Dark still life shooting

I pretty much photograph constantly, and don't I don't always have a plan for what the subject will be. Sometimes I just get an idea of a type of lighting in my head and begin with that, adding the subjects to suit. A couple days ago while in the studio I felt like shooting some really darkly lit still life subjects so I set up a lighting scene with black background and dark base, and added two tungsten lights from the rear, one on each side. I controlled the shadows with small cardboard gobos. Then I added subjects that might look good in that type of light. This is what happened.

This type of backlighting is perfect for photographing smoke so I did a number of situations with smoke in them. 

While shooting this still life set up I decided to make it more interesting by doing a deep focus technique on it. I took ten shots focusing each one just a little closer to the camera each time until I had a the full range from front to back covered. I then fed the ten images into the Helicon Focus stacking software to combine the images into one, super-sharp final photograph with continuous focus from foreground to the back of the books. From experience I find that an aperture of f/5.6 with my Nikon 85mm tilt shift lens gives the best results. Click here to download a high res version of this file.

Live demo of the Fuji X-Pro2 in New York today

If you are in New York today and want to participate in a hands-on demo of the latest Fuji gear, including the new X-Pro2, stop by the Fotocare store between 11:00AM and 5:00PM and meet the experts from Fujifilm.

You can even place an advance order while at the store.  Ask for Jeff Hirsch, the owner. Tell him I sent you and he'll take good care of you. 

Fotocare is located at 41 West 22nd Street between 5th and 6th avenues. 

Fuji X camera with studio flash

It has been more that a year now since I have changed over from a DSLR to using the Fuji X-T1 for the lifestyle shoots that I do two days a week. There are several reasons I prefer a Fuji X camera for this, first among them is the exceptional lens quality from its primes. I tend to shoot backlit a lot, which means very low contrast on the subject. The Fuji lenses can really deliver the detail  in these areas, so much so that I rarely even need to fill the shadows.

My recent photo shoot involved working exclusively with studio strobes. For most of the shoot I set the lights up for backlighting. Normally I use a DSLR when working with strobe, but because of the backlight situation I wanted to use the Fuji X lenses instead.

This scene was lit with two strobes lighting the background seamless. No other lighting was used.

I set up two Elinchrome strobes in slit banks and pointed them at the white background seamless. There was no light on the model at all, not even reflector fill. My studio floor is painted a gloss white, and by positioning the camera right on the floor I was able to capture a wavy reflection of the model. With the camera right on the floor I needed to focus using the tilt screen of the X-T1 -- another good reason to be using it for this shoot. 

I set the Elinchromes off  with a Pocket Wizard, a system that has worked extremely well with my Nikon cameras, and now seems to work equally well with my Fuji X-T1. The X-T1 needs to be set up to work with strobes. First of all, the camera needs to be in single shot mode. It will not trigger from the flash shoe when set for continuous shooting. Second, the camera needs a menu adjustment that allows the EVF to show a bright image. Otherwise the image will be too dark to see. The adjustment is made on the fifth Shooting Menu by changing the "Interlock spot AE & focus" option to "Off". 

Alternatively, you could go to "Set-up" menu 1 and select "Screen Set-up", then navigate down to "Preview Pic. Effect" and turn it "Off". This does the same thing

Finally, with the shutter speed set to 1/180x for flash sync, you're good to go.

Multiple exposure technique

This past week I've been playing around with some more variations on double exposures. This on is an image of a model I just photographed and two shots of a city for an urban background, plus some an image of smoke to give it atmosphere. I've had the photograph up on my computer for several days and keep tweaking it. I'm still not sure it's finished. I'll see how I feel about it in a couple more days.

Photoshop layers provides the vehicle for pre-visualizing multiple exposures. The layers can be treated in a number of different, see-through ways. It's a matter of playing with them and shuffling the images until it looks right.

For this image the woman layer was on top and its mode changed to "lighten". The urban background layer was placed on the bottom as a "normal" layer, but has been treated to a "photographic toning" "gradient adjustment". A second close-up urban shot of a building grid facade on top of this had its mode changed to "overlay".  On top of that is an image of smoke against a black background with its mode changed to "screen", which makes the blacks disappear leaving only the white smoke.

After the storm

The city was completely closed down during the height of the snow storm. New Yorkers I talked with felt like I did. It was a good time to stay indoors and take advantage of a mini-indoor vacation. I used some of my time to work on another image for my Metropolis series of photographs. This one is a composite of eleven images. I had most of them already, but went out the day after the storm to pick up a few more detail images. I realized afterwards that all but one of the images used to create this composite were taken with the Fuji X-T1.

Metropolis - Just another day, NY, 2016

What a difference a day makes

All day yesterday the storm was upon us with gusting winds and swirling snow. Today we awoke to a clear sunny sky. The winds from the storm blew all the snow from the trees so there wasn't much to photograph in the parks, however we did have a beautiful sunset. As I was on my way to photograph the city with the World Trade Center I happened upon this scene. It was in complete contrast to what I had been photographing just the day before, and the dichotomy between the two days made me pause to grab a shot.

A situation like this is where a good camera shows its stuff. The flowers were indoors in front of a large glass window. It was bright indoors but definitely not bright enough to pull off a perfect shot in one exposure. The flowers were in shadow and the background city scene was fully lit by the setting sun. I took four exposures of the scene with the idea of combining the exposures later. Instead, when I brought one of the shots with full detail in the highlights into Adobe Camera Raw, I attempted to open up the shadows to see if I could pull off the photo from one shot instead of stacking the different exposures.  

I was using a Nikon D810, which is one of the best cameras in the world for dynamic range and low shadow noise. Without it I might not have been so successful. When balancing a shot like this it is important to begin with an image that retains some detail in the brightest area. Without detail you have nothing to work with when you go to darken the light areas. 

One thing to keep in mind when opening up shadows like this is that you are effectively increasing the ISO in that area, and than means you get the noise that comes with it. I judged that the noise was slight enough to deal with later so I continued. The sample above is what the photo looked like before I began to open the shadows and dim down some of the sky highlights. 

Snow storm hits the Big Apple

The first winter snow storm hit the east coast very early this morning.  I began photographing it just after dawn when I was finally able to discern some shady outlines of the city through the snow and haze. My first shots were a little too dull so I put a Yongnuo flash on my Fuji X-T1 and took some photos with the Fuji 10-24mm zoom set to 10mm and f/4. After some experimenting I settled on 1/4 power for the flash achieve the right balance between the brightly lit falling snow flakes and the background scene.

I liked that the colors were very subtle, almost Impressionistic, and the avenue below was softly lit with the glow from street lamps and the headlights from a lone taxi. This is my first photo of the weekend snow. I'll be going out later to photograph the city as the snow continues.

The Flatiron Building during the mid-day white-out.

The snowstorm at dusk just as the city lights began coming on. 

The exposure can make a big difference in how the snow and background scene interrelate.  For instance, the photo above taken with a 20mm was shot at f/2.8, 1/30 second, and ISO 400.  Because of the shallow depth of field the aperture of f/2.8 made the foreground snowflakes larger.

In the photo below taken at the same time the exposure was changed to f/8 and 1/4 second at ISO 400. Here the snowflakes are smaller because of the greater depth of field and the distant flakes are not lit because of the decrease in aperture exposure so the background scene comes in sharper.  

It is all a matter of experimenting to see what effect works best for what you want to achieve.