I always enjoy a good photo shoot video. You know, a little chance to see behind the scenes, the studio banter, some cool finished stills at the end. Nice way to spend a few minutes.Several months ago, Chase Jarvis did a promo still/video shoot for the Kung Fu HD network. For various reasons, he has not been able to publish it until now. But I got an early sneak peak, and I thought it was killer. So I watched it again. And again. And again.How many times? I have no friggin’ idea. I only know that I was watching the full, 1080p version via his server. So every time I hit the “play” button, it cost him about 35 megs worth of bandwidth. Suffice to say, I owe Chase a beer next time I see him. An imported beer.Fortunately, it’s on YouTube now, so I can watch it without the guilt. It’s cool as a moose, and I know at least 94 percent of you are gonna like it too. Oh, and yeah — that song is in heavy rotation on my iPod now.Enjoy. And head over to Chez Chase to read more and see the stills if you liked it.Credits, Superfad team:Will Hyde (Superfad Founder, CD)Dade Orgeron (Concept + Director)Rob Sanborn (Exec Prod)Stephen McGehee (DOP)David Viau and Luke Allen (Designers)Phiphat “P” Pinyosophon (Sim Artist)Ryan Haug (Editor)Nate Barr (Producer)Kung Fu Master: Paul Gutierrez.-30-Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month’s feeds are sponsored by:

The Golden Hour - Perfect Times for Portraits
Today portrait photographer Christina N Dickson looks at ‘the Gold Hour’ and why it is a great time to do portrait work. Christina’s work can be found at www.ChristinaNicholePhotography.com. You are an admittedly talented people photographer. You like taking candid. You like taking portraits. After a few months of practice, you’ve progressed. But it seems that [...]

Lighting Q and A, 09-26-08
Christine, in Virginia (USA), asks:”Is it possible for a specular highlight to be anything other than blown out? If so, how do you meter and control its intensity?”Yes it is, Christine. Keep reading for how to control specular intensity — and for your second question, which I liked even better…Christine’s question went into more detail, and was asking about the process of using one light as both a key light and as a background element via the light’s specular reflection.The short answer is yes, the specular can be just about any tone you choose. It depends on two things: The reflective efficiency of the object creating the reflection and the intensity of the light source, on a per-square-inch basis.The more efficiently your object reflects, the brighter your specular will be. But you might not have much control over the object, so you can also control the specular intensity by increasing the size of the light source.Let’s say you have two lights, each set to illuminate your subject to, say, f/5.6. One is a hard light, and the other is a big, soft shoot-through umbrella.They will both correctly expose the subject at f/5.6. But in addition to creating very different qualities of light on the subject, they also will create very different specular highlights whatever is reflecting the specular — your subject and/or your background. The specular of the hard light will be tiny and very bright — and almost certainly blown out. This is because the light is very small — and very intense over those few square inches of light size.The specular of the big, soft light will be large and manageable. The size of the light source is a determining factor in the intensity of the specular. And that highlight could be a variety of tones based on how close the light is to is to the subject and background. This is because, while both light sources are putting out the same amount of light, they look very different when you measure them on an intensity-per-square-inch basis. And since a specular is basically a reflection of the light source, the intensity of each of those square inches is the main factor in the brightness of the specular.As for metering those highlights, you can use a flashmeter in reflective mode to check how bright a specular is (vs. your shooting aperture.) Or simply zoom into only the specular highlight and shoot a photo. Then look at your image and histogram on the back. The spike will tell you the tone where the specular is, as compared to medium grey.Now, Christine is Thinking:She goes on to describe a second setup:”Possible Scenario 2: The specular is caused by a light placed for the sole purpose of adding a specular–i.e. a rim light on the edge of someone’s face or a background light on a shiny wall–and changing the power and position of that light will not affect the overall exposure.”Absolutely, but I would do it in a slightly different way. Why not position the light so that it is very easy to line up the specular highlight? And yes, you could squeeze some double-duty out of it, too.And that is exactly what we did in the photo at left. This was one of a recent series of photos for a software company. My assistant Patrick Smith and I were working very quickly in a hotel conference room to do eight full-page portraits in just two hours.My main light is coming from camera left, a few feet out of the frame and pretty close to my subject. It is warmed up with a 1/4 CTO and is lighting his face with soft light via a shoot-through Westcott double-fold.The second flash is also firing through an umbrella, but that flash is directly behind me and a tad high.That is basically a “buy one, get one free” flash, as it not only provides the perfect angle to create a soft specular on the dark wood background, but also serves as soft, on-axis fill for my subject.As mentioned in the SB-III post, on-axis fill is something I am using more and more, and in several different ways. More to come on that soon.______________:: Read More: Using Specular Highlights ::Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month’s feeds are sponsored by:

On-Axis Fill: Introduction
A few months ago I was talking about lighting stuff on the phone with Peter Yang and the subject got around to small flashes.We were talking about old Nikon speedlights (SB-24’s, 26’s, etc.) when he mentioned that he liked to work with an on-camera speedlight even while he was shooting with the big Profoto 7B lights off-camera.”You know,” he said, “just to kick in a little fill in there.”I didn’t quite get it, because we were talking about his very cool photo of Admiral William Fallon at the time. But it stuck in the back of my mind and has been rattling around ever since.Fast forward a few months, and I am watching one of Joe McNally’s videos on Kelby Training. He’s shooting some multi-speedlight CLS setup. He is using an on-camera master flash to control several off-camera flashes, and is making really cool photos, as usual.Then he pops off with something to the effect of always turning the on-camera master to “no flash” because, “why would you want any light coming from on camera?”Wait a minute… on-camera… on-camera… Oh yeah, Peter Yang!So, there was one photographer I really admire, asking me why I would ever want to do some particular thing, and another photog I really admire telling me that was one of his go-to techniques.That’s one of the things I love about photography, that there are no real rules. You learn the rules so you can break them on purpose. The main thing is to know why the rules are there, so you know when and why to break them.Don’t get me wrong. I am a huge fan of McNally. God knows I have certainly ripped off learned much from many of his techniques. And for an old guy he still is mentally very spry. He does an admirable job of keeping up with us younger folks. I understand he is even starting to blog now!My friends, I think that’s just great.So, back at the other end of the chronological scale, here’s Peter Yang, knocking the cover off of the ball before the ink was even dry on his driver’s license. His pictures all seem to have this “polished snapshot” kind of thing going that just really does it for me for some reason. They are meticulously lit, with a very controlled visibility into the shadows — no matter which way the key light is coming from.That’s the day I started thinking about on-axis fill almost nonstop. It has totally changed the way I light. Not saying I would use it every time, because I wouldn’t. But it is a very powerful tool, and it merits consideration in the context of just about any lighting scheme I might be designing.Like a 3-D Detail Volume KnobIn years past, I would think of my key light first, then decide how much ambient to dial in for fill. Or if there was no good ambient, I might fill from the shadow side with another light source.Problem was, that would significantly alter the 3-D quality of my subject and create new shadows and texture on the highlight side. But lately, I have been thinking about my fill — both in terms of quality and quantity — before I even start thinking about my key light.Filling from on (or very near to) the lens axis allows you to sort of “dial in” the detail in a way that can also leave the subject very 3-D in a natural way, or compress it to look like a multi-layered paper cutout.All of the photos in this post were filled with on-axis light., in different forms and ratios. And they all have a very different look because the on-axis light source can be anything: Umbrella, ring, small softbox right over the lens — even an on-camera flash. There. I said it.(I know — it was weird to me at first, too.)And the on-axis fill can not only come from many different types of light modifiers, but can also work against just about any type of key light. And it can come in at just about any intensity, too. Thus, the ability to dial 3-D detail into the shadows.I have been working with this just about every chance I could get over the last few months. And I will be working through lots of On-Assignment that involve on-axis fill, not to mention some straight “how-to” posts that detail different fill / key light source combos and lighting ratios.But I wanted to get a sort of “intro” post out there, where I could whet your appetite with the concept. Just as mine was whetted by studying other peoples’ work over the last few months.So stay tuned for a lot more on this — with lots of specifics — in upcoming weeks. I am having a lot of fun with it, and I think you will, too.Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month’s feeds are sponsored by:

LA, LA, LA…
If you are going to one of the L.A. lighting seminars this weekend, make sure you check in on the L.A. seminar discussion thread for the latest info. Also, there is one seat that just became available, info here. (Filled.)-30-Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month’s feeds are sponsored by:

Steve E. Miller Knocks ‘em Dead
I worked at newspaper for twenty years, and to be honest I do not think I could have ever sold an idea to shoot dead artists for a fall arts preview package.My problem, of course, was that I shot for the mainstream media, and not the alternative media. In that world, they come up with the dead artists idea all by themselves and ask you to shoot it.Which is exactly what happened to photographer Steve E. Miller, who shoots for the San Luis Opisbo (CA) New Times. Video, how-to and links to more of the series, inside.The video is a time-lapse, which will let you see the physical progression of the lights. But the lighting ratios are what is key here. This is an exercise in finely tuned fill light, and you can easily do it without a flash meter. The sheets are white, but Steve wanted them to be muted and textured in the final photo. So the idea is to design that fill light first, expose it properly — white sheets — and then dial the aperture down until you get the muted greys that you want on the linens.Now, it is just a matter of gridding the key light to bring up the “demised” photographer’s face. Obviously, you can grid the art on the walls, too, to bring up other areas of interest and better sell that tonal shift in the sheets. But the key to the look of the photo is how far down you take the fill, and you can do that by eye and histogram on the LCD screen without a flash meter. Just dial down your aperture until your sheets look the way you want after you lay in that fill. Watch the histogram for blocked-up blacks, tho. Then bring up the gridded key light to make the dead guy the right exposure. Again, look at the image onscreen for the light relationships, but mind that histogram to make sure you have something you can work with in post.I’ll bet people were talking about Steve’s dead artists spread in SLO for several days. You can see the other images Steve made in his Flickr gallery, and more time-lapse videos here. The paper did a nice piece online, too.And the most important thing to remember (if you are Steve E. Miller) is that you parlay the success of this “kinda-out-there” project into a green light to do your next (even-more-out-there) project. Just be sure you pull it off, so you keep the good times rolling.Question, to the other newspaper shooters out there: Could you ever hope to sell a “dead artists” spread in your Fall Arts preview? What would your strategy be to make it happen?(FWIW, I don’t think I could ever have squeezed this one past the Features Ed at The Sun.)Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month’s feeds are sponsored by:

Platon Interview on Russia Today
Alert Reader Tom Hayton was searching for the photographer Platon on YouTube and found this 25-minute interview from Russia Today, a channel I can safely say I almost never get to watch.Two things: One, this is not about light but does give a very good look into Platon’s approach and bedside manner. It’s an interesting look into some of the thinking that goes into photographing famous (or infamous) people. Remember, Platon is Mr. Hotshot in Russia after the Putin Time MoY cover. He figured out his light a long time ago, and its the interpersonal stuff that gets him the moments in his photos.Second, the audio is off. And it creeps worse and worse throughout the vid. So you may as well just listen to it while you have your work stuff up onscreen this morning. Although they do pepper the interview with many of his pix, so there’s that.OTHER PLATON STUFF::: Platon Shoots Putin :::: Platon: Lose the Smile :::: Platon: Three Videos ::Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month’s feeds are sponsored by:

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