings mixed with the A Christmas Carol themed lights.

Preparing for a shoot

2009-12-16T15:22:00.003Z

I've only touched on this subject before, as I've been trying to get as much down in a short space of the actual shoot and how I think as I'm shooting.

I was looking at doing a post purely on the pre-preparation for a shoot just to show how much work and thinking goes into this before the actual day, however... I have been beaten to it by David "lord strobist himself" Hobby with a blog post on his preparation for a recent magazine cover shoot

Although at some point I will talk through my preparation for one of my shoots in more detail, I think the insight from this post is more detailed than I could ever write. From reading it, it's nice to know I'm on the same train of thought for the preparation but there a few things that have made me think "hmmm I really should be doing that".

Read the full post here

Help Portrait

2009-12-03T13:56:00.003Z

As some of you may know I've been busy working away on a personal project and I've been in dubai the past couple of weeks getting that started off. I'll make a more detailed post about it later, but I've come across a site posted on the strobist site recently which is actually quite similar to the project I'm working on.

It's called Help Portrait and is based around photographers using there skills to take a portrait of someone in need.

It's a great idea and I'm going to incorporate this into my current project so hope to see some of you there!

Tim Sharp Of Sharpbodies.co.uk

2009-11-15T22:45:00.000Z

I recently had a great opportunity to photograph one of the most sought after personal trainers in the UK, Tim Sharp. He's recently been in the news as the person responsible for the amazing change that Jodie Marsh unveiled to the world. Along with being a celebrity trainer, he's also a drug-free natural bodybuilder with an amazing physique.

Over the past few months he's been training for the British Natural Bodybuilding Federation (BNBF) Final and a few days before the final we scheduled a shoot to capture his body at the peak of his fitness.

Going into the shoot I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do, I did plenty of preperation work by researching bodybuilding images and also what the current trends were in fitness modelling. I discovered that much of the pro bodybuilding photos were fairly old-school and the fitness style photos were much more modern.

The first thing I did in the shoot was get my assistant for the day to stand in so i could get an idea of how the light was going to look before asking Tim to start posing. I pretty much nailed the lighting on the first shot with a small adjustment made to stop down the aperture and we were good to go.

The first set up was a triangle light with two bare strobes behind right and left, and I decided to use a small softbox on a boom overhead to one side aimed almost straight down. At this angle and being a small size I'd get lots of shadow detail in the muscles and keep the light from hitting the metal part of the background too much.

This is a wide angle shot of the set up

I asked Tim to do a few bodybuilding poses and zoomed to 85mm to compress the background.

I wanted to get some other shots that were a bit more relaxed for the site and we went outside onto the roof of the building where there was a great metal wall running along the side of the building. The sky was slightly overcast and so I took a shot using ambient light and realised that I could drop the ambient light a couple of stops to make the metallic wall go a dark grey and change the tone of the photo. I added two speedlites from the right aimed at Tim's head and torso angled downwards so I'd still get the shadow definition in the muscles. The metallic wall was reflective enough to add fill from the left so I didn't need another speedlite to bring up the shadows.

I also took a couple of natural light portrait shots for the site which you can see here

Current shoots

2009-10-24T01:01:00.003+01:00

October has been one hell of a busy month, sadly most of it has been work and not personal projects that I can talk about on here.

In the next few posts I'll be covering a few different areas.

Bodybuilding photos of Tim Sharp www.Sharpbodies.co.uk

How I shoot glass for product photography (a question I get asked time and time again).

Shooting a moody self portrait.

Using long exposure in a portrait.

Shooting with Xanadu Nox

2009-10-12T10:08:00.004+01:00

At the September London Strobist meetup, I had the opportunity to shoot with Xanadu Nox. We were shooting in Finsbury park and rather than use the Graffiti lined walls of the tunnels we actually had sunshine...

...yes really

In a last chance attempt to hold onto the thoughts of a hot summer that never happened this year I wanted to create a few images that would give the feeling of summer. We found an area that was almost like a field (well there was some grass) and I already knew I wanted to shoot into the sunlight. Shooting with the sun behind Xanadu allowed me to use it as a warm hair light that really made her hair colour "pop". Add to that a bit of lens flare and lack of contrast in the frame and we had a dreamy looking summer image. I added a small amount of light from the front with a Mini Softbox with an SB20 camera right and above the camera.

So great I got a few great images with this set up, but Xanadu is such a great model I wanted to try a few of the other locations that were around the area and get something a little different from what I normally do.

Eventually we found a bridge, metal on each side which was great for reflecting a backlight, and what made it better was there was some warm sunlight (by this time the sun was fairly low in the sky) that was hitting the bridge creating a pool of light.

I placed a bare Sb20 on a stand at the other end of the bridge to act as a backlight as it was fairly dark and I needed to seperate her from the background. by balancing for this flash I managed to turn the pool of sunlight into a very warm light, and by positioning xanadu by the right side of the bridge used the sunlight as a hair light to add some glow.

By extending her hand out It looks like she's holding a ball of light (actually the flash from the background) and so in post, I added a layer with a glow filter applied and used a fairy brush created by Obsidian Dawn to add something a little extra to the shot.

The original shot itself was good enough, but I couldn't resist doing something a little special with this image.

It had already been a long day and we were starting to loose light pretty fast by this point, so had time to get another couple of shots before we left. We had a great vantage point from that bridge and it was too good an opportunity to miss out, so we grabbed a few photos of Xanadu lying on the floor below the bridge. I took a few zoomed in, but decided the wide shots composistion just looked so much better. Apparently a few of the other photographers (who couldn't see us shooting on the bridge) weren't sure whether she had passed out, fallen off the bridge or was doing it for the shot.

I had a great time that day though, Xanadu Nox is definitely a model that every photographer should work with at least once in their career, hopefully I'll get to work with her again.

Announcement: Portfolio Pages are up!

2009-10-11T20:09:00.005+01:00

I've long had www.projecthalo.co.uk as a seperate site just showcasing some of my work. I've now decided to make this the main site for my photography and link to my portfolio galleries from here.

To the right I've added a new section called My Portfolio which is broken down into People, Places and Products. ---->

Let me know what you think.

September London Strobist Meetup

2009-10-04T00:35:00.002+01:00

I've been ridiculously busy with different photography projects the past month which is pretty strange for September, but I have lots of shoots to blog about over the coming weeks. The first of which will be the London Strobist Meetup Group shoot from last weekend.

I shot with only two of the models that day which normally would have been a bad thing, but I had two exceptionally good models that I managed to get some amazing photos with.

I tend to try and keep my photos as they are from the camera with minor retouching, however for one of them I really couldn't resist the urge to add a few nice touches.

Building a shot from 1 light

2009-08-27T23:14:00.004+01:00

More and more I get asked to teach people about photography and I realise that I need to start thinking again about the processes I'm going through as I'm usually in auto-pilot turbo mode when I'm shooting. For someone to try to follow what I'm doing as I'm doing it working at the speed my brain does can't be easy... even I can't keep up with what I'm doing sometimes. In order to help me become a better "teacher" (not sure if that's the right word, I think I'll use...) person that wants to share knowledge (less pressure on that title), I need to start breaking down how I shoot into easily explainable parts.

This morning I had a shoot for an internal catalogue of trade clothing items. Mark Green was my model and he'd be modelling a number of shirts and sweatbands etc for one of the biggest soft drinks manufacturers in the UK.

We had access to the boardroom which I knew quite well and thought great, they've just refurbished it there's loads of space I should have loads of options. Of course being in there as a photographer was completely different to how I normally see the room. there were no clear walls, sets of doors along the backwall, massive TV screens along the other, rows of cabinets windows etc etc. The one major thing I had forgotten about was the huge desk that runs through the middle of the room meaning space was limited.

The windows along one side had white walls and white blinds and I was thinking I could possibly use this as a background. Mark is pretty tall so this wasn't likely to be an option. I would love to have used the boardroom setting, but it just wouldn't work to create enough interest in the photo. I had to keep the photos fairly consistent and think about the intended use of the photos.

These photos would be going in an online catalogue so the images would be thumbnails on the main pages. I needed to keep the background as clutter free as possible... no fancy high fashion editorial backgrounds for this shoot. I then spotted the wall at the end of the room by the window.

closing the blind to try and kill of most of the natural light that end, I began to craft the light into what I needed. I set up a Boom with an SB-20 in a Magic Softbox aimed that at the wall but far forward enough to act as a key light if i needed it. This gave the wall a lovely specular that I could use as a background to convince people I had used a studio for this.

I then stuck mark in front of the wall to see how that light would look like when he was in position. You'll have to forgive the pose, but at this point I did say I was just building the shot up so this won't be in the catalogue so pose how you like... (gotta love those candids on a shoot).

I liked the light a lot, it was giving off that dramatic look I wanted to go for, and the blind over the window to the right was reflecting a little bit of fill light. I wanted to make mark really pop from the background so added a light to the right at almost head height, with a short snoot on it to make sure it didn't hit the wall behind. I tried barndoors but the space was so limited it just wasn't feasible without getting them in the frame. After a couple of frames, I edged closer to that light on the right to try and throw a bit of flare in the shot. You can actually see the mini softbox in the top right hand corner of this shot, that's how close we were working.

This was starting to look how I wanted, and for that edgy look on normal shoot I may have put a reflector in to reflect more light from right, but I wasn't shooting this for the model. I wasn't even shooting this for my portfolio, I had a client to please, and had to remember that the brief was to show off the shirt in the photo. The main problem with the above photo is that the shirt looks like it has a black hole at the lower part as the fall off from the softbox is pretty sevre. I didn't want to touch the light that I already had, as I wanted to keep that look but I wanted to bring up the colour of the shirt and the logo. I added another light right in front of me to the left, aimed at the shirt on really low power.

Et Voila... first shot ready for the catalogue. This is the final set up shot of the lights just so you can see how tight an area we were working in and the positions of the lighting.

The beauty of this set up was the front light could be positioned to just highlight whatever else we wanted no matter which product we were shooting. We shot a few pieces for Gatorade just after this using the same set up.

The Gatorade vest and towel was the main focus here so bringing Mark forward so the softbox light just touched him and mainly lit the background whilst the front light was aimed at the towel and logo on the vest really brings your eyes to that more than to Mark's face.

Similarly we tried another pose for the towel and moved the front light again to draw the attention of the eyes to the product.

Finally when shooting the Gatorade sweatband we aimed the front light right at the wrist so the hand and the Gatorade logo was the main focus.

There were quite a few more photos taken with that same set up. The longest part of the shoot was just building that light set up. as soon as that was taken care of the rest of the shoot was really fast.

If you ever see me on a shoot, it never looks that as well thought out as this, I'm doing all this "stuff" in my head as I'm shooting. But basically I'll start with no light and keep adding more one by one as they're needed. Nothing worse than starting with 3 lights and then trying to work out which one is causing your photo to not look the way you want.

Shooting Anna in Epping Forest

2009-07-10T12:52:00.002+01:00

9:30am we Arrived at Epping Forest to meet our model for the day, Anna. I was pretty worried about the weather that morning as the night before it rained through the night, and it was more like a tsunami than a drizzle!

Luckily by the time we wandered into the forest and found our spot, the sun had come out giving off that really surreal light that forests do at this time of the year. The main focus of this photoshoot was to get Anna some great shots for her portfolio and at the same time I would get to use my 135mm lens for more than just headshots (usually i can't back up far enough).

I took a number of shots in for my safety images, I tend to take these at the start of the shoot, to get the model a bit more relaxed at the same time as getting a few standard images that would work in a portfolio. Why would anyone ever stop there? I wanted to use that lovely warm light coming through trees as a rim light, as this was fairly soft and to one side I added a second light behind her to the left to seperate the other side of her from the background. I wanted to make this look more naturally lit so I used a 43" umbrella just out of frame to bring up the light at the front. The light was almost perfect from the first shot, I dropped the ambient exposure to just under a stop and turned the lights up to compensate... perfect...

Preparing for a real shoot

2009-06-21T18:59:00.006+01:00

As I mentioned previously whilst I should have been fufilling my mini-assignment I got distracted and in the process of doing some preparation for a shoot ended up shooting a personal assignment instead of doing the household shoot I was supposed to be doing.

I have a shoot next week (weather permitting) in a forest that I've never been to and wanted to make sure that I did my preparation beforehand so I could spend as much time as possible on the shooting instead of finding locations, where to meet the model and where to park etc. Its not always possible to do this on shoots and I think this is probably only the second time I've had the chance to do this much preparation.

So I checked out the location found a place to park, a couple of places that would make good backdrops and checked out light levels in the shaded areas to see how they'd look when under, over and correctly exposed. This is quite important as it will give you an idea to work with on how much light/equipment to bring and will also give you some creative options for working different looks on the shoot.

When asking the model about what type of thing she wanted for her portfolio, she mentioned crazy make up. A friend of mine that assists me on shoots (and her appartment is a great makeshift studio for headshots) has been dying to try out her make up skills on a shoot and had just bought some fantastic colours from Gosh cosmetics.

I asked her to do something she thought might be good for the shoot next week and using a combination of Gold and Blue she created something on her own face which would have been a shame to just wipe off afterwards without at least taking a couple of shots. We were shooting in her appartment against one of the white walls. I was shooting with a 135mm lens and on a crop sensor so I had to back right up to get the composition i wanted. I thought I'd be better off going with clamshell lighting but with a reflector below and the main light high above. I had another light bare coming in from the right CTO'd to get the background orange. My initial thought was have it looking almost like a sunset. Problem as many photographers in the UK with home studios will find is space... I couldn't quite get the background light to how I wanted it, and holding the reflector at the right angle was a problem.

I put the second light into a 43" umbrella and went with a full clam shell and ended up with great light just didn't like the bright white background. I only managed to move Nat away from the wall slightly (as I mentioned) room is an issue) and so i had to get the umbrellas closer in and drop the power. From this the exposure of the wall dropped and I could continue shooting. after doing a few shots for her facebook/portfolio, I thought it would be a good idea to really emphasise the make up instead of the face that was on it. Having travelled around the UAE a lot and a few other countries in the middle east, it always amazed me how amazing the locals eyes looked when their faces were covered, so we got a couple of scarves and tried those out to really emphasise the eyes.

I'm not likely to use this type of lighting on the shoot this weekend, but it's the problem solving on the shoot that was the importantly learning here which means when I hit these problems in the real world on a real shoot I'll know how to deal with them instead of falling apart and crying like i've just won an oscar. Point get the simple mistakes out of the way on practice shoots so you can concentrate on new ones during the real thing.

Random Shooting Practice: supplement

2009-06-21T01:14:00.002+01:00

It's been a few days and I should apologise for the not making the post about a household object... I've been working on something a little bit more interesting which I'll post a full story about later.

I did find her in a house, just not my house... photos to come

Random Shooting Practice Part I

2009-06-15T11:04:00.004+01:00

Not a tip on how to improve your clay pigeon shooting, but want to know why that other photographer in field spends less time setting up lights and going "um... what do I do to make the next shot different?"

The answer... practice, in fact no not just practice but practice that's actually going to make a difference when you're out on that shoot. It doesn't have to be the same style, include the same light set up or even the same subject. The practice i'm referring to is more about how you think when shooting.

It would be great if I could have a selection of models that live in my appartment that were on-calll 24-7 and at 2am when I get some crazy idea and want to try it out they would be ready to shoot. Unfortunately I'm not Hugh-Heffner and I'm sure banging on the door of any of my neighbours at 2am is more likely to involve shooting from them instead.

In the comfort of your own home, with the help of some paper, a bit of lighting equipment (this can be anything from desklamps to studio strobes) you can practice various techniques but more importantly you can practice your thinking around a shoot. In every house normal every day items can be transformed into works of art, the trick is making these bits and bobs look interesting from a photography perspective. If you make your brain work like this more and more, when you get the photo assignment from hell and the shoot involves the worlds most boring person standing in front of the worlds most boring place (and no i'm not talking about the next Uk election campaign advertising, I was thinking more the photos of Real Estate Agents that you see at bus stops in the US), you'll be able to do something a bit more interesting with it.

Knowing how hard it is for some people to get motivated to go and shoot, I set myself micro assignments when i'm shooting around the house.

Assignment: Household Object

Shoot a common household object using only one speedlite

Shot must be in colour

Minimal photoshop allowed to tidy up image (e.g. dust spots, etc)

I didn't want to get too specific with the details of the assignment, after all this was about practicing the creativity of being on a shoot.

This was a real assignment I set myself at home to practice my skills, I'll show the final image tomorrow and explain the process behind getting the shot.

"I'm not a Wedding Photographer" - Going Commando pt-1

2009-06-12T19:25:00.006+01:00

"I am not a wedding photographer" These are the words I hear myself saying time and again when I get asked by friends to be the photographer at their wedding.

Wedding Photographers are a different breed of photographer, they live and breathe weddings, they know what images capture the memories of the day and are the only people giving the Bride and Groom's Parents a run for their money in the enthusiasm dept. I 'll be the first to admit that I hate weddings (and that's not a good start for going into wedding photography) and I believe that a good wedding photographer is worth their weight in gold.

So a friend of mine was having her wedding on the 30th of May 09, and it was in one of my favourite places in the world, Lebanon. I hadn't been there since 2005 and was aching to go back so this was a great excuse for me to go visit. Unlike a lot of my friends (who all seem to be getting married this year), she never asked me to take any photos let alone "be the photographer" for her wedding. I did utter the immortal words "I'm not a wedding photographer" though just for good measure (and it felt weird not saying it when talking about a wedding). As far as she was concerned I would be there for her wedding and a holiday so didn't even have to bring my camera if I didn't want to.

So just over 2 weeks to go before the wedding and I need to book my ticket to Beirut Airport and I'm getting excited.

It might be worth noting at this point that every time in the last 4 years I've gone to book a ticket, war, riots, invasions and pretty much any reason not to enter a country has stopped me from doing so, but i was determined this time.

Then I put my card in an ATM and the machine crashed taking my card with it and my hopes of making this wedding. (Maybe someone is trying to tell me something?) to cut a long story short, I booked a flight on the morning of the 28th, caught a plane in the evening, landed in Dubai at 7am on the 29th, ran around with a friend for a few hours and then was in Beirut by 9pm.

I couldn't resist taking a few shots whilst at the wedding, I wanted to capture those memories through my eyes and I was shooting for myself not for anyone else. I had to make equipment choices before going as it was a million miles from the hotel, and although I wanted to bring with me my whole strobist kit, carrying that around with me in the 30 degree heat, to two parties, a restaurant and a church may have been pushing it a little. I decided on a fast 135mm prime in case the light was very low and a standard kit lens 17-85mm zoom.

I felt naked without my strobes, but I left them behind, knowing full well if i brought them it would only be a matter of time before I started using them even if i didn't have to.

I get to the Bride's place for the pre-wedding party, and i'm in luck, there are huge windows all along one side of the apartment acting light a giant softbox. et voila, the shot at the top of the post is the first frame I took that day and is still one of my favourites. She was waiting for the photographer and Videographer to finish setting up before having photos with everyone and it was just such a perfect opportunity to capture the shot.

The windows were to camera left and around about 6-7 feet from her giving that lovely soft light to one side that you see in the photo. There are many things I could pull apart in this photo if I were to critique it as a wedding photograph, but you have to remember I was there as a wedding guest shooting as candidly as I would have been had I have been carrying a point and shoot camera.

As I was there as a guest I could pick up on moments happening around the room that maybe a photographer wouldn't as they'd be concentrating on the bride. For me this was my favourite shot of the whole day. Yes there was a bit of the frame at the top I didn't get the whole sofa in etc but it was more about the mood it conveys.

There is plenty wrong with this shot (metering with fireworks going off isn't exactly easy), but again it's the moment that was being captured. I guess the point of this post is if you are a studio photographer, or someone that just takes their light everywhere, put the strobes down, and everyone once in awhile go Commando, it's a great feeling when your attention can be turned to capturing the expressions of people, instead of worrying about the make up, hair, lighting positions etc. I treated it almost like a street photographer would and my images were very different to what the official photographer produced and although I know that the official photos will be the ones that you'll want to buy, I would hope that the happy couple get a sense of what memories the guests would take away with them from the day.

As they say in Lebanese, Mabrouk!

I've finally done it

2009-06-12T08:19:00.001+01:00

I've tried and tried to stay away from starting a blog about my photography, but I have succumbed to the powers that be and here I am. I could compare that to my refusal to get an iPhone and now I can't live without it, so here's hoping that over the coming months this blog is as much a part of my life as Steve Jobs' wonder gadget is to me now.

I'll be basically going through the thought processes behind the photos I take, and thanks to David Hobby of Strobist fame it looks like I'll be starting with some of the assignments he's set for "Bootcamp II - The Hobby Strikes Back". Ok so I added the last bit in a moment of Star Wars Geekdom but you get the picture.

There's nothing to say you can't enter these BootCamp assignments as well, just get yourself over to flickr and sign up for an account and find the strobist group on there and all will be revealed.

NB: Just as a side note, I love using strobes/flashes for my photography, however recently i've been trying to get back to my roots using available light so there will be quite a few posts that don't involve a strobe at all.