Accident or Awareness?

This shot comes from my Elinchrom Ring Flash review. When I sent a copy of this to the model she put it on her Facebook page (with my permission) and put the caption “accident photo while adjusting my boobs”. The reality is that when I photograph models I try to give as little instruction as possible so that I can try to seize the moment and capture them in their natural pose. For some this means I have to give them some instruction and take some shots to make them feel comfortable, but the ones that are always my favorites are when I tell them I’m taking an exposure test shot or that I’m still dialing in my settings on my camera.

I’m always watching my model with the hope that I can catch them in a great natural pose. This is one of those shots, but honestly I wasn’t totally ready so I shot it from an angle that was a bit too low (hence the abrupt crop at the bottom). When the model looked up I told her to adjust herself again so I could try to get the shot again from a different angle (i.e., no crotch shot), but nothing beat the first shot for its natural feeling.

I contend that this wasn’t an accident, but rather it was not a planned or posed shot.My friend Eric Kool-Brown said it best when he said “There is no such thing as an accident, just varying levels of planning” – I couldn’t agree more!

This shot was taken with a Canon 5D Mark II using a 70-200mm lens set to 110mm for 1/100 sec at f/9. I used ISO 190 and the ring flash was powered by my quadra set to 5.0. Post-processing was quick and dirty using Photoshop, Lightroom, Color Efex 4 and Portraiture.

A Pattern Interrupted

Many great photographers have said that there’s few things more interesting than a pattern interrupted. Typically that interruption is via a splash of color. However, how do you make that splash without looking like Sin City? Some say adding color to a black and white is blasphemy, others feel it has been overdone, yet others think it’s fantastic? Since art is subjective and beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, they are all right!

In this shot I decided to push myself to go outside of my comfort zone and interrupt the jet blacks and rich grayscale tones with a little interruption. Granted there’s no real pattern here, but the same concept applies. My interruption is subtle (the hood ornament on the BMW and turn signal on the Mercedes), but they are deliberate. My goal is to capture your eye with the BMW headlight, but to pull you deeper into the photo with the color hood ornament. The Mercedes should not be forgotten so I try to pull you deeper in with the color turn signal lamp 9since there’s no other color object on the car to grab you). This hopefully causes your eyes to explore the photo and the vignette hopefully keeps you in long enough that you make a repeat voyage across the attention getting points.

This image was shot with a Canon 5D Mark II using 24-105mm lens set to 24mm and f/11 for 1/4 sec. It was on a Gitzo GT1541 tripod with mirror lockup and a timer enabled for a sharp crisp shot. To process this color photo I used Nik Software’s Viveza to control the light and dark spots, Silver Efex Pro 2 to do the color conversion, and Color Efex 4 for the tonal contrast filter. Photoshop was used so I could do fine level masking on the photo at various points and Lightroom was used for RAW file conversion.

Beware of Branding

Here’s a shot that I love, but I can’t use for anything beyond editorial purposes because of that Hello Kitty t-shirt. Sure it’s a cute shirt and it kinda makes the shot, but it’s a very well protected trademark that I can’t use for commercial purposes without the trademark owners permission. This is something to keep this in mind in your shots, especially for little things too like the occasional Victoria's Secret branding that will show up on the underwear strap from time to time too.

This photo was taken with a Canon 1D Mark IV at 120mm using a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens. This shot was taken at f/13 and ISO 160 for 1/125 sec using my studio lighting setup.