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PuntCuncher posted:Husband and wife .. er.. team. I'm having trouble coming to terms with just how loving awful they're proud they've made some mutual friends look. You need to post all of these here.
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# ? Mar 14, 2013 18:08 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 09:40 |
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Do they all have the same face in every photo? Because if so, they might have better success if they were to shoot with some balloon / blowup doll instead.
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# ? Mar 14, 2013 18:08 |
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I would probably steer them into the direction of using a single color background to learn posing and lighting before going into the world of props.
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# ? Mar 14, 2013 18:22 |
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I was bored at work (on a ship) and so I read and finished Syl Arena's guide to speedliting. Holy crap. so glad I read it. Anyway, went down to the cargo decks and took some pics. I only had my two speedlites, I had to gaffer tape them to awkward spots (not a lot of room) and had to use white shower curtains for diffusers, which worked ok I guess. But they were a bitch themselves to get up out of the way. Click on the pic to see the rest of the series, not amazing stuff but just putting into practice the stuff I learnt from the book. Really looking forward to getting home and playing the poo poo out of it. DS4 by Alex Gard, on Flickr
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# ? Mar 14, 2013 19:59 |
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Musket posted:I would probably steer them into the direction of using a single color background to learn posing and lighting before going into the world of props. I'd say that giving a model a prop to play around with is easier than having them pose all by themselves with nothing. You get to avoid the "omg what do I do with my hands" awkwardness. From my (limited) experience, it really takes someone who is very practiced to pull off a shoot with just them standing in front of a plain backdrop. But yeah, these pictures are terrible, and your friends aren't learned enough yet to know it. Let me guess, they got a ton of positive feedback on facebook, and are already booking their next garage pinup session?
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# ? Mar 14, 2013 20:13 |
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Sludge Tank posted:I was bored at work (on a ship) and so I read and finished Syl Arena's guide to speedliting. Holy crap. so glad I read it. Anyway, went down to the cargo decks and took some pics. I only had my two speedlites, I had to gaffer tape them to awkward spots (not a lot of room) and had to use white shower curtains for diffusers, which worked ok I guess. But they were a bitch themselves to get up out of the way. Click on the pic to see the rest of the series, not amazing stuff but just putting into practice the stuff I learnt from the book. Really looking forward to getting home and playing the poo poo out of it. This is a cool shot, and a great idea! I think these would be a lot better if you brought the camera down to the level of the scene - it's got that "I took this from the default standing position" thing going on, which even though you've clearly put a lot of work into this shoot ends up looking like a snap shot. Also for something this weird and dramatic I'd take the diffusion off and experiment with your Speedlites at full spot, really play with light and shadow - what you've got going here looks like a three stop difference or so, which is great for a lot of things and models the scene nicely but doesn't play a lot into the weirdness or mystery of what's going on. Finally, the text looks cool, but it really draws the eye and I keep expecting it to have something to do with what's going on. I'd clone it out.
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# ? Mar 14, 2013 20:16 |
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Thanks heaps for the feedback. Agree on the text, I already cloned out the string holding the skeleton to the pipes above him to keep him upright, I wasn't sure what to do with the text but you are right about it drawing your eye and being irrelevant. I was a bit snipped for space to do this. As for the camera perspective, thanks. It was on a tripod and I actually did think of it afterwards that I should have had it a bit lower. I am really new to the speedlite thing but have some more ideas for when I get home. I was just mostly playing with being able to control the speedlites from my camera. I feel really nervous about not having modifiers as I'm not a fan of harsh light, but I'll heed your advice and go for raw lighting and see how I go. thanks heaps for the valuable feedback. this thread is frigging awesome.
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# ? Mar 14, 2013 20:21 |
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geeves posted:Do they all have the same face in every photo? Because if so, they might have better success if they were to shoot with some balloon / blowup doll instead. This is exactly what my better half said. If they were simply treating it as a hobby and came across as receptive to feedback, I would be a great deal less concerned about bringing up the numerous problems with the shots. I'm barely an interested amateur myself but there's no way in hell I could publish photos of people looking like that. Might offer to help out on a shoot and see if they'll take some help in person. That all said, there's some amazing stuff in this thread making me wish I made more time to pick my own camera back up.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 02:28 |
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What you should do is buy them a photography book.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 03:42 |
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Just so I'm not a complete rear end in a top hat, here's a quick and dirty shot I snuck of my fiancee in a cherry orchard. Low light and I screwed up my iso, and framing and everything.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 04:50 |
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PuntCuncher posted:Just so I'm not a complete rear end in a top hat, here's a quick and dirty shot I snuck of my fiancee in a cherry orchard. Low light and I screwed up my iso, and framing and everything. How good or bad you are doesn't change how bad theirs is.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 04:55 |
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Oprah Haza posted:How good or bad you are doesn't change how bad theirs is. Self awareness might be the big difference.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 05:10 |
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Ask them if they would buy a $3000 guitar, practice on it for a couple weeks, then start posting songs they wrote and performed in public spaces for other people to see and then tell them to stop being assholes.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 06:07 |
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PuntCuncher posted:This is exactly what my better half said. Can you please post the rest of their photographs?
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 06:19 |
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beergod posted:Can you please post the rest of their photographs? I'd whack a link up to their facebook, but I'm honestly concerned about goons slamming them a little too hard and things ending in very ugly tears. I'll make a point of posting more tonight when I get home from work.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 06:54 |
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Just gonna throw these out there. I recently went to one of the busiest pedestrianised areas of downtown Hong Kong to try my hand at panning shots of people going about their business on the street. My objective was to capture the vibrant colour of the place and give a feeling of the hustle and bustle through a slow shutter speed. I settled on 1/20 as I thought I could get some good motion blur whilst maintaining some sharpness in the focal points of the subjects. It basically turned out how I had hoped, but need a little practice and some strong subjects. It's something I feel has potential and I would definitely like to build up a series. Hong Kong Hustle Hong Kong Hustle by Rupert Procter, on Flickr Hong Kong Hustle by Rupert Procter, on Flickr Hong Kong Hustle by Rupert Procter, on Flickr Hong Kong Hustle by Rupert Procter, on Flickr Hong Kong Hustle by Rupert Procter, on Flickr Hong Kong Hustle by Rupert Procter, on Flickr
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 08:53 |
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selfie by Alex Gard, on Flickr this was one of the first shots I made with my newfound knowledge. I don't particularly like the conflicting shadows. How is my post prod? Is it too over the top?
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 12:17 |
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Your left arm looks a little underexposed and colorless, despite appearing to have received plenty of light. Other than that, nothing noticeable.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 12:33 |
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Sludge Tank posted:
I'm going to tackle the lighting here. One thing that was drilled into me at film school is light from upstage to the camera, if you draw a line from the subjects nose outwards the key light (in this case the speedlite on frame right) should probably be on the opposite side of the line to the camera. An example: ArtsShootSelfie by TimFPictures, on Flickr Notice how the key light produces an even shadow area on the camera side of my face, this is very defining and attractive, it even looks like I have a jawline, which given that I am blessed with Turkey Chin is pretty amazing. This is a very dramatic example, I could have easily swung that key light around a little more to take a bit of the edge off, or employed some fill, but I liked the tone the single soft light gave. It's a rule of thumb of course, but in your case it would have benefited the subject.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 13:10 |
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edit 348734: poo poo just re-read your post a hundred times. I think I get it now. That is awesome. Thanks so much for that info. You've just given me ten thousand pokemon points. Here is a pic I took of my girlfriend a while ago, so in this instance it would have benefited from having the key light camera right more dominant than fill light camera left... to create more interesting shadows...? Jaimee by Alex Gard, on Flickr orrr... in model/makeup specific photography where focus is generally all about the model, where the fce should be illuminatedas much as possible (generally), if it were more abstract portraiture you should be exercising as much interesting secondary lighting as possible....? durrr poo poo... my terminology is useless sorry edit 39835: can I ask if/what modifiers you used? edit 43532984: in the Speedliters Handbook his age old adage being "to create interesting light, you have to create interesting shadows" has been prominent but for some godawful reason I am scared to death of it Sludge Tank fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Mar 15, 2013 |
# ? Mar 15, 2013 15:01 |
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This is like the most deeply creepy thing ever because I just can't get it out of my mind that the baby just looks dead. Really is there that much of a need for newborn photography? can't people just buy stock photography, they all look the same.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 16:45 |
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Well at least the abortion clinics are making some kind of creative contribution to society.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 16:58 |
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JuanChai posted:
I don't have much to say on these other than I think they're bloody brilliant. Not much of a critique I'm afraid. I just really like the idea and you've pulled off the execution really well. Be proud!
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 17:07 |
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JuanChai posted:Just gonna throw these out there. I recently went to one of the busiest pedestrianised areas of downtown Hong Kong to try my hand at panning shots of people going about their business on the street. My objective was to capture the vibrant colour of the place and give a feeling of the hustle and bustle through a slow shutter speed. I settled on 1/20 as I thought I could get some good motion blur whilst maintaining some sharpness in the focal points of the subjects. It basically turned out how I had hoped, but need a little practice and some strong subjects. It's something I feel has potential and I would definitely like to build up a series. These are kinda cool, man. Keep at it. If nothing else, it'll make for good practice focusing on a moving target quickly.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 17:32 |
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Sludge Tank posted:edit 348734: poo poo just re-read your post a hundred times. I think I get it now. That is awesome. Thanks so much for that info. You've just given me ten thousand pokemon points. I actually really like that picture, but yeah you probably could have dropped the fill a stop and produced a similar effect with better modeling if that's what you were looking for. You want to be thinking of it like a drawing. You can draw a face without any shadows, and it looks flat like a cartoon - as you add more shadows, the face starts to take on a 3D appearance. If the line between lights and darks is very sharp, it can create a harsher, more dramatic effect. If it blends gradually, then the effect becomes softer and more (for lack of a better word) appealing. None of these choices are right or wrong - what you're looking to do is match your lighting to the effect you're trying to create in your image. If you've never done realistic drawing or painting, it may take you some time to begin to "see" the world in this way. Once you do it's difficult to unsee! EDIT for clarity: as with many things in photography, there are two meanings of the word "modeling." The first is, of course, what your model is doing - that's the one most people are familiar with. The way I'm using it here, it refers to the creation of the illusion of 3D form on a 2D surface through variance of light and dark. Chitin fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Mar 15, 2013 |
# ? Mar 15, 2013 18:46 |
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Paragon8 posted:
There's a huge market for newborn photography. This time in their life is fleeting and people want pictures of that. Yeah they all look the same, but the parents know it's their kid and that's all that counts. The super posed newborn stuff weirds me out though. If your baby can't support it's own head then maybe you shouldn't take a picture of it doing so.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 18:56 |
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poo poo you both have given me a lot. Thanks so much. I haven't given any thought to the 2D/3D effect thing, I've been really hungup on producing even light across the whole photo. I've been really intimidated by creating shadows up until now. I'll put your poo poo into action and see what I come up with. Thankyou seriously. I also do realise the importance of incorporating appropriate light into my sibjects but have been a bit unsure until now... I'll see how I go but I think this has been a big game changer. I'll get back to you with some new shots soon. (PS I'm using this thread as a testing platform for everything I do until I feel confident enough to start marketing myself (for small-time bands/DJ's etc)... let me know if I have a long way to go, I don't want to jump the gun too soon) sorry if I'm coming across as a leach for knowledge... just want to get all this right edit: fyi I'm working with a 580exII and 430exII at the moment, both which I know how to operate from my camera (but may fail to apply them accordingly) after reading Speedliters Handbook... Sludge Tank fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Mar 15, 2013 |
# ? Mar 15, 2013 19:19 |
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I think one of the best things any photographer can do is study light in a bunch of different applications. It's not about memorizing diagrams and setups, but about understanding qualities of light and the many ways it manifests itself. Doing things like studying art (and even physics) will give you a much better appreciation for creating your own lighting. You want to understand what you're doing every time you take picture, and be able to break down other people's lighting. Once you get that down, it's just trial and error (or meticulous planning) to get exactly what you want. Have a vision, don't just settle for whatever it turns out like.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 22:55 |
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Sludge Tank posted:poo poo you both have given me a lot. Thanks so much. I haven't given any thought to the 2D/3D effect thing, I've been really hungup on producing even light across the whole photo. I've been really intimidated by creating shadows up until now. I'll put your poo poo into action and see what I come up with. Thankyou seriously. Read up on Rembrandt lighting. It's a classic, it's use able in lots of situations, and you'll see it everywhere.
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# ? Mar 15, 2013 23:52 |
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CarrotFlowers posted:There's a huge market for newborn photography. This time in their life is fleeting and people want pictures of that. Yeah they all look the same, but the parents know it's their kid and that's all that counts. Yes, that's just it. God I hate that posed poo poo, it's creepy as hell. Why are you even shooting your baby like that? That's not an accurate record of them at that time - they're not sitting around like that all day, are they. loving weird. This is one I took of mine 15 months ago, at 2 days old. Notice I haven't put her in the Lotus position.
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# ? Mar 16, 2013 12:35 |
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Hi mam, I understand you'd like to book an appointment. :bigtran: Yes, I was looking to come in on Tuesday? Tuesday sounds great, what time can I put you in for? :bigtran: Do you have any time slots around 11AM? Let me check. Yea that's wide open. :bigtran: Great. Okay, now who is the session for? :bigtran: Oh it's for my baby. Just the baby? None with either you or dad? :bigtran: Yea, just him. Okay, sure. Will you have any outfit changes or props from home? :bigtran: I'll have an outfit change, no props. Okay. How old is he? :bigtran: He'll be 5 days on Tuesday. I get these calls at least once a week. The studio probably makes 2 or 3 appointments for infants<week old. Also, I'm on the "that's creepy" train for the posed dead infant tutorial.
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# ? Mar 16, 2013 23:19 |
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I have hella Roast Beef style depression, so haven't even looked at my camera for ages; however, I decided to get off my rear end and cover for the local burly troupe when their main photo guy took ill today - Busy importing and building 1:1 previews of 1055 shots in LR, but this early shot of the compere and one of the guest artistes cheered me a bit: click>big Simple landscape shot with my 580exII and knockoff diffuser dome pointed straight forward for a spread and softened light.
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# ? Mar 17, 2013 03:02 |
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NoneMoreNegative posted:I have hella Roast Beef style depression, so haven't even looked at my camera for ages; however, I decided to get off my rear end and cover for the local burly troupe when their main photo guy took ill today - Busy importing and building 1:1 previews of 1055 shots in LR, but this early shot of the compere and one of the guest artistes cheered me a bit: In the future I would toss a color temp orange gel on there and WB for tungsten so the background doesn't have that gross cast. I keep CTO gels permanently velcroed to the sides of my speedlights because they are that useful.
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# ? Mar 17, 2013 04:07 |
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rcman50166 posted:Hi mam, I understand you'd like to book an appointment. 5 days is a little early. 7-8 days is hella awesome. Once they eat and go to sleep it's play dough baby time!
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# ? Mar 17, 2013 04:38 |
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Whitezombi posted:You need to post all of these here. beergod posted:Can you please post the rest of their photographs? Not everything, but here's a cross section and most shots from their pin-up day. http://imgur.com/a/lml0v I'm going to finish cleaning my house then go take some photos of my own. I'm not a brilliant artist by any measure, but I know I couldn't produce work like that and expect people to want to pay me for it. EDIT: No, just loving... christ. PuntCuncher fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Mar 17, 2013 |
# ? Mar 17, 2013 05:58 |
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This one is pretty good. http://i.imgur.com/v48HvPB.jpg I mean it sums up the project fairly well.
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# ? Mar 17, 2013 11:08 |
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Using the same lighting setup as this shot, I switched cameras and took this: Danny Santos II by alkanphel, on Flickr
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# ? Mar 17, 2013 14:59 |
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alkanphel posted:Using the same lighting setup as this shot, I switched cameras and took this: I know our styles differ but I desperately want to buy you a reflector.
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# ? Mar 17, 2013 15:35 |
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I kind of agree with Oprah. I like your lighting but I wish I could see at least some detail in the shadows. As it currently stands I see no information there (his left side of the chin for example). A reflector would bump them just slightly enough so that you can keep your general style.
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# ? Mar 17, 2013 18:47 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 09:40 |
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Haha yeah good points both of you, I'll break out the reflector for the next few shots if I can find one. Or maybe I will just change the lighting setup for variation.
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# ? Mar 17, 2013 23:09 |