Sofa Girls
My first attempt at a composite-style portrait.
I found this sofa when I had my camera but no lighting gear - I'd been out all morning looking for a shot and was about to head home. The snow appeared to be thawing fast so once I had the idea, I got home as quick as possible and came back with the kit.
I didn't know that the snow was going to stay till the light was more favourable so I thought "composite".
Somebody had built the sofa and left a copy of Bristol magazine on a "coffee table" so I thought I'd try to complete the living room look with a lamp and candle. I stuck a lamp on the table and dropped the exposure in tungsten WB till it looked like a nice dusk shot. Still waiting (no doubt foolishly) for news on a RP JrX release for europe after my poverty wizards packed in so I had to go with optical slaves. Not ideal in the middle of the day.
Most of the work here was done with a slaved sb-26 with doublecut CTO to paint using lighten blending in PS.
One shot in the lamp exposed so as not to blow out the detail.
One shot from above the table to fill in the "light from the lamp"
2 shots from each side of the sofa. All of the above triggered by oncamera flash at 1/1 just to get the slave to pick it up.
I then whacked a bare sb-26 slaved up on a stand with a cereal box snoot behind and down into the scene for rim (you can see this on the girls and the table). This then passed on the message to the first slaved doublecut CTO bounced into the magazine to build up the light on the girls who happened to be walking past with 2 other guys. Their attention was already on the sofa so it was easy to cajole them into holding a flash once I'd described the end product and taken their details.
I then had to wait about 4 hours and come back for sunset to get the bridge with the lights on because otherwise it wasn't a convincing dusk scene.
As it happened, the vast majority of the snow was still there but I would have had to composite anyway as there was a sodium vapour lamp spewing vomit-light all over the foreground. I did actually take a few more shots in that environment which I'll upload later but I can tell the balance isn't going to be as successful.
I couldn't find my tripod attachment so the job wasn't made any easier by having my camera on a wobbly light stand with the case stuck under one foot to prop it up.
Feedback welcome especially on the PP as I've never tried anything like this before and whenever you do something for the first time, you tend to "turn up the dials" a little too much :)
Explore #12 7th Feb '09 :D
Sofa Girls
My first attempt at a composite-style portrait.
I found this sofa when I had my camera but no lighting gear - I'd been out all morning looking for a shot and was about to head home. The snow appeared to be thawing fast so once I had the idea, I got home as quick as possible and came back with the kit.
I didn't know that the snow was going to stay till the light was more favourable so I thought "composite".
Somebody had built the sofa and left a copy of Bristol magazine on a "coffee table" so I thought I'd try to complete the living room look with a lamp and candle. I stuck a lamp on the table and dropped the exposure in tungsten WB till it looked like a nice dusk shot. Still waiting (no doubt foolishly) for news on a RP JrX release for europe after my poverty wizards packed in so I had to go with optical slaves. Not ideal in the middle of the day.
Most of the work here was done with a slaved sb-26 with doublecut CTO to paint using lighten blending in PS.
One shot in the lamp exposed so as not to blow out the detail.
One shot from above the table to fill in the "light from the lamp"
2 shots from each side of the sofa. All of the above triggered by oncamera flash at 1/1 just to get the slave to pick it up.
I then whacked a bare sb-26 slaved up on a stand with a cereal box snoot behind and down into the scene for rim (you can see this on the girls and the table). This then passed on the message to the first slaved doublecut CTO bounced into the magazine to build up the light on the girls who happened to be walking past with 2 other guys. Their attention was already on the sofa so it was easy to cajole them into holding a flash once I'd described the end product and taken their details.
I then had to wait about 4 hours and come back for sunset to get the bridge with the lights on because otherwise it wasn't a convincing dusk scene.
As it happened, the vast majority of the snow was still there but I would have had to composite anyway as there was a sodium vapour lamp spewing vomit-light all over the foreground. I did actually take a few more shots in that environment which I'll upload later but I can tell the balance isn't going to be as successful.
I couldn't find my tripod attachment so the job wasn't made any easier by having my camera on a wobbly light stand with the case stuck under one foot to prop it up.
Feedback welcome especially on the PP as I've never tried anything like this before and whenever you do something for the first time, you tend to "turn up the dials" a little too much :)
Explore #12 7th Feb '09 :D