The comments I’ve had to the recent addition of video clips showing a glimpse of how I work, I thought I’d show the progression of an idea.  Not just how the actual image was made, but how the idea progressed.

The photo above of Sarah and Mark at Coney Island, is from the day-long photo session where we went to different locations in New York.  Where this image above started, was in a previous sequence ..

Here I just used the soft late afternoon light, diffused by the approaching thunderstorm.   Beautiful light.  No additional light or flash needed.

Turning around, I saw the sky was darkening rapidly, and becoming menacing.  As it turned out, about 10 minutes later we were dashing for the car as the rain started slamming down on us.

Here is a test shot of Sarah against the sky:

Meh.  There’s nothing going on there.  There’s no drama, and no punch to the image.  
The camera settings here were: 1/250th @ f5.6 @ 400 ISO
but I wanted the sky to appear darker and more sombre.

So I added flash from a Q-flash in a softbox off to my right – a similar set-up to this one, but with a Q-flash instead of a speedlight.  The Q-flash is also TTL-controlled by the Quantum Freewire system, as shown here in this post on the lighting set-up I took with me to Vegas. My assistant, the-other-Neil, held the softbox up high.

Here it is .. the next step .. a test shot to see how it would look with Sarah lit with flash from the softbox, and with my settings such that the sky is now darker by more than a stop compared to the first test shot.

Aaah, now we’re onto something.  There’s more drama to the scene now.
My settings here:   1/250th @ f6.3 @ 200 ISO

So there is a 1.3 stop difference between this and the previous image, with the flash then exposing correctly for Sarah.

A point I’d like to labour here for a while … TTL flash vs manual flash.
I know there are many hard-core strobists out there that would insist on the flash being on manual, and there are distinct advantages, primarily the consistency in exposure throughout a sequence of images.  With Manual flash, once you have determined correct exposure, if your light-to-subject distance remains the same, then your exposure remains absolutely constant from shot to shot.  This makes post-production a breeze.

However, I often find that when I am working fast, I’ll take the speed of using TTL flash over using manual flash.  In this example, I wanted to under-expose my sky by more than a stop.  I changed both my ISO and my aperture … and my flash exposure followed.

With manual flash, the usual method would be to determine the aperture and ISO for manual flash, and then control the background exposure with the choice of shutter speed.  There is a chance then of hitting the ceiling at max sync speed if your background isn’t dark enough yet.  So you’d have to figure out a shutter speed as a starting point, and then work out the flash power setting (at that specific flash-to-subject distance), and then figure out the combination of aperture and ISO.

It works.  I suspect the majority of photographers that do on-location lighting with off-camera lighting would work with manual flash.  And any photographer that wants to get a grip on mastering lighting, absolutely have to know how to use manual flash. Comfortably and fast.  And understand how the settings need to be juggled – shutter speed, aperture, ISO, flash power, light-to-subject distance.

So … back to using TTL flash.  Since TTL flash will follow my camera’s settings, it was faster for me here to just use TTL flash.  Remember, the thunderstorm was brewing.  (A video clip that follows next week will show a sequence following this where we relied on the incoming wind.)  But I digress …

TTL flash follows my settings.  I want to get 1.3 stops under for my background?  (or more) … then I simply change my aperture and ISO and my flash output will follow.  Simple.  The possible variation in exposure is something I can live with and can fix in post if necessary.

Back to the sequence of images.  Now, as adorable as Sarah looked … it needed something more, something a little more Fashion-y.  So I added Mark and had Sarah lean back into him.

Here is the image straight out of the raw conversion program:

The settings are still:   1/250th @ f6.3 @ 200 ISO

The composition needed to be tightened up, so I went for a more cinematic crop, and added some Photoshop fairy dust again to make the image pop even more .. and there you have it!

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Flashy Photo Sessions in NYC 06-19 from Neil van Niekerk on Vimeo.
[ if the video is choppy, let the clip buffer completely first, or turn off HD ]

On Friday June 19th, (along with my assistant, the-other-Neil), I met up with 3 models in New York for a photo session with each.  The intention was to try out different lighting techniques, different equipment .. and just to have fun and see what we can come up with.

First we roamed the Meat-packing District and Greenwhich with Aleona and Laura Lee, and then later on met up with Sasha in Brooklyn.  This video clip will be a glimpse of working with three gorgeous models in an ever-fascinating city.   Enjoy!  : )   I think what might be interesting with this video, is to see the wider view in relation to the resulting image. 

 Some of the images have already been posted here, and you will see more of them over time. And some will eventually appear in a book on the topic of off-camera lighting to be published next year.

The lighting ranged from just available light, to using off-camera Q-flash with a softbox, and later on with Sasha, some video lights.  A flexible approach that allows for divergent results, helping to keep the final mix of images fresh.

The equipment:
Nikon D3;  Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S;  Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S;  Nikon 200mm f2 AF-S

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The workshop dates for the rest of 2009:

The NJ / NYC workshop coming up shortly on July 13th.    sold out!

The UK / Ireland workshop dates in July are also coming up fast.  
Both the Brighton and Birmingham workshops are now sold out.
The workshop in Cork, Ireland on Sunday, Aug 02, is also sold out,
but there is the chance of an overflow date on Monday Aug 03 for Cork.

The dates for latter half of 2009, with the new dates in bold :

• Denver, CO  -  Aug 18 (Tue)
• Portland, OR  -  Sept 1 (Tue)
• Seattle, WA  -  Sept 3 (Thu)
• NJ / NYC  –  Sept 14 (Mon)
• Boston, MA  -  Sept 16 (Wed)
• Philadelphia, PA  -  Sept 29 (Tue)
• Annapolis, MD  -  Oct 1 (Thu)  (city changed from DC, and date also changed)
• Atlanta, GA  -  Oct 13 (Tue)
• Palm Beach, FL  -  Nov 03 (Wed)   (date has been moved forward by a day)
• Austin, TX  -  Nov 17 (Tue)
• Dallas, TX  – Nov 19 (Thu) 

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For anyone who attends the workshops, there are some extra goodies thrown by the kind sponsorships from Fundy, and ProDPI.  Get more details on the workshops info page.

For those who are interested in attending one of the workshops this year, the 2008 workshops were very well received.  For feedback on previous workshops, check the comments left by the attendees for each workshop.

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. Register for a workshop .

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As first in an ongoing series about overpowering the sun with flash, this photograph was from a session with Sarah and her husband, Mark.  The sunlight on Coney Island was pretty harsh, and I needed to / wanted to clean up the sun’s harsh shadows with flash.

Since the Sunny 16 rule has it that broad daylight is in the order of 1/250th @ f11 @ 100 ISO … you’d either have to shoot with a bare speedlight, (which, as a small light source, will cause hard shadows) .. or use a much more powerful strobe with a softbox.

For this image I used the Profoto AcuteB 600R lighting kit with 2×3 Profoto softbox off to my right, adding flash at full power.  I placed the softbox and flash to come in from the same direction as the sunlight, adding as much light as the sun.  The intention is to clean up the shadows caused by the sunlight, and because I am then under-exposing the background by a stop ..  thereby also saturating the sky.
settings: 1/250th @ 160 ISO @ f22

(And yes, I can see the effects of diffraction at that aperture. There’s definitely more softness than I would’ve had at f8 or so. Next time I’ll try a ND filter, and see how that works out.  As for the amount of dust bunnies that rear their ugly little heads at f22 .. ouch!  Mucho cloning and spot healing brush.  And I thought I was fussy about keeping my sensor clean!)

In addition to cleaning up the dust spots, I also removed some people in the background and removed the reflection of the softbox that appeared in Mark’s sunglasses.  The image then had a little bit of extra sweetening done to it with some Photoshop fairy dust that I sprinkled over it.

For those who would like to see the image directly out of the RAW converter ..

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At a recent wedding the time we had for the formal photographs were compressed, and we had to come up with a variety of romantic portraits and formal photos.  This time I decided I want to do them only using video lights.  The wysiwygnature of lighting a subject with video lights was a bonus in this case, allowing me to work fast.

I had my assistant crouch down behind them, rim lighting them with the video lights.  The actual light falling on the couple is the ambient light in the room.  The image above was shot at 1/80th @ f2.8 @1600 iso, using the Nikon D3 and Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens.  The other images here which are directly lit by video lights, are at different settings with lower ISOs and higher shutter speeds.  But since this image was rim lit by the video lights, and the video lights didn’t contribute much to the actual exposure values, I had to go higher on the ISO, and a little lower on the shutter speed than I normally prefer.

I purposely let the video light flare here, by changing my position until I could see the edge of the video light.

The image above had some post-processing done to it, by running one of the Totally Rad Actions on it, giving a slightly retro feel which I think suited it.   Here is what the image looked like with only the WB touched up a bit …

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Two more images from the portrait session: 

 1/100 @ f3.2 @ 1000 ISO

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1/100 @ f2.8 @ 1000 ISO

Withthese images, I do have to touch up the exposure as part of the normal editing of the RAW file.   Since my assistant would move position during a sequence, whether inadvertently, or whether on my instruction, there will be some variation in exposure, as well as variation in the spread of light.  But this is part of the bit of serendipity of working with video lights – there are often a surprise in how the images comes out simply by the light being positioned differently for various images in the same sequence.

More articles on how I use video light:
- Sasha L (model),
- Priscilla (model),
- embracing tungsten light. 

And here’s a list of equipment if you’re curious about which video lights I use.

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In reply to some questions on using video light for portraits, here are some images of Sasha, a model who brought an entirely appropriate sense of the dramatic to the photo session.  With vintage clothing and hats, the video lights appeared a good choice for lighting. 

For this session, I had an assistant who held up two Lowel ID-lights, each with barn-doors to flag the light and stop light spill .. and in this way get a lot of control over the direction and placing of the light.   The one light was used to light up our model, and the other light was to light up the background.  We were standing out on the dark street in Brooklyn, and we needed the second light to create some interesting background.  In this case the background was a brightly painted brick wall. 

In explaining here how I use the video light, I also thought it pertinent to show some of my less successful images as examples of the progression in getting to images that have impact ..

 Firstly though, in using video light for portraits my assistant who is holding up the light(s) need to be very aware of what I am trying to achieve, and what I am looking for .. so that any movement by the model is taken into account in how my assistant holds the light(s).  What I am immediately looking at, is how my the shadow of my subject’s nose falls on his / her face.  Now, this advice isn’t prescriptive, and there will certainly be numerous examples of very effective and dramatic lighting with video lights, that go against the following advice.  But it is how I immediately approach lighting my subject with video light.

If you look at the shadow of her nose, it falls under her nose .. or in other images slightly below and next to her nose.  This would be variations of ‘loop lighting’.  If you search for the phrase on Google, there will be websites who explain this in depth.

In this next image, you can see that the shadow of Sasha’s nose falls across her face in a way that makes for a less pleasing portrait.

To compensate for this (if I really liked the background and her expression and pose), would be to ask my assistant to move the light more directly onto her instead of off to the side.

Another problem appears in the next image – the light comes in at too steep an angle from above, creating a shadow under her brow which I didn’t like.  The same way to correct this would be to ask her to lift her head slightly, or to ask my assistant to drop the video light slightly in position.

So these are the simple guidelines that I start off with in using video lights for portraits  – I look at the lighting pattern on my subjects face by looking at the shadow of my subject’s nose.  And then also how the other shadows fall on my subject’s features.  In these two examples, I also don’t like the way her head melts into the shadows in the background.  Ideally, there would be some light there to isolate her from the background.

So there it is .. a  simple method as a starting point for dramatic portraits with video lights.

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Now, the usual short-hand description of the way the flash pulse is dissipated, is as a near-instantaneous burst of light.  But the reality of it is that there is a specific rise time to the pulse, and also a specific way the light decays from the moment the flash is fired.  This decay in the light pulse becomes slower for certain flashguns (mostly non-studio flashguns), as the flash is fired at higher power settings.

This becomes essential knowledge once you delve into the realm of action-stopping flash, but for most of us as wedding and portrait photographers, it is immaterial.

Going back to the image I posted a few days ago ..

 The model, Aleona, was lit with an off-camera Q-flash T5D-R, using Quantum’s wireless system, and a 24×32 softboxon a lightstand.

The settings were:  1/1000th @ f4 @ 200 ISO
and a few of regular visitors to this blog caught that I shot this at 1/1000th of a second with a Q-flash .. and they don’t support high-speed sync (yet).

Here are a few test shots to show what happens at various shutter speeds with the T5D-R  Q-flash either at full power or at 1/8th power, while going over the maximum flash sync speed of 1/250th for this camera. (Nikon D3)

At 1/500th of a second at 1/8th power (@ f2.8), you get the expected nearly black frame as the one shutter curtain obscures the flash exposure:

But the moment I went to full power on the Q-flash while still at 1/500th, I got this:

Flash exposure across the frame!   But very uneven.  The bottom part clearly has more light than the top half

Going up all the way to 1/1000th of a second:

The flash exposure seems now a little more even across the frame, although there is a noticeable darkening of the image at the top.

In trying to figure out the physical reasons for this, I found these helpful webpages ..
http://www.sportsshooter.com/news/1888
http://www.paulcbuff.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=59
http://www.scantips.com/speed2.html
http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist/discuss/72157618877229864/

.. and here is what I surmise is happening:
(and I would love to hear corrections or fine-tunings of my understanding of this.)

Looking at the flash pulse duration,

The flash duration is usually described in terms of how long it takes for 50% of the flash power to have been released .. this is the t.5 period.  But that whole time there where the flash more slowly releases some of its juice, is measured as the period until only 10% of the power of the flashtube remains to be dissipated.

So here is how I’ve figured out what is happening with the Q-flash:
Checking with Quantum’s technical dept, they told me that the flash duration is as slow as 1/300th of a second at full power.  

At 1/2 power it increases to 1/700th of a second, and at 1/4 power 1/1300th of a second.  At 1/8th power, the flash duration is as short as 1/2400th of a second.

So while we remain below max sync speed, we get to see most of the flash exposure register on the frame. All is good, and life is how we understand it.   The moment we go over max sync speed (at less than max power), then we see the shutter curtain.  This still makes sense.

But once we hit full power, the flash duration is so long, that at a high shutter speed, we hit the back end of that pulse .. I surmise somewhere between the t.5 and t.1 time.  This then means we get flash exposure across the frame … but since the flash power is declining as the shutter curtain moves across the frame, we get that uneven exposure.

And I suspect it is more noticable at 1/500th, because then we’re probably hitting the flash pulse closer to the t.5 spot.

So there you have it … I was able to shoot at a much higher shutter speed with the non-HSS  Q-flash .. simply because the flash duration is so slow at full power.  Of course there is a huge loss in effective exposure .. but I was able to sort-of-sync at a shutter speed higher than max flash sync speed.

I don’t really see a practical application for this in terms of action freezing, because the difference between 1/250th and 1/300th is marginal. Where this might be used is if you need to use a shallow depth-of-field and can sacrifice the loss of power. In the photo above, I didn’t really need f4  and in a more serious shoot, I’d be in the region of 1/250th @ f8 and using less flash power for the same results.  But I thought this was an interesting bit of exploration.  It certainly helped my understanding of how flash works.

I would love to hear comments on this, and any corrections to my understanding of what is happening here.

Aleona - lit with an off-camera Q-flash T5D-R, using Quantum’s wireless system, and a 24×32 softbox on a lightstand.  1/1000th @ f4 @ 200 ISO.

More details and possibly a short video clip to follow ..

NYC photo shoot – Linda & Gary 06-14 from Neil van Niekerk on Vimeo.
[ if the video is choppy, let the clip buffer completely first, or turn off HD ]

As a glimpse of how I work with couples during a photo shoot, here is a video clip of a recent session.  Linda and Gary’s wedding is coming up later this year.  I met up with them this weekend in Manhattan and we roamed the Meat-packing District and Times Square for some vibrant portraits.

Another photograph from the recent NYC photo shootout.  We were a group of photographers working with Lea during this part of the afternoon.  There are several parts in what makes an image successful – the subject, the setting, lighting and then the post-processing. 

There are limitations in working as a group with a model.  So where I would’ve preferred shooting with a longer lens to compress the perspective more, you sometimes have to accept the situation.  In this case, the setting wasn’t ideal, and there was a fair amount of background clutter.  Therefore this might be a good time to to show some of what I might do with post-processing of an image.  Especially since with this image there was, for me at least, a fair amount of post-processing involved.

Before we get there, just a note about the lighting.  It was the same light as I used in this previously posted photograph of the NYC photo shoot-out.  The lighting set-up was similar to the one mentioned here, where I explained some of the metering involved in using manual flash with a softbox.

In this instance I wanted to expose for the sky, and then use flash to lift the model to the same exposure level.  Starting point was 200 ISO and max flash sync speed. (1/250th for the Nikon D3).   Metering for the sky with my camera’s meter, and taking a few test shots, checking the preview image on my camera’s LCD, I was happy with f6.3

I then had to move the softbox close enough, and set my flash power high enough, to give me f6.3 at that distance for that ISO.  For this, I used a handheld flashmeter.

This then is the photograph as I took it, and this is also then my starting point in editing the image afterwards …

The original image, with no adjustments other than my default settings for ACR / Bridge in CS4.  There’s a lot of clutter that should be eliminated.  My camera’s sensor wasn’t as clean as it should be and you can see at least one large dust bunny there.  The image also lacks punch.  So we can systematically improve on the image ..

First of all, I adjusted the colour balance to give me a slightly warmer tone overall.  My preference is definitely for warm skin tones.  I also punched in a bit more Contrast and Vibrance.   Then, still editing the RAW image in ACR (CS4), I made the sky darker and more brooding by pulling the exposure down and increasing the contrast, using the local corrections feature.  I used the Auto-Mask setting. (Thank you for that hint, David!)   I then convert this edited RAW file into a JPG.  This then gives me a very good JPG to edit further in Photoshop.

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Working with the JPG now in Photoshop, the first thing I did was to get rid of the dust bunnies.  The people in the background also had to go.  And the lamp light and all kinds of extraneous things in the background.  The simpler, the better.

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I like this image, but I would’ve preferred if Lea had looked up for this specific image.  So I copied her eyes from another image in the sequence, and pasted it over this image.  This gives a more dramatic look to the image, and also gives me catchlights in her eyes.

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Okay, now we’re getting somewhere!  But that van and building in the background still bothered me.  They had to go.  I cloned them out, using various parts of the building and sidewalks around that area.  This part of the edit is a little sloppy, and if you were able to look at the full-res image, you’d see it.  But this is where I had to decide on the trade-off between keeping the clutter (at no additional time invested), or get rid of them with a little bit of time invested (but slightly sloppy work there), or spend a lot more time in finessing that.  I decided I could live with that little bit of sloppiness there for showing on the web.  Very few people would’ve picked it up from the image posted at the top. I could live with it.

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The next step for me was to give more detail in the paved road.  It’s looking a little too sombre in the image above.   I used the Shadow / Highlightsfeature in Photoshop to bring back a lot more Shadow detail.  The rest of the image was masked with a layer mask so that only the paving was affected.

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Now for the next two steps are interesting, although I am going to gloss over the specifics.  In essence, the idea behind what I do for the next few steps are similar to what I wrought for the other photo of this session that I posted … but the specific way I implemented the edits and the specific actions and plug-ins that I used, are different for this image than I had used there.  But the approach is the same …

… and the idea is that I use a technique / action(s) / plug-in(s) for Photoshop to over-smoothen detail … but on another layer I use different action(s) or plug-in(s) to really boost the local contrast and saturation and detail.  By blending the layers between those two extreme ways of editing the image, you then end up with an interesting look, where there is a lot of detail, but the image looks like it might have been air-brushed.   And that’s as much as I am going to give away here.  Play around with that idea and see where you end up.  There’s a whole variety of ways that can be implemented.

And there’s the final image .. a combination of having a great model, an interesting setting, solid lighting, and some finessing in Photoshop. 

I have to underline that word there .. finessing.  You can’t save a pitiful image, but you can make a good image even better with some Photoshop fairy dust.  But your original photograph needs to have everything in place already, or else the time you spent in editing the image will be needless polishing.