Beating the daylight!
I’m going to start this post with a confession; I own a Lightsphere! I bought it a few years ago before I realised that, umm, well….you know! Don’t go out and buy one, but if you do already have one here’s my suggestion. Tape aluminium foil to the inside of it. That’s what I [...]
A Quick Tour of Dolores Park!
I recently had the pleasure of shooting Christina and Laura as part of my time for prints project. I brought along my friend Jorge who is becoming quite a regular on the shoots I do! We went out to Dolores Park in San Francisco on a particularly nice day. Unfortunately the park [...]
Car Park Studio
Here’s a simple headshot I took about an hour ago. I took it in the basement car park of our apartment complex using a Canon 580EX and a 43″ reflective Westcott Umbrella. I quite like the 43″ but it just doesn’t give out light as soft as I want so I ordered a [...]
One Light and a child
Today is the first opportunity I have had to shoot any photographs since I went to the OneLight Workshop last week. Of course I have no real models or clients so I have to endure the torture that is shooting my son. I took five frames before he lost interest. I suppose [...]
OneLight Workshop in Seattle
On Saturday I attended the OneLight Workshop by Zack Arias. I’m sure most people are familiar with Zack by now so I won’t go into details of his past, how he got to where he is now or what he shoots on a day to day basis. All you need to know is [...]
The kindness of strangers
As you know I’m running a time for prints project so I can learn how to light and to build a portfolio. I’ve shot a few people now, but I knew all of them so it was easy to just go and do it with no stress involved. Of course, I can’t spend [...]
The day the ambient light tried to kill me!
Continuing on with attempting to learn to light I met up with some friends of mine, John and Mel. John and I have shot together before so it was a nice relaxed shoot….in the middle of the day. Shooting in the middle of the day is hard! The ambient was very bright [...]
Manu & the grid spot
This is the second and final shot I’m posting of my friend Manuel from San Francisco Daily Photo. This was taken using a single Canon 580 EX II using a 1/8 Honl Speed Grid. The strobe was positioned to the camera right, about 6 feet up on a light stand, 1/4 power and [...]
A fun evening
Last Sunday evening, after shooting Manuel, I met up with my friend Jorge and his family for an informal portrait session. Jorge is a San Francisco lad and was keen to be photographed with a San Francisco icon in the background so we headed into the Marin Headlands and used the Golden Gate Bridge [...]
In a dark tunnel
As you may be aware I’m trying to get a time-for-prints project off the ground. It hasn’t been easy to get any takers thanks mostly to the recent Media Temple outage that took my site offline for a week. Thankfully Manuel over at San Francisco Daily Photo came to my rescue and came [...]
A softbox & a lot of itching!
Let this post serve as a warning, scout your location well before you or your subject enter the area. I didn’t and now we all have Poison Oak, and it itches like crazy!
Now, onto the shot. I didn’t request this surprised look, however it’s the only shot out of about 100 where they [...]
Pouting & related activities
This is one of the first portraits I took using off-camera lighting. It’s shot against a pure white wall and was really a test shot to help me understand the effects of shutter speed & aperture on the photograph. Now, some of you may have not heard the one statement that really helped [...]
Mum & son at sunset
I’ve watched all of the Zack Arias photo critiques and the one constant theme in all of them is to not post multiple images of the same person on your site. Some of us have no option! I’m an immigrant so the only people I know are through work & are generally not [...]
Monkey silhouette
I have watched the Zack Arias One Light DVD’s a few times now & I believe I’m starting to grasp the foundations. There is a shot he does on the DVD where he turns the room white with Sunpak 120J and I’ve had a go at replicating it but I need more practice. [...]
Capturing a monkey!
It’s very difficult to take photographs of Cameron as he will not sit still, he grabs the lights, punches the umbrellas and just generally is a monster. The bonus is that all his jumping around and pulling faces are quite entertaining and certainly expressive.
Have you ever tried to photograph a two year old? [...]