Carrie Notari

I was about to turn the page in the Light and Lens book when I spotted an incredible photo, it was by Carrie Notari.

I decided to check out some of her work:

I love anything that is montage, so finding this has completely opened up my views on it even more.

I love the way she has overlayed pictures of bark over top of the portraits of faces and body parts, the texture combination is very interesting to look at, it's surreal.

Source: http://www.fotobot.com/gallery.html

Reading more of light and lens.

There is a paragraph that is very true and quite motivating.

On page 290 - Light and Lens: Photography in the digital age.

It says that when you walk down a street, you don't see anything but making sure you're not about to trip up or something, you take no notice of your surroundings. But to be truly inspired, you must have an open mind, explore, see, look and be aware of everything. 

That the method of working should consist of composing the viewpoint and the lighting inside the frame, then you ask questions to yourself, you answer them in the frame. You think about it all independently, perhaps influences run through your mind but you must never feel the need to compete or envy someone else's work and only use parts of someone else's ideas if you work that way, never directly copy because it's not your idea at all. 

Very true words, I have always worked this way, I will continue to do so as it works for me.

My Studio Portraits.

My passion is not only photography, but it's music too. I chose to photograph a couple of musicians for their profiles in use, to be used to promote them. I was going for a kerrang! style client. My first shoot was high key, the second was less high key but not quite low key. I used Rembrandt lighting at the front with a fill light. The hi key photoshoot had 2 bowens lights with umbrellas to spread the light onto the background. The second photoshoot had one bowens light with a reflector at the back to create a Rim light around the subject.

Here are some of the images from the first shoot:

All (ISO - 100) f8 1/100 - they have been edited.

Here is the technique I have used for editing these images:

Original Image

Image > Adjustments > Levels

Levels can adjust the shadows, highlights and midtones. Here, I changed it so that it appeared more darker in the midtones and shadows as the original was slightly on the bright side.

Ctrl+Alt+Shift+B OR Image > Adjustments > Black + White

I created a new layer and changed this to black and white.

Blending layer turned into 'Soft Light' and opacity set at 68%

This layer makes the contrast more punchy and the colours have more tone in them, I had to reduce the opacity so that it wasn't too overpowering in contrast as it didn't show as much detail in the image if it was kept at 100%.

Image > Adjustments > Color Balance

After I had flattened the layers, I went onto the color balance adjustments to bring out the yellow tones for the blonde in the guitarists hair as I felt the black and white additional tones had lost the colour coming through.

Using the spot healing tool, the one that looks like a plaster.

I got rid of the odd spot here and there to make the skin appear a bit better. In previous photos I've had to use the clone tool to even out the skin tone beneath the eyes in certain angles that he was in as those areas appeared darker than they do here, making him look as tired as he was!

Filter > Lens Correction > Custom then Darken the Vignette

To add a bit of framing and tone on the white background, I thought I would add a vignette round the edges. This has always been a habit for me ever since I learnt how to use it, in some cases it can look too much so I've learnt to use it wisely, but this adds a powerful effect I feel as it puts the attention on the guitarist just that bit more. Oh and lastly I had to click 'Ok' and flatten the layer as it turns into a floating layer.

So there you have it, a before and after:

Before

After

Here are some of the images from the second shoot:

All the settings and editing techniques were the same for these photos. 
I would love to do this type of shoot again, this is one of the things I would like to do as a career, to take photographs of musicians because I would like my interests combined.

Light Painting Again

I tried another attempt at home to do some light painting, I got my housemates to wave a torch around in the kitchen with all the lights switched off.

(ISO - 100) f5.6 0.8 Sec

This appears evidently too short in time, but they stopped waving the torch too early and I framed it too off.

(ISO - 100) f5.6 1/5

After adjusting the timing to a time that had worked well in the studio, this was the result. I find it quite tonal but it was out of focus, which always has been a problem since I've tried it at home.

(ISO - 100) f5.6 1/8

This was more improved, less time so that there was less of the fuzzy glow, the torch was in focus and I had rested the camera on a pile of catalogues on the table..I still know I need a tripod for this exercise! But I am pleased with this result, it's the best one of the lot.

(ISO - 100) f5.6 1/8

They had accidently knocked open the curtains, however, I am rather impressed by the effect it made! It looks like fire almost because of the orange glow! 

(ISO - 100) f5.6 1/8

Here is another attempt at this 'fire' effect, this time I waved the camera around aswell as the torch being waved around. I feel that it would be better if there had been a particular shape drawn.

(ISO - 100) f3.5 1/4

I wanted to light up my housemate and have shapes drawn around them, at first, I thought their laptop would light them up, I changed the shutter speed and aperture too. This didn't work because the laptop light wasn't bright enough, I needed a flash.

(ISO - 100) f3.5 1/13

(ISO - 100) f3.5 1/13

I used the flash this time round, shortened the time when I should have left it or rose the aperture, but I think the results show that they worked quite well this way, the blurriness could have been resolved with a tripod though!

I'd be quite happy to try these out outside one day to involve a landscape inside the frame too.

Night Photography (Shutter Speed Assignment)

Here are a collection of photos I took at night time using a slow shutter speed.

(ISO - 100) f3.5 1/4

 I took this as soon as I was outside, just to adjust the settings. It's the most sharpest one and the rest were too dark.

(ISO - 100) f5.6 1/4

 A few photos later, I got out into the street and I'd changed my settings before then, so this didn't quite capture the street lights very well, they're merely floating dots! 

(ISO - 100) f5.6 1 sec

 The aperture was at it's limit so I had to change the shutter speed, thankfully this got the correct exposure but I had a weakness of trying to be too quick at this shoot, so unfortunately was out of focus. This is pure practice though, I've never photographed night properly like this. I need a tripod!

(ISO - 100) f5.6 1/3

 I wanted a nice street view, this one was ahead of me, I adjusted the seconds on it as there was a more even light. I had several goes to actually get it in focus this time, this was the most focused one and I'm actually quite proud of it! I still feel like it's on the softer side though.

(ISO - 100) f5.6 1/3

 I decided to try out some lighting trails using car headlights as they went past, I've done this before but not stood out on the street. I felt this shot was too early and too short in exposure, the line is short.

(ISO - 100) f5.6 1 sec

(ISO - 100) f5.6 1 sec

(ISO - 100) f5.6  0.8 sec

Then these were more of the results with a longer exposure to get these more better light trails.

I feel that I will come back to these and try them again one day and hopefully create some wonderful night time images!

Studio Lighting for Portraits (Part Three)

Hi Key Lighting:

Hi Key lighting usually persists of a lot of lights, with the background being fairly bright. So for this task we used 4 lights.

Instead of playing around with lights infront of the subject or using one light behind, this time we added 2 lights that lit up the background to make it appear white in the photos, we used umbrellas to spread out the light so that it wouldn't look 'blocky' and the small poles slide through the reflectors that attach on the lighting heads.

(ISO - 100) f11 1/100

This is what the lights do, they make the background not appear grey, but white and very very bright. They usually have to be set quite high on the brightness number too, but not too much more than the front lighting, perhaps 2 stops.

(ISO - 100) f11 1/100

And this is with the main and fill light added. You can see the normal tones coming through just like in the previous lighting images blogged earlier. 

(ISO - 100) f11 1/100

(ISO - 100) f11 1/100

 We tried to do some silhouettes, the first attempt was ok but the lights around the subject could have been darker and the background lights may had have to be more brighter. The second attempted didn't work because the set up next to us had their lights turned on at that moment unlike in the last take, in which the light leaked over to our side too!

(ISO - 100) f8 1/100

(ISO - 100) f5.6 1/100

Then the next thing we did was create a typical high fashion style hi key lighting photo, so we opened up the apertures to get over exposed images. Then doing the same again, I changed the white balance too, to tungsten which gave a blue cast to the image which you can see in the second image. It's a good technique if you want a blue toned image!