One more for the Metropolis series

I added one more image to my Metropolis portfolio, this one a composite of over six photographs of city elements. These images often take quite a while to construct. This one took longer than most. The entire series can be seen here on my website.

Metropolis - Tower mosaic

Using LED panel lights to imitate cell phone, computer, or tablet screens

Today in the studio we were covering a situation where we wanted to create a nighttime scene with models in bed using a tablet and laptop and their faces lit up from the screens. I've done similar shots many times before, but in the past I've used tiny flash units hidden near the screen to light the models. This time I decided to try a new technology and use a couple of small LED video panel lights.

This natural light photo taken with a Fuji X-T1 and 56mm f/1.2 lens is a mix of three different types of lighting. The natural ambient light was a soft daylight from windows, There is a tungsten lamp on the nightstand giving off its warm glow. The LED lights were used without their balancing filter to mimic the cooler light given off my most screen devices. 

The shot could not have been easier. The panel LED lights we used were the Bescor LED-70 Dimmable 70W video lights. I chose them because they were small and powerful enough, but were also dimmable making it easy to balance their light output with ambient light. They also take AA batteries instead of a rechargeable cell. We don't use lights like these too often and I didn't want to have them sitting around with a battery cell draining away. With the double A's I can simply pop in batteries whenever we need to use the units. Rechargeables would probably have resulted in a smaller unit, but the dependability of using AA's out-weighed that for me.

The Bescor LED-70 lights give off 70w of light from 96 5mm LED bulbs. The unit comes with two replaceable lamp covers, a diffused clear panel shown on the lights here, and a color-correcting amber screen to balance them more towards natural light at 4300k. 

The lights were powerful enough to allow me to work them at full output with an exposure of 1/500 second and f/1.4 with an ISO of 400 -- more than sufficient for my needs. Bescor also makes a smaller 40w unit for $24.95 using AAA batteries. It it isn't dimmable but could always be used with a neutral density filter gel taped over its face.  

The Bescor LED-70 I used here sells for $39.95 at these stores:   B&H   Adorama   Amazon

The smaller Bescor LED-40 for $24.96 is also available here:  B&H   Adorama    Amazon

Working the light for a chiaroscuro effect in black and white

This is a scene I photograph quite often, mostly in the late evening around sunset or afterwards into the night.

I had been observing the light change for awhile, as the sun moved further into the southern horizon. I wanted this to be a photo of the Flatiron District with the Flatiron Building playing center stage in the composition. At 10:30AM the building was fully lit from the morning sun, which also left a pleasing shape of light at its foot. I felt the way the light fell on the city at that time would make an interesting black and white image with a composition built upon dark contrasts of light and deep shadow.

I felt the photo is a little difficult to see at this size so I included a high res version, which can be downloaded here. It isn't as big as the final 40" wide image, but is big enough to give a sense of detail. 

Even though the Flatiron Building is the main focus, my favorite part of the scene is off to the left where the sunlight bounced off of a building to light up the Metropolitan Life tower and clock.

The dark areas of the scene were as important as the lit areas in terms of the compostion so I didn't know in advance what focal length lens I would want to record the scene. I settled on putting the 24-120mm Nikon f/4 zoom on a Nikon D810. The zoom gave me some quick mobility to bracket around the focal lengths, and the f/4 didn't bother me because the photo was going to be taken in very bright sunlight and I could pick my aperture.

I added a polarizing filter to both darken the deep blue sky and cut through the haze in the distant building. Even so, with an ISO of 100 I ended up at f/5.6 and 1/250 of a second. While you could hand hold a camera at that speed, I have learned the hard way that it is best to put a high resolution  camera like the Nikon D810 on a tripod at all times. High resolution seems to magnify motion blur.

In post processing I pushed the contrast even further to increase the chiaroscuro effect and added a vignette for the same reason but also to focus the attention at the center of the scene.

Getting by with a Fuji X-T1 and two Fuji standard zoom lenses

Sometimes I really want to travel light and uncomplicated, yet have enough of a focal range to cover most anything I would encounter. When I know my photography will be limited to the outdoors and I will have plenty of light, I often just pack the two standard Fuji zooms, the original 18-55mm and the 55-200mm. This gives me an effective, full frame focal range of 27mm-300mm -- enough to cover most anything I would encounter. Both lenses are variable aperture (f/2.8-4 for the 18-55mm, and f/3.5-4.8 for the 55-200mm) so I won't expect to be using them for any selective focus shots. Nonetheless, on a bright day with distant subjects I would probably be working around a constant f/5.6 anyway.

This is my basic kit for the day of shooting, just two Fuji zooms, a polarizing filter, and my cell phone where I also have a light meter APP I sometimes use. 

On this particular day I planned to walk around a New York construction site at Hudson Yards where I had seen a forest of cranes one day while passing by in a taxi. I didn't think I would even need any lens shorter than 27mm. Otherwise I would have also tossed the Fuji 14mm in my pocket.

I would never think to use this sort of zoom combo with any other camera brand, but the Fuji lenses are so good that even their basic zooms are truly exceptional -- maybe not up to the extremely high standards set by their fixed aperture zooms, but solid performers with no apologies needed for their performance. The big advantage is that both zooms are light enough and small enough to fit in a coat or vest pocket -- just right for the kind of casual shooting I had in mind.

When you consider that you can buy a Fuji X-T1 kit with the 18-55mm lens for around $1400, and add the 55-200mm for another $499, This is a fully packed pro-quality travel kit for only $1900.

The 18-55mm has a 58mm filter thread, while the 55-200mm is 62mm. So I carry one 62mm polarizer and a 58-62mm stepup ring so it fits both lenses. With the two lenses, a polarizer, and my X-T1 plus extra battery I set off for an afternoon of photography of the construction site.

This panorama of the entire construction site is made up of four horizontal images stitched together later using PRGui software.

I took this hand-held panorama on my walk back from the site. It is made up of two 18mm shots stitched together later in PTGui. 

Nature Impressions

This past week I launched my new art website at www.tomgrill.com.  (My commercial site is still available at www.tomgrillimages.com, but it, too, will soon be revamped.) One portfolio on the site that is quickly becoming a favorite of mine is Nature Impressions. Over the past few weeks I have been going back to some of my older work and creating some new images specifically for this portfolio.

The title for the portfolio comes directly from Impression Sunrise, Monet's painting for which the Impressionists painters were derisively named. I have been re-working my images by decreasing the amount of detail in an effort to present more of a recollected impression of the experience than a literal representation of the scene.

Below are some of the latest results.

Winter pines and snow, CT, 2008

Caribbean sunset, 2013

Autumn forest, 2015

Foggy morning on the Hudson,NY, 2013

Water stones, Pennsylvania, 2015

Shadow on the dunes, Death Valley, 2009

Ocean sunset, Jamaica, 2013

Calm seas in fading light, 2013

Photo Grids

Ever since I created one of these grid photos of 25 images of the Empire State Building I have wanted to do some more. Recently, I assembled these three -- one on colorful buildings in Jamiaca, another on the American flag, and a third on New York taxis as a companion piece to the Empire State Building grid-photo.

Because they are assembled from 25 high resolution images, the final photographs are quite large. They make really dramatic 36" x 36" or 48" x 48" plexi prints.

This one is entitled "Taxi!" and even includes some details of the old Checker cab. 

This one is called, "Showing the colors". It includes photos of flags in use, some weathered, many waving proudly, one group hand held at a parade, and even one a light display at Times Square. 

I drove around the island for two days collecting these photos of colorful buildings to put together this crazy quilt grid of Jamaica.

Photographing water splashes

We took a break from our normal routine and decided to photograph some water splashes in the studio today.

Freezing the splash in mid air calls for a fast action flash. Normal studio units have a duration of flash that is generally too slow so we turned to our Nikon SB-910 flash units. Through trial-and-error we discovered that a 1/4 power setting on the flash units was enough speed to freeze the water without any motion blur.

The next problem to overcome is the depth of field, which needed to be quite extensive. The 1/4 power setting on the flash units did not provide enough light for a very stopped down aperture. To compensate we boosted the ISO to 400, which is not a problem on the D810. The result was a working aperture of around f/20.

A splash this complex is actually a combination of four separate splashes assembled in Photoshop.

Because we never knew exactly where a splash would end up we needed to include an extra large frame area that would allow a cropping of the images later. That was one reason for using the high 36MP of the Nikon D810. Cropping the image still resulted in a large enough photo afterwards.

The lens was a Nikon 85mm tilt-shift. First of all, this is a macro lens and, consequently, is comfortable working at a very low aperture. In addition, it allowed for tilting the lens to achieve even greater depth of field on the splash.

 

This is the basic setup. The two black flats provide the black edging on the water and glass. Behind them are two more Nikon flash units bouncing light from the white side of the flats onto the wall for a background illumination. A black water tray also helps with the black outlining. The main light is a single Nikon SB-910 set to quarter power and passed through a bank. The water is tossed in the air over the tank using a variety of implements. You have to experiment with this, as each one gives a different shape to the splash. 

We took advantage of the lighting setup and did some pouring shots afterwards.